Tag Archives: spending

This is Pretty Clear

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Regarding DHS’ potential shutdown, here’s Speaker John Boehner (R, OH):

We want to get a conference with the Senate. Now, they’ve made clear that they don’t want to go to conference. But they’re going to have a vote.

And

A spokesman for [Senator Harry (D, NV)] Reid said Sunday there will be no negotiations with the House over Homeland Security funding and immigration.

That spokesman, Adam Jentleson, added:

Senator Reid has been clear for days on the fact that there will be no conference[.]

Finally, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D, CA):

We want a clean bill. I see nothing else happening, other than a clean bill.

There you have it. The Democratic Party of No is intent on shutting down DHS in order to support President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional immigration-related “executive actions.”

Because, Veterans

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President Obama’s 2016 budget blueprint proposes rolling back a program that gives veterans the right to receive faster care outside of the long waitlists at the troubled Veterans Affairs medical system.

Obama signed the Veterans Choice Program into law in August following months of partisan wrangling on Capitol Hill….

His 2016 budget “proposal” doesn’t zero out the program; instead, it achieves elimination of the funding by allowing the VA to reallocate that part of its budget to other purposes

to support essential investments in VA system priorities in a fiscally responsible, budget-neutral manner.

Apparently, veteran choice isn’t an essential investment, or it’s not a fiscally responsible use of the money, or both.

Because veterans are another group of Americans whom Obama and his Democrat minions don’t think are capable of making their own decisions.

On the other hand, it was a Republican addition to last year’s compromise and interim bill for reforming the Veterans Administration. Maybe because, Republicans.

The Party of No

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Democratic Party obstructionism continues in the Senate. Recall that the Democrats refused to allow over 300 House-passed jobs-related bills even to come up for debate in the last session and how they shut down the Federal government over a House-passed spending bill that fully funded the government but that didn’t have an additional 2% of what the Democrats demanded.

They’re at it again. The House has passed a bill that fully funds the Department of Homeland Security for the year, which under the last session’s compromise passed in December, had only been funded through the end of this month. The bill also rolls back a number of President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional immigration “executive actions.” Obama’s minions in the Senate are vowing to block the bill, to filibuster it.

Obama has promised to veto the bill, should it make it past the Senate Democrats’ obstructionism. Obama and his minions are fully prepared to shut down HHS, to walk completely away from what little border security they’re willing to provide today, if they can’t have 100% of their way.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) has made the question clear:

It’s a debate that will challenge our colleagues on the other side with a simple proposition. Do they think presidents of either party should have the power to simply ignore laws that they don’t like? Well, will our Democratic colleagues work with us to defend key democratic ideals like separation of powers and the rule of law? Or will they stand tall for the idea that partisan exercises of raw power are good things? The House-passed bill we’ll consider would do two things. Fund the Department of Homeland Security and rein in executive overreach. That’s it. It’s simple….

Remember the Democrats’ behavior in 2016.

Austerity

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President Obama called for an end to “mindless austerity” on Thursday as he announced his desire to end “sequester” spending cuts in his budget for 2015.

No, Obama wants to perpetuate—even expand—the deliberate austerity of excessive government spending and ever-rising taxes. His “budget” calls for a 7% increase in Federal spending to be paid for with increased taxes, including increases in the death tax on inheritances (which Obama is attempting to disguise by calling it a “trust fund” tax). Indeed, Obama’s “thinking” on taxing was exposed by his attempt to tax Americans’ savings for our children’s college, our 529s.

If the Republicans and Conservatives in Congress are smart, they won’t waste time on the Obama stuff. They won’t even respond to his nonsense. They’ll just ignore it and pass a conservative budget that includes both tax reform and tax rate reductions.

Obama’s going to veto anything this Congress passes, anyway; his vetoes should simply be used to shape the ’16 elections.

A Tax Cut

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The Wall Street Journal had a thought on one. Our gas tax should go away. Completely.

The gas tax began in 1956 as a 3¢/gal tax that was intended to fund, via the Highway Trust Fund, building…highways and bridges. Today, that tax stands at 18.4¢/gal (and 24.4¢/gal on diesel). The gas tax has roughly matched inflation over those 58 years.

However, HTF spending has not, nor has it been kept to building highways and bridges. Today, that money also gets spent on

mass transit in merely six metro areas and sundry other programs for street cars, ferries, sidewalks, bike lanes, hiking trails, urban planning and even landscaping nationwide.

None of whose riders or users pay a single red cent to the HTF.

WSJ‘s alternative?

Simply using the taxes that are supposed to pay for highways to, well, pay for highways makes the HTF 98% solvent for the next decade, no tax increase necessary.

More than that, with more than 70% of highway spending already done by the states and not the Federal government, the States can allocate their own funds (a related example: who’s paying for California’s “high speed” train boondoggle? Not just Californians), make their own decisions regarding spending priorities, without freeloading off their neighboring states’ citizens’ tax money. The Federal gas (and diesel) tax can be done away with once the HTF’s spending is refocused.

Where are the Republicans on this? The WSJ had a thought on that, too, in the same article.