The Democratic Senator from North Dakota is taking the position that The Budget Control Act (the formal name for the agreement that raised the debt ceiling) totally counts as a budget. While the idea of a federal budget that only takes twenty-eight pages to describe is actually kind of intriguing to me, the fact remains that the summary tables of an actual federal budget are | Read More »
The Republican Study Committee has a new ad out pointing out how long it’s been since we had a budget:
The formal capitulation took place yesterday, and signals an end to Gov. Dayton’s ill-conceived, ill-timed, and ill-executed attempt to dominate the Minnesota legislature in the same way that predecessor Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R, MN) did during his term in office. The very short version, for those not following along: Minnesota Republican legislators wanted a $34 billion dollar, two-year budget with no new taxes; Dayton wanted | Read More »
Personally, I’m not entirely certain why the Obama administration is so adamant about raising taxes on small businesses, but they’ve at least abandoned their previous position where a possible early end to Bush-era tax breaks (now scheduled to expire in 2012) was on the debt ceiling negotiating table. Unfortunately, the White House is still adamantly refusing to accept the pesky objective reality that there are | Read More »
I was absolutely certain that there was insufficient moral courage in the California state government to actually make stick the new rule that if California legislators don’t produce a balanced budget on time every year, then California legislators don’t get paid until they actually do produce a budget. That’s probably because I’m a bit cynical when it comes to political foxes and fiscal hen-houses, particularly | Read More »
USA Today has the funniest thing I’m going to read today, I think: At the last of four events on Rep. Paul Ryan‘s “listening tour” of his district Thursday, he called on a man in the front row of a high school auditorium, then instantly recognized him. “You changed clothes!” Ryan told Steve Jozefczyk. The 54-year old salesman from Franklin, Wis., had asked Ryan several | Read More »
…yeah, you know what’s in it already, don’t you? That “People’s” bit is what we call a tell: a promise of big, honking wholesale confiscation of Other People’s (Not Really The Real People) Money. And lo! – this is precisely what the Congressional Progressive Caucus wants to do: Increase payroll taxes. Both sides. Reintroduce the tax hikes on small businesses that were threatened last year. | Read More »
Emphasis on ‘may:’ they’re considering coming up with an alternative to the GOP budget plan that was released today. If the Democrats feel like it. And if Ranking Budget Member Chris Van Hollen can get his head around the big numbers involved. That’s not guaranteed, given that Van Hollen’s past experience with big, scary numbers shows that he has a bad tendency to go full-bore | Read More »
Three things immediately leap out at me regarding this first look at the GOP’s long-term budget proposal: As Hot Air put it, everything’s apparently on the table. Everything. 6.2 trillion cut in spending over the next ten years*; 4.4 trillion cut from the deficit. Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security reform. An implicit promise of an end to ethanol subsidies. Defense cuts. Ending the bailout mindset. Top tax rates | Read More »
It’s looking increasingly likely that Senate Democrats are unwilling to die on the hill of opposition to 4 billion dollars’ worth of cuts in the short-term emergency funding bill to supplement the continuing resolution that the Republicans had to pass in lieu of a proper budget that the Democrats refused to even offer last year – yes, that’s a bit of a run-on sentence. It’s | Read More »
Via Glenn Reynolds, ladies and gentlemen: your tax dollars at… actually, “waste” doesn’t have the right connotation of “bizarrely surreal.” Essentially, Democratic legislators have mainstreamed the antiwar Left’s Giant Puppet People by bringing the cartoon aardvark Arthur to a budget discussion. Now, here’s the thing: I try to regulate what my kids watch. I’m assisted in this by the fact that my wife is, frankly, | Read More »
(H/T: AoSHQ) Considering that there is a projected deficit of 1.5 trillion dollars, you might think that the White House might start taking the idea of spending cuts seriously. You would be wrong: the Budget Office has released the President’s proposed 2012 budget, and they involve a paltry 775 million in spending cuts. That would be .05% of the total deficit. Not five percent; point-oh-five | Read More »
(Via Drudge) 17 billion. Off of a 3.4 trillion dollar budget. How quaint. May 7 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama is seeking $81 billion more in spending on domestic initiatives in his record $3.55 trillion budget plan while calling on Congress to trim $17 billion worth of programs, including tax breaks for the oil and gas industries. [snip] Unlike past years, the administration won’t release | Read More »
That’s the word that the Washington Post used, so don’t blame me (H/T: Glenn Reynolds): Obama’s Machine Sputters in Effort to Push Budget Grass-Roots Campaign Has Little Effect When his post-campaign organization was unveiled in January, Barack Obama vowed that the 13 million-strong grass-roots network built during his presidential campaign would play a “crucial role” in enacting his agenda from the White House. But in | Read More »
I’ve received word that the Senate passed our current budget monstrosity 55-43. No Republican defections: we picked up Bayh and Nelson of Florida Nebraska [my bad!]. Earlier, the House version passed 233/196 with no Republicans voting for it, 20 Democrats voting against it, with supposed fiscal conservatives (and European junketeers) Charlie Melancon (LA-03) and Bart Gordon (TN-06) singled out for special ridicule as being part | Read More »
Well, that may be unfair: as Andrew Malcolm notes, if Obama hadn’t spent the last month trying to convince people that his 3.6 trillion dollar budget was a good idea it might have slipped even further than the recent Gallup poll shows that it has. Which means that he’s saved or created – what? Five, six points on the polls? Looking at the poll itself, | Read More »
Fresh from their general campaign last Saturday of utterly failing to convincing Congress to do anything, Organizing for America is now engaged in regional spamming of their email lists to go after of individual legislators considered either hostile or insufficiently favorable to the President’s plan to saddle the next three generations with even more crushing, unnecessary debt. This is primarily targeting Republicans: in fact, based | Read More »
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