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Support the RSC Budget Along With Ryan’s Budget Today

It's time to separate the men from the boys in Congress.

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  April 15th, 2011 at 08:23 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

**Update: The RSC budget garnered 119 Republican votes, roughly half of the conference.  Keep in mind that there are 176 members of the Republican Study Committee.  Republican leadership members Cathy McMorris Rodgers and David Dreier switched their votes from yes to no in the last minute in order to thwart a Democrat plan to let the amendment pass by voting present.

Yesterday, Congress voted for the final continuing budget resolution of FY 2011.  The House vote was 260-167 and the Senate vote was 81-19.  Due to the meager cuts provided in this convoluted budget deal and the fact that it failed to defund Obamacare and Planned Parenthood, 59 Republican congressmen and 15 senators indomitably opposed their leadership and voted against the bill.  Republican leadership offered wild gyrations and employed arm twisting to ensure that there wasn’t too much dissent.  They even solicited the help of Steny Hoyer to whip up enough Democrats in support of the budget.  Nonetheless, enough conservative House members opposed the bill that its final passage was secured only with Democrat support.

Clearly, there are more than 59 unvarnished conservatives in the House who intuitively know that this was a bad deal.  Unfortunately, yet understandably, many of them were tepid about undermining their leaders in the last hours of debate.  They were all eager to move onto the “real fight”, the 2012 budget.  Well, today is their chance to show that they are serious about repudiating the past 80 years of socialism and profligate spending, by voting for the Republican Study Committee budget.

Later today, the House will vote to adopt Paul Ryan’s FY 2012 budget as part of the first step of the budgetary process-a concurrent budget resolution (H.Con.Res. 34).  Unlike the Democrats who failed to pass a budget resolution in 2011, Ryan will pass his budget on the exact date, April 15, which is prescribed in the 1974 Budget Act.

The Concurrent Budget Resolution provides a blueprint for the entire congressional budget for the next fiscal year, as well as a plan for the 10-year budget frame.  Additionally, the resolution, if adopted, provides a top-line cap – known as a 302(a) allocation – on all discretionary spending, and an individual spending limit on all appropriations subcommittees – known as 302(b) allocations.  Ryan’s top-line figure for FY 2012 is $1.019 trillion.

While Ryan’s budget is a great start, it doesn’t cut enough discretionary spending and fails to balance the budget for another 26 years.  The RSC, under the leadership of Congressman Jim Jordan, will submit its budget, Honest Solutions, as an amendment to the budget resolution.  Their plan will cut $9.1 trillion and balance the budget in 9 years (see our full report here).  Every conservative should support this amendment.  Call your congressman today and request that they draw a line in the sand and prove that they are worthy of holding public office.  Tell them to vote for the RSC budget amendment!  After all, this is the real fight, isn’t it?

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COMMENTS

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  • Death_of_the_Donkey

    Macro Economic Advisors obliterated the Heritage study yesterday:

    http://macroadvisers.blogspot.com/2011/04/economic-effects-of-ryan-plan-assuming.html

    This quote at the end is quite telling:

    “In our opinion, however, the macroeconomic analysis released in conjunction with the House Budget Resolution is not relevant to the coming discussion. We believe that the main result ? that aggressive deficit reduction immediately raises GDP at unchanged interest rates ? was generated by manipulating a model that would not otherwise produce this result, and that the basis for this manipulation is not supported either theoretically or empirically. Other features of the results ? while perhaps unintended ? seem highly problematic to us and seriously undermine the credibility of the overall conclusions.”

    • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

      http://macroadvisers.blogspot.com/2011/03/ma-analysis-fiscal-drag-from-hr1-4-pp.html

      Yeah, that says it all about whether we should care what they think. They think it might be prudent to keep on spending, because they believe reducing government will harm economic growth.

      Basically that website is a bunch of macroeconomic fairy tales for socialists.

      • Death_of_the_Donkey

        Yes, it would be a short term drag on growth, but would have a long term positive impact. Why is that so bad? In the real world, government spending is part of GDP, and in the real world, the private sector does not instantly step in and fill gaps when government spending falls (it may happen over time, but it isn’t an instantaneous effect).

      • msctex

        Could someone please explain the mechanism supposedly at play in the minds of such people, where essentially investing money in the Government can have an efficacious result upon the economy? Where taking it out and not putting it back can be good? How does using the Federal Government as a wise, all-knowing middleman supposedly function? I would like to grasp exactly what it is that these mal-educated people are telling themselves, because it escapes me.

        I am not asking about the Philosophic nature of such people, or their true intentions. I’m asking about the math. How exactly is this supposed to work?

        • Death_of_the_Donkey

          Lockheed gets like 90% of its revenue from the feds, are you claiming that Lockheed doesn’t add to the economy. Government has always been a part of GDP, as it can add to the economy in real terms (remember multiplier effects). The important thing to remember is that GDP doesn’t have (nor should it) a tax component and thus what the government component partially represents is the effect of the spending of those tax dollars (if we didn’t include government in GDP we would essentially be measuring economic growth after taxes were paid, but before they were spent).

          The math of all this is pretty simple. If you cut government spending, you will see an immediate short-term negative impact on GDP growth as the government component drops. Over time though, this drop will get offset by private investment that will step in and pick up some of the slack left by government. In other words, there is no free lunch, in order to get the budget fixed, we are going to have to suffer some short term growth slowdowns.

          • msctex

            If it draws from the economy to the tune of 90% of its income and operating costs, and manages to put back more than that amount, then yes. If not, then it would appear the answer is no.

            What you are describing is essentially a Government company, and I fail to see how something which must be supported by tax-payer dollars could hope to do as much good in the economy as something which stands on its own, without, as I said, the Government as a middleman.

            And how can the Government be considered part of the GDP, yet not acknowledge a tax component? The Government has one source of income. What you say about the possibility of growth slowdowns makes sense in this context, but again, why should Government be considered part of the equation, given that it would need seemingly be exponentially effective, as it must succeed in turning a profit which counteracts the drain which funds it?

      • Dave_in_Fla

        Or is that a faux pas these days?

        • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack
        • Death_of_the_Donkey

          that showed a 2.8% unemployment rate (the lowest ever), coupled with essentially zero inflation, an immediate uptick in residential housing investment, and absolutely no short term growth loss from the cuts may perhaps be a bit off?

          • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

            We take a close look at people who use the RedState comments section to promote discredited, socialist Keynesian thought that government spending promotes economic growth, and so cutting spending will make things worse.

          • Death_of_the_Donkey

            The report you linked to clearly states that they believe the spending cuts would have a long term positive impact on GDP. The question is of the short term, where cuts WILL have a negative impact on growth (please find me any peer reviewed economic study that shows different). And further, my purpose with posting the original link was to show that the Heritage study was garbage and that we need an independent and accurate (as accurate as possible anyways) model to evaluate all the plans, so we can make a better decision as to which one to adopt (whether it is the RSC plan, Ryan’s, Simpson-Bowles, or some other plan). We need to be able to compare apples to apples, since we may only get one crack at this.

          • aesthete

            that the Heritage study premises are just ludicrous on their face. Even most conservative and libertarian economists wouldn’t speculate a negative multiplier or even an > 1 multiplier for government spending — short term, anyways. I like Ryan and I like his plan, but he paints a ridiculously rosy scenario regarding employment, inflation, etc.

  • cja99

    Your right, it’s a joke. The country is going down the toilet. No one asked Obama WHAT HAPPENED TO GE PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE IN TAXES during his speech yesterday…Oh yes, that’s right they paid nothing in taxes last year because GE and Immelt are in the bag for Obama.

  • harlan

    …in the House who know that this was a bad deal.

    And therein lies the problem.

  • izoneguy

  • Dave_in_Fla

    Unlike some of the folks above *rolls eyes*

    I like what the RSC is doing here. We know that neither the Ryan budget or the RSC budget will survive Obama’s veto pen, but they are doing something very smart by putting a marker out on the table of actual legislative changes to the structural defects ahead of the debt ceiling debate.

    This puts some real bargaining chips that would be in the trillions in play, something that wasn’t possible during the last CR debate.

    The Ryan budget is a better political concept, while the RSC one is better for the country and its fiscal health. The main difference, as I understand it, is that RSC makes structural changes to entitlements for current recipients, while Ryan gives folks over 55 years old a pass.

    The RSC budget will be demagogued as trying to “kill grandma”. Now to be fair, that is what is being done with the Ryan budget, but that is demonstrably false and the Dems have been called on that already by some of the MSM lapdogs. The RSC budget is going to be a harder sell.

    I would like to see as many votes for the RSC budget as possible, but if it doesn’t pass, but the Ryan budget does, I’m going to be ok with that outcome.

    What I really like is that we will have a budget passed prior to the debt ceiling vote. That is going to give a lot of leverage.

    • http://redmeatconservative.blogspot.com/ dhorowitz3

      ans seriously put, Dave. That is exactly the point. As Erick said several times last week, we need to start all the way from the right so we have more leverage in negotiating. This budget should receive the support of most of the conference.