Federal Budget
December 6, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
The Republican congressional leadership has formulated its short-term strategy for responding to President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty. It wants to pass a continuing resolution that will fund most of the government for a full year, but will fund the Department of Homeland Security — which is responsible for implementing the amnesty — for only a few months. It’s not a terrible strategy, but neither is it optimal, for two reasons.
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September 22, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama has found uses for the U.S. military in spite of himself. Max Boot points out that he has just sent 3,000 troops to Liberia to “fight” Ebola; 1,500–and counting–to Iraq to counter ISIS; and hundreds, possibly thousands, more to Eastern Europe to deter Russia. In addition, Obama sent more than 150 troops to Africa to fight Joseph Kony. And he keeps sending troops to carry out various Special
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April 10, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Today the House of Representatives voted on the budget that came out of its Budget Committee–the Paul Ryan Budget, as it is often known in the press. The budget, which would put the United States on a path toward fiscal sustainability, passed by a vote of 219-205. No Democrats voted to move toward a balanced budget and start dealing with our $17 trillion debt. On the other hand, a few
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March 12, 2014 — John Hinderaker
This morning, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew appeared at a Senate Budget Committee hearing on President Obama’s FY 2015 budget proposal. Not a lot of attention has been paid to Obama’s budget, probably because, to an even greater extent than usual, it is dead on arrival. There is zero chance of it being the basis for federal spending next year, let alone the next ten years. Still, it has significance as
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March 5, 2014 — John Hinderaker
This morning Cynthia Burwell, Director of the White House Office of Management And Budget, testified before the Senate Budget Committee on President Obama’s just-submitted FY 2015 budget. Currently, federal discretionary spending is capped by the Ryan-Murray compromise spending bill that Obama signed just 10 weeks ago. Yet Obama’s budget ignores that compromise entirely, and proposes to spend an additional $56 billion in the discretionary category, above and beyond the current
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March 4, 2014 — John Hinderaker
President Obama offered his FY 2015 budget proposal today. There were not a lot of surprises, as the key elements of the budget had been leaked over the last week or two. This is how Obama characterized the document in his appearance at an elementary school: [I]t enables us to meet our obligations to future generations without a mountain of debt. This is mystifying. Currently the federal government is more
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February 23, 2014 — John Hinderaker
President Obama’s budget for the next fiscal year is slated to be released on March 4. While the budget is not yet public, the administration leaked a description of it to the Washington Post: “With 2015 budget request, Obama will call for an end to era of austerity:” President Obama’s forthcoming budget request will seek tens of billions of dollars in fresh spending for domestic priorities while abandoning a compromise
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January 28, 2014 — Steven Hayward
I wonder sometimes how the reasonably sensible Bill Galston can remain in today’s Democratic Party, whose obsession with equality has elided into pure, envy-filled resentment of the successful. There’s a reason why envy was long considered one of the seven deadly sins, and to give voice to this in punitive redistributive policy, as Democrats now so clearly wish to do, may well prove deadly to American society. Writing in the
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January 20, 2014 — John Hinderaker
The $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill that was rammed through Congress last week is the latest in a series of massive federal laws that are negotiated in secret, debated scarcely at all, and voted on without being read. Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee were studying the spending bill even as it was being enacted, and have published an excellent top-line analysis of the legislation here. If, like most voters,
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January 14, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Last month, the Paul Ryan-Patty Murray discretionary spending bill was unveiled. Sort of unveiled, anyway: it didn’t actually exist, but was summarized in a series of bullet points. Now the bill has taken tangible form. Here it is, all 2,860 pages, including explanatory statements: The House is expected to vote on the omnibus spending bill tomorrow, less than 48 hours after copies became available. No one will have read the
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January 14, 2014 — Steven Hayward
Forget House of Cards! The good folks at the Cato Institute have begun producing a series of short videos about downsizing the ultimate (fiscal) house of cards, the federal government. Sounds like an overdue idea. We’ll run a few of them here on Power Line, starting with the one below examining the Department of Agriculture (about 3 minutes long), but if you can’t wait to take in the whole series,
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December 19, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The late Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire issued a monthly Golden Fleece Award to public officials who bestowed taxpayers’ funds on risible projects. Senator Proxmire issued the award for more than a decade until he retired from the Senate in 1989. Proxmire was a vanishing breed of Democrat who purported to oppose government waste while supporting all the Great Society programs that really opened the spigots, yet the spirit of his
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December 18, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
As John and others have pointed out, the Murray-Ryan budget compromise cuts spending by reducing cost of living increases in military pensions. The reduction even applies to disabled veterans. Naturally, there has been a backlash against these cuts. So naturally, Patty Murray (but apparently not Paul Ryan) is trying to distance herself from them. Murray’s people are blaming Ryan. But these cuts could not have seen the light of day
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December 17, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The Ryan-Murray budget deal cuts spending by reducing cost of living increases in military pensions. This provision was troubling to Senator Jeff Sessions, who is a spending hawk but thinks there are lots of items in the federal budget that should be cut before veterans’ benefits. As usual, I think Sessions is right. Harry Reid runs the Senate with an autocratic hand. One of his favorite tricks is called “filling
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December 17, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
By a vote of 67-33, the Senate has invoked cloture on the Murray-Ryan budget compromise, thus ending debate and paving the way for passing the bill. As I understand it, all 55 Senate Democrats voted for cloture and were joined by 12 Republicans. The 12 Republicans are: Lamar Alexander, Roy Blunt, Saxby Chambliss, Susan Collins, Jeff Flake, Orrin Hatch, John Hoeven, Johnny Isakson, Ron Johnson, John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, and
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December 16, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Marc Thiessen disputes the conventional wisdom that Republicans should accept the Murray-Ryan budget compromise because if they don’t, they will be blamed for an ensuing government shutdown. He notes that unlike with the October shutdown over Obamacare, this time it would be the Democrats who are trying to force a change to established law. I made the same point last week: Republicans received most of the blame for the recent
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December 16, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The Murray-Ryan budget deal almost surely will pass the Senate, but Republicans are making supporters of the compromise sweat a little: “The struggle is still on in the United States Senate; we will need about eight Republicans to come our way. I feel we’ll have a good, strong showing from the Democratic side. But we need bipartisan support to pass it,” Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said on CBS’s “Face
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