Tag: Federal Budget
Chris Coons is On the Budget Conference Committee
This is the committee formed as part of the deal to re-open the government and avoid the debt ceiling. It isn’t much of a giveaway, as Conference Committees are the usual order of business in Congress after budgets have passed the House and Senate. This Conference Committee — as would others — is meant to negotiate a single budget from the two that have passed. Senator Chris Coons is on this committee as a result of his being on the Senate Budget Committee.
Senator Chris Coons Calls Out Republicans for Not Getting to a Budget Deal
Recall that the Senate passed its budget in March, and the House passed its budget before that — meaning that if we’re finally following the “regular order” of budgeting, there should be a Senate and House Reconciliation Committee so that these two bodies can come to some agreement on a budget. That budget — a policy document only, it appropriates no money — is supposed to guide the appropriation process. Except that the GOP doesn’t want to work on a budget until we are much closer to the debt ceiling problem. We were supposed to have faced the debt ceiling in march or April, but the Treasury figured out a way to postpone that until Fall. So the GOP is stuck with a pretty bad timeline — blowing up the economy over the debt ceiling just before they start campaigning is very bad juju. And they have NO negotiating position unless the debt ceiling is imminent they think. So Senator Coons took to the Senate floor today to call to get back to the regular order of the budget process and to stop the effects of the sequester:
Essential Reading on the Deficit/Debt Issue
Since we are to be treated to multiple staged crises by the GOP in order to dismantle entitlement programs so that there is more money to funnel to wealthy people, I thought it would be useful to collect some of the better pieces trying to assess where we (and the US Budget) really are. The coming months will be filled with more of the usual he say/she say fake objectivity from the media, who won’t do much to give you any context much less any real numbers. In other words, they’ll be participating in the fear factory that will be generated in order to create a better opportunity to cut back on entitlements. Several of these pieces will be longish and some will be fairly data-rich (we want that), so you might need a little time to read through them. But a good deal of the story is that we’ve gotten in a good deal of deficit cuts and we’re pretty close to the number needed for long term sustainability. This is good ammunition for talking to our Congressional delegation who seem hell bent on helping the GOP to cut Social Security and Medicare. Because what we should be focusing on is fixing these two — not in asking seniors to cut back.
I’m sure there will be other good work coming down the pike and I’ll add that to this list, but am not sure yet how to revive the thread. In the meantime, you can bookmark this as a place to find smarter journalism (or just plain wonkishness) on the budget issues.
A Tale of Two Budgets
The National Priorities Project is a government sunshine project — making the complexities of the Federal budget and budget process easily comprehensible. If you haven’t been to their website before, you should click through and bookmark this great resource. One of their efforts is a series of explainers using You Tube on various budget and policy issues. This one compares the Ryan/Romney/GOP Budget with that proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus:
McConnell Breaks with House GOP
As President Obama threatens a government shutdown in September due to GOP duplicity, Senator Mitch McConnell (R – Kentucky) has decided to keep up his end of the bargin.
Tis the Season to Bash Feds
It must be the holiday season as it seems that the rethuglicans in Congress are once again taking aim at Federal employees. As a compromise to extending the payroll tax holiday that has been championed by President Obama, Senate ruthuglicans, led by Sen. Dean Heller (Tehadist – NV), introduced legislation to “pay” for the extension by freezing Federal salaries for an additional 3 years (on top of the 2 year freeze instituted last January) and cut 200,000 Federal jobs. And get this, these asshats also want to make sure that millionaires won’t be eligible for food stamps! Now when was the last time a millionaire either qualified or applied for food stamps?
#Fail
That seems to sum up (as of this writing, which is shortly before the Super Committee deadline) the rather expected results of the work of said Super Committee.
What Out of Control Spending Looks Like
Since we’re still going to be focused on this narrative that the government spends too much, it is worth a look to see what it is the government is spending on (thanks to TPM)
Debt Ceiling – Are We Screwed?
Ezra Klein reports that the Obama’s press conference means the debt ceiling negotiations have failed.
John Carney Wants to Know How You’d Manage the Federal Budget
He is holding 3 meetings on Wednesday, June 8 in conjunction with the Concord Coalition, which is billed as a non-partisan policy organization. Here is the invite from Representative Carney that came in my email:
Video and Transcript of President Obama’s Speech Today
This is posted and linked for the folks (like me) who couldn’t watch or listen to the speech this afternoon. The video is about 43 minutes long. Link to the transcript at whitehouse.gov is also provided if you’d rather read it.
The Pentagon Being Asked to Tighten Its Belt — Finally
This is good news — this is Not Enough — but this is genuinely a good direction.
According to the NYT today, SecDef Robert Gates is asking the entire DOD to find billions of dollars in cuts to help fund the wars that they are in:
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