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Thursday, February 07, 2008
DAILY FISCAL POLICY REVIEW
The FY09 budget proposal submitted Monday by President Bush is the talk of the town (leaving the the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday results and aftermath aside). Not so much because it is likely to be enacted, but because it provides talking points opportunities for everyone. Below are figures from the Senate Budget Committee that express the president's broad priorites in stark terms. The defense figure is the highest in real terms since World War II; the domestic cuts belie the administration's concerns about a recession...
... which should be obvious from the $146 billion stimulus package they signed off on with the House last week. A one-vote loss in the Senate last night on a much more generous package approved by the Senate Finance Committee probably prevented a protracted House-Senate conference on the two packages. Although Senate Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) threatened to force repeated votes on on the Finance Committee plan, he and Minority Leader McConnell (R-KY) reached a compromise today on a bill that would expand tax rebate eligibility for low-income senior citizens, disabled veterans and widows of veterans, McConnell's precise terms once he saw that the House bill wouldn't fly in the Senate. "We forced McConnell to cry uncle," Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-MT) crowed...
The House GOP minority -- or at least a bare majority of it -- seems to have an equally strong purchase on reason and logic. This afternoon, the House voted down H. Con. Res. 263, which called for a six-month moratorium on earmarks. That's kinda like what the Democrats did last year, though you would never know it from the rhetoric used in support of the resolution, frinstance:
The words "$400 billion deficit" - unveiled Monday in President Bush's 2009 budget - should be all the motivation Congress needs to end its abuse of earmarks. Earmarks are an inefficient, corrupting and often wasteful use of taxpayers' money. Now reform proposals have come from an unlikely source - House Republicans, who from 1995 to 2006 elevated earmarks to an art form and national outrage.
-- Riverside (CA) Press-Enterprise, 2/7/08 (an "excellent oped," per Bill Green, Office of the House Minority Leader)
Unlikely source, indeed, Mr. Green. Some, perhaps including Mr. Green, are still suffering from the misapprehension that banishing all earmarks forever would reduce the deficit, when earmarks only allocate spending, not increase it.
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Discretionary Spending -- The President proposes a discretionary topline for FY09 of $989.8 billion. The topline for defense is a $24 billion increase over the amounts enacted for FY08; for domestic spending, it is a decrease from FY08 of $13 billion:
Discretionary Spending in 2009
($billions)
Defense 536.8 +4.6%
Domestic* 413.4 -3.0%
Total 989.8 +1.6%
* includes Homeland Security
Source: Senate Budget Committee
Posted by Dana Chasin
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