Another Budget Disaster - Will America Heed Paul Ryan before It's Too Late?

Conservatives cannot be proud of the $1.1 trillion bipartisan budget bill passed by the House of Representatives yesterday. It violates spending levels imposed by sequestration and permits the US to keep spending money it does not have. "It's just another example of bipartisanship spending more money and putting us further in debt," Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth, told Newsmax. "It's 1,582 pages. I'd be willing to make a bet that not one of the 435 of them actually read it.... [It is a] return to spending more now and growing the size of government putting us further in debt - and promising to behave better later, but not now," he said. Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, told Newsmax that the bill signaled "a substantial retreat on the part of Republican leadership and a broken promise on what they said they would do in 2010. It's very frustrating." By a vote of 359 to 67, the House passed the huge spending bill based almost line-for-line on the compromise brokered in December by Republican Representative Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, and Democratic Senator Patty Murray, who heads the Senate Budget Committee. Three House Democrats joined with 64 Republicans to oppose the measure, which finances the government through this year and makes the possibility of a federal government shutdown unlikely in a congressional election year. The legislation delays another $20 billion in Pentagon cuts imposed under the 2011 sequestration bill, on top of the $34 million in reductions imposed last year. The bill is expected to be approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate later this week. The bill allows both parties to claim victory. House Speaker John Boehner said the vote was a strong example of bipartisanship : "The House came together to keep the government open while further reining in its out-of-control spending," Boehner said in a statement. "I am particularly pleased that this measure contains no earmarks, which were once a pervasive symbol of a broken Washington. Also of note is that we are not providing any new or additional funding for the president’s healthcare law," Boehner added. The GOP-controlled House has voted numerous times to repeal the embattled Obamacare law. "Of course, there is always more work to be done to deal with Washington’s spending problem, an effort Republicans will continue to lead as part of our focus on growing the economy and preserving the American Dream," Boehner said. Republicans who voted against the budget bill called it a continued example of fiscal irresponsibility by Congress. "Voting for a trillion-dollar-plus spending bill without more time to find ways on how we could reform and downsize government was something I could not support," Representative Matt Salmon said. "This bill also fails to incorporate strategic opportunities to implement solid fiscal reform. If we are not willing to make tough choices now, then how can we expect future Congresses to make the bold and difficult choices we are unwilling to make ourselves?" Salmon asked. Representative Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has said all along that he would oppose the budget : “The American people are worried, and rightly so, about the state of our economy and the threat posed by our nation’s ever-increasing, spending-driven debt,....The American people expect their elected officials to work to address the crisis that is coming if we don’t get our fiscal house in order. Unfortunately, the appropriations bill passed by the House today doesn’t come close to meeting the expectations of the American people or the responsibility we have to future generations." But Americans for Tax Reform was more cautious in speaking to Newsmax about Wednesday's vote. The omnibus bill "falls short of many conservative ideals," said Mattie Duppler, the taxpayer advocacy group's director of budget and regulatory affairs, but she noted that the $1.1 trillion total represented the fourth straight year that spending had declined from the previous year. Funding for Obamacare also was cut, as well as $500 million cut from the Internal Revenue Service, accused of political harassment, and $440 million that would have gone to implement President Obama's healthcare law, Duppler noted. "The omnibus leaves many things to be desired," she told Newsmax, "But it does demonstrate slow progress in a time where many, at one point, believed the fight for smaller government was all but lost." The budget plan also was opposed by Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation. What was perhaps most troubling to budget critics, however, was that the size of the budget bill - 1,582 pages. "Nobody knows what they’re doing," Chocola said. "Literally, they do not know what they’re voting on. No one could. They posted this bill on Monday night - and here we are, on Wednesday, they're voting on it. Unfortuately, we have to pass it to see what's in it - and it's become business as usual," he added. "The result is we have more debt and we put our children further in the hole and diminished their future standard of living, because we can't do the hard things now." Kibbe also attacked the notion that the bill demonstrated effective bipartisanship in the House. "That's great for Washington, but the American people are looking for some semblance of fiscal responsibility," he told Newsmax. "Bipartisanship that funds all of the Democratic priorities and all of the Republican priorities does nothing for the American people....They’re using Washington math. They’re talking about spending reductions from an inflated baseline, when the fact of the matter is that spending goes up based on the kind of math that families would use around the kitchen table." "Everything's relative," Chocola said. "When people talk about the deficit coming down - well,...this is not reform." In addition, the budget bill also would earmark $92 billion for U.S. military operations abroad, mostly in Afghanistan, slightly less than last year, as well as $7 billion for disasters and other emergencies. "It's interesting," Kibbe observed on the military allocations. "If you're going to deal with our national security, you have to deal with the fact that we're borrowing so many trillions of dollars....It undermines our position in the world and it squeezes those very functions in our national defense that are so important....You can't continue to spend money you don't have to fund defense if at the same time you're bankrupting the country....if we're going to get off the road to fiscal ruin." The budget was drafted by GOP Representative Hal Rogers, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, and his Senate counterpart, Senator Barbara Mikulski, who said of criticism, "That's the nature of compromise." ~~~~~ Dear readers, it seems that with a weak but visible recovery underway in the US, tax receipts are increasing and, combined with the small but visible reductions in annual spending, are producing a smaller annual budget deficit. Conservatives have pushed for using the federal tax collections of the more normal economy to bring down federal spending as the private sector steps up its spending on job creation, as well as to begin to tackle the entitlements dilemma and reduce the national debt. If this new budget, on full analysis, can be used to hold to the income - spending patterns set out by Paul Ryan in his multi-year budget analysis, called The Path to Prosperity, then we may see both reduced federal spending and reductions to the national debt. But even Ryan's major overhaul of the US budget requires congressional determination because it will be 2021 before mandatory and discretionary spending is reduced from 12% of GDP in 2010 to about 6% in 2021. Ryan's budget plan is the only one that actually creates budget surpluses - but not until 2040. However, Congress cannot find the courage to follow Ryan. Even the GOP fears public backlash if Medicare becomes a voucher system. There is little alternative. Take the Ryan high ground to fiscal health or slog along with growing expenditures and deficits and national debt until America collapses under the weight of its own mindless, greedy need for welfare-state government handouts.