Tag: budget

Democrats may get around to alternative budget proposal.

Democrats taking this budget as seriously as 2010’s!

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 delusional when he’s in trouble; besides, it would also probably require Van Hollen to be able to take off his shoes by himself, and, well, some things are harder than they look.

Yes, that was snide.  What makes you think I care?  I’m too busy being annoyed that the only grown-ups in Washington DC right now all have Rs after their names; it gets tiring to have to do all the intellectual heavy lifting on an issue.

Besides, the only people that will get huffy are Democrats, and they should be doing something more useful with their lives anyway.  Getting mad at the way that their elected officials are all off in the Magical Kingdom of Self-Abuse over budget policy would be an excellent start; you’d think that the drool and the vacant expressions and the general looks of genial idiocy that their legislators are displaying right now would bother Democrats, but apparently not…

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Nancy Pelosi’s irrelevant budget objection.

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 not my fault. – anyway, Reid doesn’t particularly want to play chicken on this one, particularly since the cuts are to things that the President pretended to be in favor of cutting anyway*.

However, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi seems to have not gotten the memo, because she’s criticizing the cuts… and, by association, the President for suggesting them in the first place.  Such a criticism requires only the highest, most logical rebuttal:

Sit down, Nancy.
Shut up, Nancy.
When we want your opinion we’ll ask you, Nancy.

Continue reading Nancy Pelosi’s irrelevant budget objection.

#rsrh “Read my lips: no new debt.”

How silly is this claim by the President that “We will not be adding more to the national debt” under his budget?  Let me put it this way: when even the left-aligned PolitiFact is forced to rank your statement as “False” – despite a frantic reach-out from the White House – well, it’s pretty darn silly.  And as that first Heritage link shows, nobody’s buying the spin on this one.

Well.  Nobody that’s even the tiniest bit independent of the Democrats, at least.  Take a good look around and take careful note of who’s giving away the game on this one.

Via @cayankee.

Moe Lane

#rsrh “It’s a trap!” (shrug) OK.

So it’s a trap.  If the Democrats want a fight on the budget, fine.  The less important point is that the Republican party has decided to actually say the dread phrase “entitlement reforms” – which is something that most of the people reading this have almost given up hope to ever hear them do.  The more important point is that this is the right thing to do.

Two thoughts, to finish this off: Continue reading #rsrh “It’s a trap!” (shrug) OK.

Behold Obama’s mighty $775 million budget cut!

No, that is not a typo.

(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 percent.

The White House wants to call this a “tough call:” they also want credit for spending freezes that should have started two years ago. Actually, they should have started thirty or forty years ago, but this administration’s only on the hook for the stupid fiscal decisions that they made once they were actually in office. Which are considerable: Continue reading Behold Obama’s mighty $775 million budget cut!

President Obama courageously cuts 0.5% of budget*.

In that special not-really-doing-that-at-all way that government is so good at, of course.

(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 until May 11 its “analytical perspectives” or “historic tables” that help explain its spending decisions and put them in context. Obama repeated his pledge to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term in 2012.

I know that this is going to sound like a radical notion, Mr. President: but maybe if you stopped letting your fellow-Democrats swill at the trough…

wapoobamabudget1
(Heritage)

…you’d stop seeing this graphic that keeps mocking your pose of being for fiscal responsibility?

Just a thought.

Moe Lane

*Number taken from AoSHQ.

Crossposted to RedState.

The sputtering of the Obama machine.

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 its first big test, the group dubbed Organizing for America (OFA) had little obvious impact on the debate over President Obama’s budget, which passed Congress on Thursday with no Republican support and a splintering of votes among conservative Democrats. The capstone of the campaign was the delivery of 214,000 signatures to Capitol Hill, which swayed few, if any, members of Congress, according to legislative aides from both parties.

Continue reading The sputtering of the Obama machine.

The Democrats’ budget has passed. [UPDATED]

It is now theirs, with no ambiguities and/or caveats. They own it all.

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 of the group of Blue Dogs that signed off on a 3.6 trillion dollar budget. In short, the GOP Held The Line again.

This, by the way, despite a whopping 214,000 signatures gathered by the Democrats in support of the budget: as the Washington Post rather gleefully noted [H/T: Instapundit], the stenographers over at CNN and Huffington Post duly wrote down the 642K number quoted without asking how many duplicates. It turns out that they counted each signature three times.

Continue reading The Democrats’ budget has passed. [UPDATED]

Obama’s budget media blitz ineffective?

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, it’s interesting to see how an outside-the-margin of error result can be framed as ‘holding steady.’ 46/26/30 for/against/don’t know enough last month versus 39/27/33 this month, and support for it has slipped down the Republican/Democratic/Independent line. Although possibly the most embarrassing part of this whole thing for the administration is that the aforementioned media blitz – personal, online, televised, radioed, phone called, and for all I know, messenger pigeoned – didn’t have a better than a margin-of-error effect on the American public’s awareness of the issue. Admittedly, they were already pretty aware, but the Obama administration was looking for a win here, not a no-decision.
Continue reading Obama’s budget media blitz ineffective?

Obama’s Organizing for America targets… Evan Bayh.

No, you’re not misremembering. Bayh’s a Democrat.

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 on admittedly extremely limited communications with other people who might get spammed, I’m concluding OFA is not generically targeting Democrats. But they did go after Evan Bayh:

OFA sent an email to Indiana residents on Wednesday asking them to phone Republican Rep. Steve Buyer, Republican Sen. Richard Lugar and Democratic Sen. Bayh to let them “know where you stand on President Obama’s budget.”

Bayh has been one of the Democratic party’s most outspoken members against President Obama’s spending, penning recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to outline his opposition to the $410 billion omnibus bill the Obama signed. He also announced he leading a 15-member working group of moderate Senate Democrats last week. Bayh said the group was informally called “the practical caucus.”

Bayh, of course, is hated by progressives – it’s one of his more endearing traits, really – and he’s certainly been on the administration’s radar since he announced his so-called “Gang of Fifteen.” While supposedly there were no public problems between the White House and the centrist Democrats over this unwillingness of the latter to blindly follow the former over the cliff*, it’s not really a secret that President Obama likes to have deniable proxies do his dirty work for him**. Which is probably why Bayh is scheduled to be personally targeted by Moveon.org, Campaign for America’s Future, USAction, and the rest of the usual suspects: apostasy is always the worst of sins to the True Believer.

Speaking as a Republican, I wholeheartedly support this activity, and think that it should be encouraged. Although I think that there are limits.

Moe Lane

*Note that they might still do it anyway.

**Eric Flint, in writing of Henry Clay in 1824: The Arkansas War:

Granted, Clay had always been a rough political fighter, even if he wore gloves. Porter had admired that trait in times past, and he wouldn’t have objected if the gloves came off. The problem was that Henry was doing the opposite as time went on. He was adding more gloves at the same time his blows were getting lower.

Crossposted to RedState.