Tag Archives: budget process

Trying To Get Back To Where We Started

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Up until 2008, there was a definite process for funding our government. It involved separate spending bills for each department. Up until that time, there were still government shutdowns, but they were rare. The current House of Representatives is trying to bring us back to the regular order of passing budgets.

On Saturday, The Daily Signal reported:

The House of Representatives took a major step toward averting another government shutdown when it passed a funding package Thursday. 

But perhaps more importantly, House Freedom Caucus members influenced the process around the bill’s consideration in ways they say could help government spending in the future.

The House’s “minibus” package covers three of the 12 funding areas for the federal government: Energy-Water, Interior-Environment, and Commerce-Justice-Science. Appropriators have attempted to reconcile both chambers’ priorities, and the package will be considered in the Senate next week.

The article concludes:

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., told The Daily Signal after the vote on Thursday that he views the outcome as a victory for his caucus, which has long called for separate votes on individual appropriations bills.

“We’ve already done away with what we call the ‘Christmas omnibus’ [where] you pile all 12 bills together, you work them out in a smoke-filled room, nobody has any chance to say anything about them,” Harris said.

“What we did today for the first time ever is say, ‘oh, and by the way, we’re going to have a separate vote on some of the bills,’” he added.

Harris also praised the stripping of the “very offensive million-dollar earmark to a Somali led organization where the brother of the organizer was arrested as a terrorist.”

In Harris’ view, the process this process should be replicated in the future.

“The framework we’ve laid out, especially this past week, allows us to… return to… what we call regular order: Each bill considered separately, amendments allowed on the floor—you know, the way it was when I first came here, and the way we should return to.”

The legislation could still face headwinds in the Senate, though, where Paul is complaining of “billions in refugee money” in the bills.

There is too much pork in the bills. However, until we elect people who actually have a sense of fiscal responsibility, we have to consider what will actually pass Congress.

The Slant On This Story Is Very Subtle

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Remember when Fox News was conservative? Those days are gone. On Monday, Fox News posted an article about the coming budget battle in Congress. Unfortunately Congress has not followed its own budge procedures since 2008, one of many reasons the federal deficit has grown so fast.

The article states:

The ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus is signaling it will not help Congress avoid a government shutdown next month unless a short-term spending bill is linked to a bill requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.

First of all the House Freedom Caucus is not ultra-conservative. They are conservative, period. Ten years ago they probably would have been considered middle of the road. Just for the record, why is requiring proof of citizenship in order to vote a problem?

The article continues:

The House GOP rebels are also calling for a short-term spending plan to extend until the new year, at which point allies of former President Trump hope he will be in the White House again. 

That puts the group in direct opposition to their more traditional GOP colleagues, including House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., who suggested last month that he would want to finish the government funding process by the end of 2024.

With just six of 12 individual appropriations bills having passed the House, and none yet in the Senate, it is all but certain that a short-term extension of the current year’s funding levels will be needed to keep the government open past the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

…The House passed the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act last month with five Democrats voting with every single House Republican in passing the bill. 

However, it is opposed by the White House and likely will not get a vote in the Democratically-held Senate, meaning its inclusion in a final CR would be fighting an uphill battle.

Cole told reporters last month that he would prefer something with wider bipartisan appeal, like supplemental disaster relief funding, to be attached to a CR instead.

“I haven’t really thought about it yet, it’s not a big deal to me. But again, if it can’t pass the Senate, it isn’t going to be an effective CR,” Cole said when asked about the SAVE Act. “So a real CR, you know, I’m more interested actually in disaster relief. That’s something that I think the two sides can come together on.”

It would be nice if someone in Washington would do their job and get back to the prescribed budget process.

 

We Need Fiscal Responsibility In Washington

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On Friday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about this year’s budget deficit. One of the conclusions that can be drawn from the numbers is that so far electing Republicans to the House of Representatives has not had any impact (actually that’s because the lame-duck Democrat Congress passed bills that limited the 2023 Congress’ ability to curtail spending). However, now we have a speaker who seems to be less likely to continue previous shenanigans. The next few weeks are going to be very interesting in terms of the budget process.

The article reports:

The United States is increasingly losing the war against red ink.

Per new Treasury Department figures, the U.S. government is courting a worsening fiscal crisis. Officially, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the federal government ran a $1.7 trillion deficit for fiscal 2023, which ended Sept. 30. That’s up from a $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit posted in 2022.

But as highlighted by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Yellen’s math ignores another $300 billion in debt incurred by President Joe Biden’s student debt cancellations, bringing the actual total of the deficit under the president to a full $2 trillion. Fix that adjustment for fiscal 2022, and that year’s deficit amounted to a little less than $1 trillion.

This means that in just one year, sans recession and sans war, the federal government under Biden managed to double the deficit by more than $1 trillion. And in large part, it’s all thanks to his embrace of inflation, or at least inflationary spending.

Broadly speaking, the explosion of our national debt, which is now the size of the nation’s annual GDP, is primarily driven by our growth of government spending. While the rest of the nation pays handsomely for inflation with their paychecks, reduced in real terms of purchasing power, our wealthiest generation profits from the pockets of taxpayers. Thanks in large part to the cost-of-living adjustments for our entitlement programs, the three greatest categories of federal budget outlays — Social Security ($1.4 trillion), Medicare ($848 billion), and Medicaid ($616 billion) — grew by 11%, 12%, and 4%, respectively, from just last year.

The article concludes:

The stratospheric surge in bond yields should serve as a warning to Washington that even if the Fed won’t force the government to slow down the spending, the nation’s creditors will not continue to bankroll Uncle Sam without him paying a hefty premium for the privilege. While underlying demographic trends and the inherent, gerontocratic structure of entitlements predestined the nation to a certain fiscal fiasco long before the pandemic, the bipartisan embrace of wartime borrowing, and then Biden’s decision to double down on inflationary policy, have put the country on the path where not even the Fed can fight the deficit disaster on its own.

If Washington won’t listen to the Fed, perhaps it will begin to listen to creditors as the coffers continue to run dry.

We can’t afford to fund wars all over the world. The defense contractors love it, but the country will be destroyed by the debt incurred.

Will Fiscal Sanity Return To Congress?

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On Thursday, Breitbart posted an article illustrating the path to fiscal sanity for Congress (assuming Congress actually wants fiscal sanity).

The article reports:

On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) stated that the best way Congress can fix the economy is to get back to the regular appropriations process…

…Donalds said, “[I]f our economy doesn’t get back on track, we’re all in trouble. And the number one way we can do that from Capitol Hill is…we’ve got to get back to regular order in Congress. We have to have real appropriations, not smoke-filled room foolishness. We’ve got to get all that COVID money out that was appropriated, still not spent. Our economy can’t take it. And then, you have to get to the hard stuff. Yes, we have to have border security. You can’t have fentanyl in our streets. Yes, we’ve got to make sure our military is strong because the Chinese are…a clear threat to global security, especially in Taiwan. All these things are happening at warp speed. We’ve got to get serious. No more games.”

Congress has not followed the regular budget process since 2009. The chart below shows what has happened since then:

The second column is revenue; the third column is spending; the fourth column is the  surplus or deficit. The chart represents trillions–not billions.

How much is a trillion?

Let’s get back to a budget process that works.

 

 

The Wrong Solution

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The coronavirus has devastated America’s economy. Small businesses have closed while certain large businesses have prospered–Amazon, WalMart, Loews, etc. Many restaurants are holding on by a thread. So how do you undo the damage? There seems to be some disagreement on the answer to that question.

Issues & Insights posted an article today about the stimulus package proposed by the Democrats. Simply put, the proposed package is nothing more than a bunch of goodies unrelated to the coronavirus. The package represents a wish list of spending the Democrats have wanted for years. The Republican attempts at reaching a compromise have been rebuffed.

The article reports:

In rejecting compromise, Biden gave Congress a green light to totally ignore Republican input by passing a stimulus package through reconciliation, not the normal budget process. That will require a simple majority of 51 senators, not a supermajority of 60, to pass.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer confirmed this Tuesday, saying: “Joe Biden is totally on board with using reconciliation” to pass the bill.

So, just as with Obamacare, the fix is in on the Democrats’ all-or-nothing bill, loaded with goodies for far-left interest groups, teachers unions and Blue State governors.

But a few points need to be made here, not just about this bill, but about stimulus in general.

First, the economy is already recovering. It grew 33.4% in the third quarter and 4% in the fourth, following 2020’s disastrous 31.4% second quarter plunge. Unemployment peaked a 14.8% last April, but fell to 6.7% in December, far better than any official forecasts.

We’ve already committed $4 trillion in spending on COVID-19 over the past 10 months, but still have an estimated $1 trillion left unspent. Add another $1.9 trillion, and you see that COVID-19 adds to our already massive pile of federal debt, which, at $28 trillion, amounts to well over $200,000 per family.

Such reckless stimulus spending will impoverish the next generation. Yet, the fact is, the pandemic didn’t shut down the economy. Politicians did. Now they’re preening over their own generosity while piling up more debt that you, your kids, your grandkids and your great-grandkids will be paying off for decades to come.

Worse still, much of the Democrats’ “stimulus” bill will actually damage the economy.

The damage to the economy will be in the form of lost jobs due to the increase in the minimum wage. The Democrat plan will also extend unemployment benefits, which historically decreases the incentive for Americans to look for work.

The article also notes:

Helping fiscally troubled states is a huge mistake. Most are Blue States that have spent and taxed their way into trouble, and now want to use the pandemic as a cover for a bailout. It was bad policies by elected officials and bad decisions by voters that got these states into trouble, not the Chinese virus. Bailing out profligate states only encourages more of the same behavior.

And, sure, increased spending on schools sounds great, but that money won’t go to students. It will line greedy teachers unions’ pockets. Meanwhile, education standards and test scores will continue to slide as schools remain closed.

Instead of indiscriminately spending more money on bogus stimulus with checks for all, and irrelevant spending on Democrats’ far-left wish lists, we should target aid to the truly desperate and needy in our economy, those who were blindsided by some states’ destructive lockdowns and are now jobless.

So how do we grow our economy? First of all, we open up the country. Secondly, we do what President Trump did–cut taxes, decrease regulation, follow the rule of law, and protect property rights. Those things will get us back on track.