Did I say narrowly? I meant massively, but you probably guessed that:
President Obama’s budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it.
Coupled with the House’s rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama’s budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year.
Republicans forced the vote by offering the president’s plan on the Senate floor.
Democrats disputed that it was actually the president’s plan, arguing that the slim amendment didn’t actually match Mr. Obama’s budget document, which ran thousands of pages. But Republicans said they used all of the president’s numbers in the proposal, so it faithfully represented his plan.
Former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett is working on a project for NBC entitled 1600 Penn (it’s about time a network tried a show about DC politics written from the perspective of the left for a change). I’m thinking about working on a competing program called Everybody Hates Obama’s Budget.
The House Appropriations Committee proposed cutting the State Department and foreign operations budget by more than $5 billion next year, in its annual allocations released Tuesday.
The Obama administration actually requested modest increases in funding for the State Department and USAID for fiscal 2013 when it released its budget request in February. While the Congress doesn’t divide up the accounts the same way as the administration, in an apples-to-apples comparison, the House Appropriations Committees’ allocation for State and foreign operations for fiscal 2013, $48.4 billion, would represent a 12 percent cut from the administration’s $54.71 billion request for the same accounts.
The House proposed fully funding the president’s $8.2 billion request for State Department funding related to the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, known as the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account. Therefore, the remainder of the funding proposed by the House, $40.1 billion for the base budget, would represent a 14 percent cut to the administration’s request for non-war related diplomatic and development activities.
The House proposal would also be a $5 billion or 9 percent cut from the funding levels enacted in fiscal 2012. The Senate Appropriations Committee, in its own allocations, proposed giving the State and foreign operations accounts $53 billion, roughly equal to fiscal 2012 levels, although the Senate proposed shifting $5 billion from the OCO account to the base budget.
Non-governmental organizations that focus on international affairs funding were quick to criticize the House Appropriations Committee’s actions.
“Retreat from our engagement in the world is not an option for the sake of our national security, but these cuts to the International Affairs Budget represent just that,” said retired Marine Corps Gen. Mike Hagee, co-chair of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition’s National Security Advisory Council. ”The International Affairs Budget is absolutely critical to our nation’s security and economic interests, and the programs it funds are cost-effective ways to prevent conflicts that will eventually require us to put our brave men and women in uniform in harm’s way.”
The allocations released Tuesday are just the first step in a long appropriations process. Next, the subcommittees will write up appropriations bills to fit within the allocation limits, after which both chambers will ostensibly begin marking up appropriations bills and moving them through the legislative process.
Practically, nobody expects the Congress to actually pass appropriations bills this year through both chambers due to the hyper partisanship of the presidential election season. But the spade work done by the committees could influence what ends up getting funded in the catch-all emergency stop gap spending bill that Congress will have to pass when the fiscal year expires Sept. 30 in order to keep the lights on throughout the government.
The House’s proposal could also be just the first step in a multi-year effort by the GOP to steadily reduce funding for diplomacy and development, as is spelled out in the 99 page “Path to Prosperity” document put for by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI).
DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was on Fox News last night, and Brett Baier asked her about the Dem-controlled Senate’s failure to pass a budget for a thousand days plus three months. The short answer from Wasserman Schultz was “because the Romney-Ryan budget is so horrifying we’re incapable of moving” (was Mitt elected President or to Congress and I missed it?).
Wasserman Schultz started talking about “process,” and Baier seemed to be one step away from digging up Schoolhouse Rock clips on YouTube to show DWS how Congress works. Baier put Debbie Downer through the wringer so effectively that it looks like her perm actually relaxed a bit during the interview:
About halfway through the interview was when Gawker’s mole was supposed to pull the fire alarm and bail DWS out of trouble, but, much to DWS’s chagrin, he was unable to be there.
The meeting was broadcast on one of the C-SPAN channels, so this isn’t exactly a secret. Only three Democrats bothered to show up at all, out of a dozen assigned to it. Republicans showed up, prepared to cast votes to finally bring the ignominious streak of 1,085 days (as of yesterday) without a budget resolution to an end. Sadly, Democrats — who control the committee, the chamber, and the White House — don’t have the same sense of responsibility.
Oh well… like Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-elusional) says, “Budget? We don’t need no stinking budget!”
Conrad on Wednesday will begin a committee markup of a resolution based on the Bowles-Simpson deficit recommendations, but told reporters there is no date scheduled on which the markup vote would occur.
“This is the wrong time to vote in committee; this is the wrong time to vote on the floor,” he said. “I don’t think we will be prepared to vote before the election.”
It’s been the “wrong time” to do the basic business of passing budgets for more than 1,000 days.
Where’s President Obama to lambaste the do-nothings for obstructionism now? Guess he’s content to let sleeping dogs lie.
If you thought you’d heard President Obama’s speech about the Paul Ryan budget proposal before, the reason is, you have. It’s not uncommon to parrot similar themes, but these days it sounds as if White House speech writers have hopelessly lost the thesaurus. As evidenced by the RNC video below, some of this speech was a verbatim repeat of presidential rebukes of House budget proposals last year. Maybe the teleprompter hasn’t yet accounted for the time change by “springing forward” from 2011 to 2012.
Alternate MSNBC headline: Environmentally-conscious president leads by example on recycling:
*****
Past Obama speeches have come dangerously close to owing Jimmy Carter some royalty payments, so at least this time he’s repeating his own words.
If the GOP proposals are so horrible, the Dems should counter by finally proposing their own budget — one that can get at least one vote in the House, that is.
The White House and Democrats have been attacking Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, for having the audacity to put forth budget plans, something the Democrats in the Senate have failed to pass for well over a thousand days at this point.
The first words out of Rep. Steve Israel’s mouth, a Democrat from New York, were the pathetic blather about “billionaires.” Most Americans aren’t billionaires or even millionaires and are more concerned about the rising costs of gasoline, food, and everything else than whether the rich pay more taxes. In point of fact, the rich pay the vast bulk of the income taxes and some forty percent of workers pay none at all. If you earn more than $250,000 a year, Democrats think you’re rich.
Harry Reid
Never mind that most of us are trying to live within our own budget, the Democrats have resisted passing any kind of a budget to address a looming fiscal crisis of their making. That was why voters in 2010 returned control of the House, where all appropriations are authorized, to Republicans. If they had done the same for the Senate, we might actually have had some budgets, but Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, has ensured that every effort to address the fiscal mess fails.
The White House and the Senate, despite the Simpson-Bowles Commission, despite the so-called “super committee”, and despite the plans put forth by Ryan, have utterly failed to do anything but spend, spend, and spend. To do so, they must borrow, borrow, and borrow.
In February, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that annual spending over the Obama era had climbed to a projected $3.6 trillion this fiscal year from $2.98 trillion in fiscal 2008; more than 20%. It added up to an increase of about $5 trillion in just four years. This year will mark the highest deficit—the difference between government revenues and government spending—since 1946!
Robotically and moronically, the Democrats keep calling for higher taxes and even the CBO has concluded that the 2012 tax hike (ending the Bush tax cuts) on capital gains, dividends, estates and small businesses would impede economic growth, reducing it 1% the next year and raising the specter of unemployment rising from 8.5% to 9.1%–increasing the jobless to 750,000.
As The Wall Street Journal put it, “the CBO’s facts plainly show that Mr. Obama has the worst fiscal record of any President in modern times. No one else is even close.”
In addition to the tired rhetoric about billionaires and millionaires, the Democrats are also lying about Ryan’s plan as it relates to Medicare, claiming it wants to deprive older Americans of its benefits, but as Ryan points out, “Our budget’s Medicare reforms make no changes for those in or near retirement.” Without reform, Medicare will go broke as will Social Security.
Ryan’s plan “spurs economic growth with bold tax reform—eliminating complexity for individuals and families and boosting competitiveness for American job creators.
Fiscal year 2013: Cuts, Consolidations, and Savings Budget of the U.S. Government Office of Management and Budget (www.Budget.gov)
Obama’s 2013 budget looks to cut the Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) from $25 million to $12 million. But has almost no cut in the Federal Air Marshal Service. From CNN:
President Barack Obama’s budget ax is falling hard on a program that allows pilots to carry handguns in the cockpit as a last line of defense against terrorists.
Obama’s proposed 2013 budget cuts in half funds for the Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) program. The current budget of $25 million a year — which goes for such things as conducting background checks, training the pilots, and periodic gun proficiency tests and retraining, in addition to administrative costs — would be cut to $12 million.
The thousands of armed pilots, who greatly outnumber the better-known federal air marshals, volunteer for the job, train at federal academies and are deputized to use their weapons in the cockpit. They call themselves the “single most cost-effective counter-terrorism measure” the government has taken.
The federal government spends about $15 a flight for FFDOs, as armed pilots are called, compared to $3,000 per flight for federal air marshals, said Mike Karn, vice president of the Federal Flight Deck Officers Association. Those numbers are based on costs of the respective programs divided by the number of flights covered by armed pilots and air marshals.
As recently as last March, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano voiced support for the program, agreeing with Rep. Chip Cravaack, R-Minnesota, a former airline pilot and FFDO, that it was a vital part of the country’s layer defenses.
But in the budget documents released Monday, administration officials said security measures put in place since 2001, such as locked cockpit doors and 100% screening of airline passengers, “have greatly lowered the chances of unauthorized cockpit access.”
The proposed budget also cuts Federal Air Marshal Service funds almost 4%, to $927 million. It is unclear whether that cut will result in fewer air marshals. The number of air marshals is classified. . . .
My understanding is that there are currently about 10,000 to 12,000 FFDOs out of about 60,000 commercial pilots flying large planes and 90,000 flying all size commercial passenger planes.
Rep. Cravaack: Is your intention that this program be phased out?
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: I think that as the budget request shows it is our intention to reduce it, yes. But we have not predicted its demise.
Orin Hatch: “We have not seen a budget resolution from the Senate Budget Committee in 3 years despite the fact it is legally required“. Hey thanks for pointing that out sparky, Now tell the American people who is responsible and how they intend to hold them accountable for this infraction. This is what I want to focus on. The elite and political classes in America think the rest of us are too stupid or pre-occupied with where the next entitlement check is coming from to figure out what is going on and are betting no one will make enough noise to bring about any consequence for their collective misdeeds.
See America, I do not care what side of the business end of the tax mans gun your facing. Getting money from Uncle Sam or having it taken from you, at the point of a gun no less. The fact of the matter is no one is being held accountable for these monolithic screw ups or dereliction of duty where our confiscated earnings are used with frivolity. Voting these elected criminals out of office is not enough. We need to see substantial prison time for those that subvert or deliberately disobey the oath of office. An oath they sworn to protect at any cost the US Constitution. They were aware of this oath when they won the approval of the constituents to represent them honestly. They swore that oath when they took the office in ceremony.
These individuals have asked for and been given the sacred trust of the people. When they fail to adhere to that trust and openly participate in the dereliction of office it should be held in a brighter light than say the guy that works for Joe the Plumber and got caught taking copper pipe home to turn into recycling for cash. The public figure has betrayed us all and the oath of office, Joes Employee betrayed just Joe. Not demeaning Joe in any way but Joe can deal with his theft via the local police. What alternative as an electorate do we have? Not much. The right of governmental redress is being shut down but liberal judges with every motion filed and those filing the motions are being disparaged not only by the democrats but the republicans as well. I guess as a collective no one really wants to accept the truth.
Ok, so what is it going to be? We know the truth regardless of what these political puppets think we know.
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If you thought you’d heard President Obama’s speech about the Paul Ryan budget proposal before, the reason is, you have. It’s not uncommon to parrot similar themes, but these days it sounds as if White House speech writers have hopelessly lost the thesaurus. As evidenced by the RNC video below, some of 
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