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Tuesday, October 10, 2006
The Do-Nothing 109th Congress, Pt. 2
In Part 1 of our evaluation of the 109th Congress to date, we looked last week at Congress’ effort to meet its minimal constitutional requirements: producing a budget resolution and adopting a budget.
While Congress failed to complete work on the FY2007 budget, it did approve an additional $70 billion in tax cuts over five years, and allowed discretionary spending to increase to $873 billion, $30 billion above the 2006 level. On top of this, Congress approved two major FY 2006 supplemental bills to finance the war in Iraq and Katrina recovery, totaling $110 billion.
Concludes the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
The 109th Congress took already large projected budget deficits and passed legislation that will make them larger. The legislation increased projected deficits from 2005 (the year the Congress convened) through 2011 (when the current five-year budget window ends) by a total of $537 billion. Moreover, the budget deterioration over the past six fiscal years — 2000 to 2006 — is the second largest deterioration for any six-year period in the past half century.
It could have been a lot worse. Remember the Bush Administration’s partial-privatization plan for Social Security? By the Administration’s own estimate, reported in the Washington Post by Allan Sloan, the all-in costs of the plan: $24.182 billion in fiscal 2010, $57.429 billion in fiscal 2011 and another $630.533 billion for the five years after that, for a seven-year total of $712.144 billion.
Congress refused to touch this politically and fiscally toxic plan. Sometimes doing nothing can be better than the alternative.
Posted by Dana Chasin
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