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Home :  Federal Budget & Tax : 
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Thursday, November 29, 2007

Deja Vu on Spending

The domestic appropriations fight is feeling like the war spending debate all over again.

The Democratic caucus is now behaving much like it did then. First comes disbelief that the President and his congressional allies are intransigent, then strategic confusion. If everything goes the same, the next step is full capitulation.

Leadership is also rhetorically ruling out using Congress's most powerful tool, the power to withhold funding unless the President gives in. Speaker Pelosi says the government won't be shut down, just like they would never withhold Iraq war funding. They're fighting with one hand tied behind their back. You only do that if you're more interested in making political statements than policy.

What if the government did shut down? They could send a CR with extra spending, or even the omnibus bill they're preparing, to the President just before the CR expires. In a day or two they could pass another CR that gets everything up and running again, and they could say, "look at the President, shutting down the government. We're responsible- we'll keep the government running if we have to. But we'll do everything we can to advance our popular agenda, even if that means momentary sacrifices."

Right now, the Democrats cannot say that they've done everything possible to advance their agenda. All signs point to more of the same next year, another year of gridlock, frustration and doubts about the competence and courage of the Democratic party. The risks of inaction aren't all that different than the risks of action.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 03:39:30 PM



Wednesday, November 28, 2007

WIC Budget Cuts in Omnibus Bill?

USA Today reports that funding for WIC, a nutrition program that mainly serves pregnant women and infants, may be in jeopardy.

Half a million people could be cut from a nutrition program for low-income young children, pregnant women and recent mothers next year because prices and caseloads have risen since President Bush proposed his 2008 budget in February.

The threatened cutback, outlined in a report to be issued this week by the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, is likely unless Congress and the White House agree to boost funding for the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program.

The report is based on this paper by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Apparently Congress is working on an omnibus budget bill, which combines all unfinished appropriations bills, that splits the difference between the President's requests and Congress's proposals. But in the case of WIC, splitting the difference would mean a reduction in people served, mainly because the price of food has gone up so much. Between 295,000 to 400,000 women and children could be cut from the program.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 09:26:26 AM



Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Giving Up On SCHIP?

CQ (no subscription) is reporting that health care advocates are abandoning the SCHIP funding increase and asking for a one-year extension that maintains the level of service being offered now. Some states may not have enough money to provide insurance to everyone enrolled now if Congress doesn't do something soon.

When you're faced with a choice between the President's request to cut SCHIP and a one-year extension, I can understand choosing the latter. The question is, has it come to that? Bush and the Republicans do seem so stubborn that there's no chance of a reasonable compromise, and I doubt the Democrats will outfox them.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 03:30:02 PM



Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Heck of a Job FEMA

Last week, the Washington Post reported on more bad news coming out of FEMA. According to a Government Accountability Office report, FEMA has wasted over $30 million in contracts for housing (read: trailers) in the last year. Wow!

Here's some of the worst of it, from the Washington Post:

By not awarding work to contractors with the lowest bids, FEMA misspent $16 million, said the Government Accountability Office, Congress's audit arm. The agency misspent an additional $15 million on inspections that it could not prove were performed, preventive maintenance for which contractors falsified documents, and emergency repairs on trailers that FEMA did not own, the GAO said.

Come on...





Posted by Adam Hughes, 05:50:06 PM



There's Enough Money For The War and Defense Employees

Via Think Progress, the White House is threatening to furlough Defense Department workers unless Congress funds the war in Iraq with no strings attached for a complete year. They're claiming that they have to move money out of employee compensation to fund the war because the President's war funding request has not been enacted.

It may be too early to call it, but this appears to be a transparently political move and just plain wrong. There is no need to furlough anyone yet, because Defense can take money out of their budget that's scheduled to be spent later in the year. They can use that money for the war instead of furloughing anybody.

See this post, with links to reports by the Congressional Research Service, that lays out the options the Bush administration has for funding the war without a direct appropriation. Kudos to Rep. John Murtha for calling a spade a spade and not backing down (yet) when the administration uses scare-tactics and wraps itself in the flag.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 02:52:04 PM



Monday, November 19, 2007

CQ Out To Lunch On Budget Battles

CQ reports today that the Democrats' $11 billion compromise on appropriations might be picking up momentum.

In evidence, they offer that the President did not mention appropriations in his weekend radio address and something about Sen. Jon Kyl not wanting domestic spending tied to war funding. Color me unconvinced. The more reasonable interpretation is that the Republicans haven't moved from their position of rejecting this compromise.

Face it: unless the miraculous happens, the President and congressional Republicans will not let up. It has taken me a while to believe this, and I could be wrong, but the last few weeks have destroyed all hope that the conflict over spending bills could be resolved meaningfully. The Democrats may find some way to make the best out of this bad situation, and they should be criticized if they don't. But mostly the only thing left to do is hold accountable the Republicans who sided against children, against cancer research, against education, and for nothing.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 05:11:51 PM



$11 Billion Cut Not Enough For Republicans

Before the House Republicans sustained the President's veto of the labor/hhs appropriations bill, Democrats had offered to cut $11 billion out of budget bills, half of the difference between their budget proposal and the President's. Roll Call is reporting that that offer has been rejected.

House Republicans are rejecting a compromise offer from Democrats that would cut in half their proposed $22 billion increase to President Bush's budget, but it's unclear how long GOP leaders will be able to keep getting their Members to walk the plank against popular spending bills.

House Republicans barely found the votes to sustain President Bush's veto of the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and related agencies spending bill last week, and Democrats think they will either get a deal or be able to paint Republicans as heartless toadies of an intransigent and unpopular president.

Although Republicans have made the spending veto battle the key to restoring their tattered "brand" as the party of fiscal responsibility, and some conservatives dream of forcing Democrats to adopt a yearlong continuing resolution that would freeze spending across the board, others may be inclined to declare victory at a 50-50 draw rather than being forced to vote for ever-deeper cuts to domestic spending programs like home-heating assistance, cancer research and local aid as the holidays approach.

This report seems fairly preliminary, but at the very least, there's no known endgame for the budget yet, and very little prospect for meaningful compromise. How do the Democrats compromise with a Republican party that can only sees its success in their failure?



Posted by Matt Lewis, 10:42:36 AM



Friday, November 16, 2007

Splitting the Difference or Just Hairs?

CongressDaily PM today ($):

Democrats are proposing to cut $10.6 billion from their initial proposed spending bills. Even with the cuts, security-related spending Bush requested would rise 11 percent above the current year, while non-security domestic spending Democrats want would grow about 3 percent. Under the new allocations, Democrats would increase spending across most government agencies by $10.9 billion above last year; by contrast, the Defense bill Bush signed this week increases non-emergency funding by $39.7 billion from last year.

So now, Bush is going to moan about how fiscally irresponsible a $10.9 billion boost to domestic spending is. That's a nice lookin' $39.7 billion glass house he's got there. It'd be a real shame if a rock hit it.


Image by Flickr user fro3enfire used under a Creative Commons license.


Posted by Craig Jennings, 05:29:10 PM



Approps Update - Defense Down; Labor-H Out
  • The Defense Appropriations bill was signed earlier this week. It is the first FY 2008 appropriations bill to be signed by the president.
  • The bill also contains a continuing resolution to fund governmental operations until December 14.
  • Bush vetoed Labor-H when he signed the defense bill. Last night, the House tried and failed to override the veto by 2 votes.
  • Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants to split the $22 billion difference between Congress's budget and the President's request
.
November 16, 2007 House Senate Conf. Cmte. President
Cmte. Floor
$ Agriculture 18.8 18.7
$ Commerce-Justice- Science 53.6 54.6 54.6
Defense 459.6 459.6 459.6 459.3 459.3
$ Energy & Water 31.6 32.3
Financial Services 21.4 21.8
$ Homeland Security 36.3 37.6 37.6
$ Interior & Environment 27.6 27.2
$ Labor-HHS- Education 151.4 149.2 149.9 150.7 VETOED
Legislative Branch 3.1 4
Military Construction-VA 64.7 64.7 64.7
State- Foreign Operations 34.2 34.2 34.2
$ Transportation-HUD 50.7 51.1 51.1 50.9
Numbers are amounts of discretionary spending in billions of dollars. Green boxes indicate approval. Black boxes next to bill titles are bills which the president has issued a veto threat; boxes with "$" indicate veto threat was issued because of discretionary spending level.


Posted by Craig Jennings, 11:25:30 AM



Dems Backing Away From Backing Away From Transparency!

Well, good news came in late last night as Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) announced he struck a deal with House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Olver (D-MA) to remove language that would prohibit the publication of Federal agency budget justifications (See my post last night for more info).

This is fantastic news - congrats to Sen. Coburn for standing up for transparency. You can read his statement released last night on his website.





Posted by Adam Hughes, 10:30:18 AM



Conservatives Sustain Labor/HHS Veto

It was very close, but last night conservatives in the House sustained the President's veto of Labor/HHS. The vote was 277-141 (roll call). If two nays votes had switched, they would have had enough to override. The Washington Post has more.

This is bad news for the people who depend on the programs funded by Labor/HHS. Most likely, the Democrats will reduce funding to enact this bill. Funding may go down in other appropriations bills as well, since it is now fairly certain that the House will sustain the President's veto of any of those bills, too. Indeed, Democrats are already making overtures to begin negotiations with the President over funding reductions.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 10:12:44 AM



Thursday, November 15, 2007

Dems Backing Away From Transparency?

Remember when the Democrats came to power earlier this year and promised to end the culture of corruption in Washington? Then remember when they passed a fairly significant lobbying and ethics reform bill? Ok, then what is going on here - Roll Call: Earmarks in, Reforms out of Trans-HUD Measure

Roll Call reported today on some disturbing news - that the Transportation-Housing and Urban Development (T-HUD) appropriations bill has include earmarks that have not been disclosed yet under earmark transparency rules. In total, 18 earmarks worth $24 million were included in the conference report for the bill. The House Rules Committee website claims the vast majority of these new earmarks are for relatively benign projects.

Yikes. Let's go through this. First off, who is deciding the relative benign-ness of these projects? Maybe Duke Cunningham thought the earmarks he was including as paybacks to companies who bribed him were "relatively benign" too? Wouldn't it be better to let everyone see them from the beginning and let an open process decide their benigninivity?

Second, if the vast majority are relatively benign, what are the ones that are not benign? Shouldn't those be excluded until they can be properly reviewed?

That's not even the worst of the news in the Roll Call article. The T-HUD bill also includes language that prohibits federal agencies from disclosing their "budget justification" documents to any committee in Congress other than the appropriations committees before the May 31 after the president's budget is released. I assume this would mean those agencies could not make these documents public either, as many of them do now. All this comes after OMB Watch joined with the National Taxpayers Union and 52 other organizations last year to strongly support the publication of these documents and we were ultimately successful as OMB agreed to voluntarily publish the budget justifications.

The fact that there are attempts moving forward to clamp down on access to this information is truly unfortunate. What happened to the cleanest, most open Congress in history?





Posted by Adam Hughes, 06:00:26 PM



Bush Attempts To Secure His Legacy

The Bush administration is up to some of its old tricks this week. After the Washington Post reported at the end of October of a movement within the administration to implement as much policy as possible through administrative functions rather than convincing Congress to adopt its policies, we are beginning to see some specific instances of their plan. In September, the White House issued new principles for agencies in conducting risk analysis that could impact agencies ability to protect the public. Then on Tuesday this week, Bush signed a new executive order (EO #13450) that attempts to "improve government program performance." Sounds like a good thing, no? let's look a bit deeper.

Dive into the Exec Order

Posted by Adam Hughes, 04:27:59 PM



Bush on Fiscal Policy: Born Again, Again?

I've been thinking about President Bush's actions this week on fiscal policy, and I've got to admit, I'm pretty darn confused. Let's review:

  • Bush vetoed the $150.7 billion Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, which contained a 4.3 percent increase in funding, for containing too much spending, but signed the $471 billion Defense appropriations bill, which had a 9.5 percent increase in funding. Bush has also been pressuring Congress to approve an additional $197 billion in "emergency" war funding. Huh?

  • Bush has vowed to veto the AMT patch bill moving (slowly) through Congress because it is fiscally responsible and doesn't add to the deficit. Wait, what?

I suppose Bush believes we should never pass a tax increase and continue to burden our children and grandchildren with mountains of debt. But he is vetoing appropriations bills left and right over much smaller levels of funding (less than 10% as much in many cases) that are not deficit financed. It's difficult for me to understand exactly how the president decides to be the decider on these issues. He has shown he doesn't really care about fiscal responsibility (based on his position on the AMT bill, and, well, on his horrendous fiscal record as president. Actually, he's probably the worst fiscal manager we've ever had as president). He also doesn't seem to care about giving Americans the support and investments they need to succeed - unless those Americans are currently living in Iraq, Afghanistan, or on a military base. Even then his support is suspect as he has worked to cut back veteran's health benefits and often stiffed soldiers on pay increases. Most of the increases are more likely to end up with Halliburton or Lockheed Martin than soldiers).

So what is guiding the president in these decisions, if anything at all? Kevin Drum over at the Washington Monthly may have the answer:
It's funny how much more opposed Bush is to Democratic pork than he was to Republican pork, isn't it? But whatever. I don't think anyone seriously believes that Bush really cares about the earmarks in this bill. Basically, he seems to have decided that the only way to stay relevant is to veto stuff. Within the borders of the United States, it's pretty much the only influence he has left. Democrats don't care about him, Republicans wish he'd go away, and the American public is bored with his snooze-inducing speeches. What else can he do to attract attention?

Drum just might be right, particularly considering that the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that since 2001, Bush has signed 50 appropriations bill from Republican Congresses that exceeded his budget requests - failing to veto a single one of them. Bush has already been a born-again Christian once. He can't claim to have found religion on this issue too.





Posted by Adam Hughes, 11:22:17 AM



Fear and Spending

One of the more disturbing aspects of the spending debate has been the President's reliance on scare tactics. Essentially, Congress has not given him a big enough target, so he must conjure one up.

He calls the tobacco tax "habit-forming," while closing the carried interest loophole will raise everyone's taxes. He says that Congress wants to spend over $200 billion more than he would with this year's appropriations bills. SCHIP will ineluctably bring us down the path to "socialized" medicine.

But SCHIP is a small program for children's health, not socialized medicine. The only spending this year's appropriations bills will do is this year's spending- that's a $22 billion difference. Carried interest has nothing to do with 99 percent of all taxpayers, and tax increases aren't drugs.

The basic point is that the President and his backers are not interested in the policy- they're interested in scaring the public. Capitulating to the President, I think, will legitimize this fear. If offered a compromise, the President will be able to tell the public that he kept the Democratic majority from spending $200 billion, from socializing medicine, taxing everyone, and so on. It will appear as if the Democrats had given the President the giant target he wanted, and were forced to come down from it.

Congress should stand up to the President. They should stand up for their modest spending requests and tax proposals. They should not give an inch unless the President and his backers begin to speak substantively about policy differences. I'm not holding my breath, though.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 11:17:15 AM



Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Labor/HHS Vote Thursday

The House Labor/HHS veto override vote will likely be held late Thursday night, far sooner than most expected. Perhaps the House leadership is confident of a veto override, fresh off overriding the President's veto of the water resources bill. One last push might be all it takes! Take action!

Update: Visit this site to send an email to Congress.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 12:01:31 PM



Stan Collender's Got A New Blog

You've read his columns (excerpted maybe too often on this blog)- now you can read his new blog.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 10:28:20 AM



Tuesday, November 13, 2007

JEC Report: the Cost of Stay-the-Course in Iraq

If you are like many Americans who perceive geometrically escalating costs of the wars in Afghanistan and especially Iraq, unaccountably greater now than in recent years, you might look ahead at cost projections and just drop your jaw.

There appears to be a very serious misunderstanding. Many Americans are suffering under the misapprehension that current troops levels in Iraq are unsustainable and that, in any case, the weight of political sentiment strongly militates against maintaining current troop strength and increases in American treasure expended on the war going forward.

But with the "success of the surge" and the Administration's eye-popping, record-breaking $200 billion request for war funding in 2008, one is safer to assume a stay-the-course strategy.

A Joint Economic Committee report released today assesses the cost of stay-the-course:

  • What the Bush Administration Said the War in Iraq Would Cost: $50-$60 Billion
  • Total Economic Costs of Iraq War Through 2008: $1.3 Trillion [JEC Report, "War at Any Price?" 11/13/07]
  • Projected Costs of Iraq and Afghanistan Wars Through 2017 Even If U.S. Does Drawdown to Korea-Like Levels: $3.5 Trillion [JEC Report, "War at Any Price?" 11/13/07]
  • Cost to a Family of Four to Fund Iraq and Afghanistan Wars Through 2017: $46,400 [JEC Report, "War at Any Price?" 11/13/07]


Posted by Dana Chasin, 10:08:46 PM



Appropriations Update- Standoff Over Labor/HHS

Congress has now sent the President the Defense appropriations bill, an extension of this year's continuing resolution, and the Labor/HHS appropriations bill. The President will sign the Defense bill, the first appropriations bill of the year to be enacted, and the CR, but he's expected to veto Labor/HHS, and doesn't even seem to be considering negotiating with Congress over its funding levels. The Hill:

President Bush rejected a plea this past weekend to open a dialogue with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to resolve the impasse over federal spending.

Pelosi and Reid, who had hoped to send Bush a $65 billion veterans and military construction spending bill, pleaded in a letter sent to the president on Saturday that he show "some willingness to find common ground."

"We write today to make it clear we welcome this dialogue," Reid and Pelosi wrote. "Key to this dialogue, however, is some willingness on your part to actually find common ground. Thus far, we have only seen a hard line drawn and a demand that we send only legislation that reflects your cuts to critical priorities."

The White House declined their offer and demanded that Congress send Bush the appropriations bills "one at a time — as they promised the American people — and within the reasonable spending limits recommended by the president," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement Saturday.

Update: It's official- the President has vetoed Labor/HHS.

Posted by Matt Lewis, 10:05:15 AM



Friday, November 09, 2007

Approps Update: Chambers Approve Defense, Labor-H

Thursday evening, the Senate approved the Defense spending bill conference report, and the House gave thumbs-up to the Labor-H conference report.

Meanwhile, a conference committee approved the $50.9 billion Transportation-HUD spending bill.

November 9, 2007 House Senate Conf. Cmte. President
Cmte. Floor
$ Agriculture 18.8 18.7
$ Commerce-Justice- Science 53.6 54.6 54.6
Defense 459.6 459.6 459.6 459.3
$ Energy & Water 31.6 32.3
Financial Services 21.4 21.8
$ Homeland Security 36.3 37.6 37.6
$ Interior & Environment 27.6 27.2
$ Labor-HHS- Education 151.4 149.2 149.9 150.7
Legislative Branch 3.1 4
Military Construction-VA 64.7 64.7 64.7
State- Foreign Operations 34.2 34.2 34.2
$ Transportation-HUD 50.7 51.1 51.1 50.9
Numbers are amounts of discretionary spending in billions of dollars. Green boxes indicate approval. Black boxes next to bill titles are bills which the president has issued a veto threat; boxes with "$" indicate veto threat was issued because of discretionary spending level.


Posted by Craig Jennings, 01:44:11 PM



House Approves Labor/HHS- Next Stop, President

Yesterday, the House approved Labor/HHS conference report on its own by 274-141 (roll call). If 3 nay votes switch, it'd enough to override a presidential veto. Now the bill will be sent to the President, though its not clear exactly when that will happen. The President then will most likely veto it, and the onus will be on the House to override it.

Update: See this Coalition on Human Needs pamphlet for the budget cuts a veto-sustaining vote would be supporting.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 10:39:51 AM



Thursday, November 08, 2007

Checks

Congress had its first veto override today. That wasn't so awful now, was it?



Posted by Matt Lewis, 05:11:01 PM



Deficit/Spending

Here's an interesting paper on the "starve the beast" school of government reduction by tax cut (via Inclusion). The abstract:

The hypothesis that decreases in taxes reduce future government spending is often cited as a reason for cutting taxes. However, because taxes change for many reasons, examinations of the relationship between overall measures of taxation and subsequent spending are plagued by problems of reverse causation and omitted variable bias. To deal with these problems, this paper examines the behavior of government expenditures following legislated tax changes that narrative sources suggest are largely uncorrelated with other factors affecting spending. The results provide no support for the hypothesis that tax cuts restrain government spending; indeed, they suggest that tax cuts may actually increase spending. The results also indicate that the main effect of tax cuts on the government budget is to induce subsequent legislated tax increases. Examination of four episodes of major tax cuts reinforces these conclusions.

Its conclusion casts doubt on Jason Furman's paper on the distributive impact of the 2001-5 tax cuts. If the pattern holds, those tax cuts will not be paid for with spending cuts, as Furman predicted, but with more tax revenue. What's undetermined is who will be taxed, not whether taxes will go up. Indeed, it is increasing tax revenue caused by a growing and unequal economy that's already closing the deficit the Bush tax cuts opened.

This begs the question: does deficit-financed spending "starve the beast," so to speak? The deficit-financed war in Iraq, for example, will ultimately be paid for. Again, if the pattern holds, taxes will go up in the long run. Spending won't decline to make room for it in the budget.

Regardless, the paper does raise powerful questions about deficits. Do they not have the tremendously harmful impact on spending that most reasonable people, in good faith, think they do? For the vice-grip this notion has on policymakers, it's remarkably untested empirically. Hopefully papers like this will get a full discussion going.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 05:02:27 PM



John Edwards Has A Secret

An interesting article in the Times on who's advising the presidential candidates on economic policy. So far, only John Edwards has broken Washington taboos and (quietly) declared that he'd increase the deficit to pay for more social spending.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 03:13:01 PM



Senate Strips MilCon/VA from Labor/HHS

Yesterday, the Senate separated the MilCon/VA funding from the Labor/HHS appropriations bill, and then it passed the Labor/HHS bill by a much lower margin than it had previously. The House will now have to vote on the Labor/HHS conference report on its own. It will almost certainly pass, and then the bill will be sent to the President. Here's the roll call on final passage, and the roll call on the procedural vote to separate the two bills.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 11:34:14 AM



Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Labor/HHS-MilCon/VA Package Passes House

Last night, the House passed the Labor/HHS-MilCon/VA package by 269-142 (roll call). That's not quite enough to override a veto, but 22 members didn't vote, half of whom were Democrats who'd almost certainly support the bill. So only five or so Republican "nay" votes stand between a veto override and more gridlock.

Now the action's in the Senate. There's some chance the package could be split apart, which could mean it will take even longer to send this bill to the President.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 09:53:37 AM



Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Do I Dare to Legislate? How Much do Vetoes Hurt?
... and other in-appropriate paralyzing questions

Another part of the Collender article that Matt blogs on below concerns the role or strategy (if such exists) of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees and congressional leadership regarding the FY 2008 budget process. Collender's perspective:

Rather than continuing to agonize about it much longer, it's time to pick a strategy for dealing with the White House on the FY08 appropriations... The president vetoing something and Congress not being able to override it may not be the worst thing that happens to you and may well be more harmful to the administration than to the Democratic majority.

After his (otherwise characteristically forthright) speech yesterday at the National Press Club "about the coming manufactured controversy over appropriations bills that will afflict this town over the coming weeks," House Appropriations Chair David Obey (D-MI) demurred when asked if he supported splitting the Labor-HHS and MilCon/VA bills or sending them in tandem to the president, saying that he didn't want to "telegraph" his moves to the GOP.

Praytell, why not? Who cares? Just pass your bills, in tandem, trifecta, or quadrophenia, in the teeth of veto threats or regardless of them. Just do it. And then pass the word along to your friends in the Senate, which appears to suffer from advanced BPD (budgocratic paralytic dysfunction). If you can't make Iraq policy, might as well pull hard on the pursestrings. Stop mincing around those veto threats and bring 'em on instead. You may not win, but you will be doing your job and heightening the distinction between your values and vision and whatever passes for them from the Great Vetoer.

As Collender concludes, "not passing FY08 appropriations is getting old."



Posted by Dana Chasin, 07:45:19 PM



We Have a Flag on the Play

Roughing the passer, on CQ. That's a 15-yard penalty for this lede ($):

If Congress' appetite for earmarks has been greatly reduced by recent scandals and public pressure, it is not especially evident in the nation's largest domestic spending bill.
And then we find out that the bill has "more than 2,200 earmarks and special projects totaling more than $1 billion." Holy cow! That's a lot of earmarking. But then here comes the late hit:
That is about seven-tenths of one percent of the bill's total discretionary spending of $150.7 billion...Lawmakers in charge of the legislation have estimated that they cut the volume of earmarks in the measure by 40 to 50 percent compared to fiscal 2005, the last year that the bill contained earmarks.

Image by Flickr user jotefa used under a Creative Commons license



Posted by Craig Jennings, 06:11:33 PM



Conferees Approve Defense Approps

CQ Alerts us that:

House-Senate conferees agreed on a $459.3 billion Defense spending measure for fiscal 2008 (HR 3222) that includes a continuing resolution to temporarily fund all government operations after Nov. 16 but does not include funds for military operations in Iraq.
November 6, 2007 House Senate Conf. Cmte. President
Cmte. Floor
$ Agriculture 18.8 18.7
$ Commerce-Justice- Science 53.6 54.6 54.6
Defense 459.6 459.6 459.6 459.3
$ Energy & Water 31.6 32.3
Financial Services 21.4 21.8
$ Homeland Security 36.3 37.6 37.6
$ Interior & Environment 27.6 27.2
$ Labor-HHS- Education 151.4 149.2 149.9
Legislative Branch 3.1 4
Military Construction-VA 64.7 64.7 64.7
State- Foreign Operations 34.2 34.2 34.2
$ Transportation-HUD 50.7 51.1 51.1
Numbers are amounts of discretionary spending in billions of dollars. Green boxes indicate approval. Black boxes next to bill titles are bills which the president has issued a veto threat; boxes with "$" indicate veto threat was issued because of discretionary spending level.


Posted by Craig Jennings, 01:00:50 PM



Critical Labor/HHS Vote Today

The House is expected to vote on the Labor/HHS/Education/MilCon/VA appropriations bill today. This is probably the most important vote on the bill. If it doesn't receive veto-proof support now, it probably won't get it after the President vetoes the bill. So call or email your representative now and urge them to support the bill!



Posted by Matt Lewis, 10:45:10 AM



Monday, November 05, 2007

Approps Pickle for President over Labor/VA Pairing
Mitch McConnell Risks Paying the Price of Obstruction

An article ($) in Congressional Quarterly today reports on the legislative prospects of a measure pairing the Labor-HHS and Military Construction/VA spending bills. The article indicates that the measure is expected to be filed today.

But

Republicans in both chambers — along with the administration — object to packaging the bills... Senate Republicans could raise a point of order on the floor to strike the Military Construction-VA section that would take 60 votes to waive... Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said at a news conference Nov. 2 that it was "a reasonable surmise" that GOP leaders would offer the point of order because they oppose the package.

The pairing in the package presents a problem for the President because both bills in it bust his budget request. At the same time, McConnell and the administration are mindful of virluent reaction of veterans' groups in the aftermath of articles on conditions at Walter Reed Hospital, articles that garnered reporter Dana Priest and the Washington Post the Pultizer Prize.

And to the extent that Senate obstruction of spending bills increases the odds of a government shutdown, Mr. McConnell's fingerprints on such a catastrophe would be indelible -- at a time when polls in his 2008 re-election race show mixed results for him and he can ill-afford to reinforce his redoubtable reputation for obstruction.



Posted by Dana Chasin, 01:03:26 PM



Thursday, November 01, 2007

Labor-HHS To Be Linked To MilCon-VA

CQ is reporting that congressional negotiators have agreed to a joint Labor/HHS-MilCon/VA bill. The House will likely vote on Tuesday, and the Senate Wednesday. The Department of Defense appropriations bill is no longer part of the package.



Posted by Matt Lewis, 03:12:48 PM




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Most Recent Entries for Federal Budget & Tax

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