Budget Deal winners: Obama, Pentagon while tea partyers lose

[guno]

Another blow to the teabaggers


WASHINGTON — Count President Barack Obama, the Pentagon and new Speaker Paul Ryan as winners in the hard-fought budget deal between congressional leaders and the White House.



The losers are tea partyers .



Budget Deal winners: Obama, Pentagon while tea partyers lose :: WRAL.com

 

[waltky]

Obama gets a "diamond-encrusted, glow-in-the-dark Amex card"...

Senate OKs budget and debt deal, sends measure to Obama
30 Oct.`15 | WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress early Friday sent President Barack Obama an ambitious budget and debt measure that averts a catastrophic national default and sets spending priorities for the next two years.

The Senate voted 64-35 to approve the bill just after 3 a.m. EDT, with Democrats and Republican defense hawks uniting to overcome opposition from GOP presidential candidates Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, both members of the body. President Barack Obama had negotiated the accord with Republican and Democratic leaders who were intent on steering Congress away from the brinkmanship and shutdown threats that have haunted lawmakers for years. Former House Speaker John Boehner felt a particular urgency to get the legislation finished before leaving Congress, while many lawmakers wanted the issue resolved as they look ahead to presidential and congressional elections next year.

The opposition was strong in the Senate, and Paul, a Kentucky Republican, left the presidential campaign trail and returned to the Capitol to criticize the deal as excessive Washington spending. In an hour-long speech that delayed the start of the final vote, Paul said Congress is "bad with money." He railed against increases in defense dollars supported by Republicans and domestic programs supported by Democrats. "These are the two parties getting together in an unholy alliance and spending us into oblivion," Paul said.

Cruz, another Republican presidential candidate, canceled campaign events in Nevada to return to Washington for the votes. Speaking on the Senate floor late Thursday, he said the Republican majorities had given Obama a "diamond-encrusted, glow-in-the-dark Amex card" for government spending. "It's a pretty nifty card," Cruz said. "You don't have to pay for it, you get to spend it and it's somebody else's problem."

MORE

 

[waltky]

Obama signs off on budget...

Obama Signs New Budget Deal After Congress Approval
December 19, 2015 | WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers sent President Barack Obama Friday a $1.1 trillion budget full of federal spending and tax breaks, which the president quickly signed before leaving Washington for his annual holiday vacation.

The Senate voted 65 to 33 to approve the bill, after the measure cleared the House earlier. Congress then adjourned until January. The new budget avoids a government shutdown through the 2016 fiscal year and represents highly unusual cooperation between Democrats and Republicans, who in the past have often deadlocked.

The president said, "I think the system worked" this time. He said budget negotiations were free of the usual acrimony that had plagued budget dealings in the past. Many attribute the new attitude among the politicians to new House Speaker Paul Ryan who managed to keep the fiscal hawks in his own Republican Party under control.

The new budget, among other things, increases defense spending, helps to strengthen U.S. cyber security efforts, lifts the 40-year-old ban on U.S. crude oil exports, and creates $690 billion in tax cuts over the next 10 years. It also reforms the U.S. visa waiver program following the deadly attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.

The budget did not include the defunding of women's health care provider Planned Parenthood, which has been at the center of a political fight about the organization providing abortions and fetal tissue for research groups. The deal also did not include a controversial measure temporarily halting the program that allows Syrian and Iraqi refugees to enter the country.

Obama Signs New Budget Deal After Congress Approval

 

[waltky]

Cut spending, not add to the deficits and debt...

'We Have a Fundamental Budget Problem Coming Our Way in 11 Years'
December 17, 2015 | Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, says he came to Washington to cut spending, not add to the deficits and debt that will crush future generations.

He spoke on Thursday, one day after House leaders, working with the White House, produced a $1.1 trillion spending bill. And Brat warned of worse to come: "We have a fundamental budget problem coming our way in eleven years. All federal revenues will go only to entitlement and mandatory spending programs and interest on the debt in eleven years. All federal revenues will be used just to pay for those programs. So, that's Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, Bush prescription drug program, etc.," he told CPAN's "Washington Journal." "If that's true, and it is...there won't be one dollar left for..the military, education, transportation, running government, in eleven years. We'll have to deficit-finance the entire budget to run the government."

Brat, an economist and a member of the Budget Committee, noted that Congress deals with only one third of the budget -- the discretionary part. Two-thirds of the budget is mandatory spending on the big programs such as Medicare and Social Security. "If you want to change those, you have to change those through law." The looming debt crisis is "not a Wall-Street-type financial crisis," Brat said, but it does have "huge implications" for the American public. If entitlement programs suck up all federal revenues, "there won't be any money to block-grant back down to the states," and that means "localities will have a harder time."

Brat advocates reforming, not cutting, the mandatory spending programs so they won't be insolvent by the next generation. That includes raising the retirement age for future beneficiaries. "So we've got some heavy lifting to do." He noted that House Speaker Paul Ryan has "expertise" in both entitlement reform and budgeting, "so hopefully we can do that."

As for the monstrous spending bill produced this week, "Everyone threw in the kitchen sink," Brat said." "I don't think the average American is going to be happy with the product at all. We broke the budget caps that we promised at the beginning of the year by at least $80 billion over two years. We lost $106 billion in deficit reduction. And so just on the numbers, I'm a no vote."

Rep. Dave Brat: 'We Have a Fundamental Budget Problem Coming Our Way in 11 Years'

 

[LordBrownTrout]

Another blow to the teabaggers


WASHINGTON — Count President Barack Obama, the Pentagon and new Speaker Paul Ryan as winners in the hard-fought budget deal between congressional leaders and the White House.



The losers are tea partyers .



Budget Deal winners: Obama, Pentagon while tea partyers lose :: WRAL.com

The country loses again.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Actually, and in point of fact, Ryan secured a number of provisions that tea party people have long supported: he got long extensions (a few of them permanent) on a number of pro-business tax cuts, an end to the absurd oil export ban, an improvement in the intel community's cyber security capabilities, a delay in two huge Obamacare taxes, and a cut in the IRS's enforcement funding.

 

[bripat9643]

Actually, and in point of fact, Ryan secured a number of provisions that tea party people have long supported: he got long extensions (a few of them permanent) on a number of pro-business tax cuts, an end to the absurd oil export ban, an improvement in the intel community's cyber security capabilities, a delay in two huge Obamacare taxes, and a cut in the IRS's enforcement funding.

The delay in those taxes helps Obama entrench the ACA. By delaying the pain, Congress put off the date when the outrage would be enough to end it. Once it's thoroughly entrenched, there will be no getting rid of it without installing a dictatorship.