70% Of Obama’s Budget Is Writing Checks To Individuals

Budget: What is the federal government's most important function these days? Based on the Obama budget released today, it's not defense, or roads, or education, or the environment. It's cutting checks.
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Federal healthcare spending tops Social Security for the first time

The government spent $936 billion last year on health programs including Medicare, Medicaid and subsidies related to the Affordable Care Act, a jump of 13 percent from 2014, according to the Congressional Budget Office.  Spending on Social Security, in contrast, totaled $882 billion, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported.Read more at The Hill Read More......

McConnell tries to lower GOP expectations on spending

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged Wednesday that he and the House Speaker are discussing a short-term government funding bill to avoid a shutdown on Oct. 1.
McConnell (R-Ky.) also warned his GOP colleagues that they are almost certainly going to have to accept spending levels above those in the 2011 Budget Control Act that introduced the sequester, the series of automatic cuts and ceilings meant to restrain federal spending.


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Obama says he won’t accept budget that doesn’t raise spending

President Obama said Monday he will reject any budget from Congress that doesn’t boost spending on both defense and his own domestic priorities, saying the spending “sequesters” need to go.  “America can’t afford being short-sighted and I’m not going to allow it,” the president said while speaking at the Homeland Security Department as he released his $4 trillion budget for fiscal 2016.  His budget calls for boosting discretionary spending by more than 6 percent, and raising taxes to pay for it.

Read more at the Washington Times Read More......

WSJ: As Tax Day Nears, Where Does Your Money Go?

Three nonprofit groups help answer that and other questions of interest to taxpayers -- Where does your money go? Loren Adler, research director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget offers a breakdown, which shows how $100 of revenue was allocated among spending programs in fiscal year 2013. Please note that last year's figures do not include the cost of changes under the Affordable Care Act, which Mr. Adler estimates will come to about 6% of spending when they are fully phased in.

Read more and see the "tax receipt" graphic by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget at Wall Street Journal Read More......

Who Read 1,582-Page $1.1T Spending Bill? Congressman: ‘Nobody Did’

When asked whether he read the 1,528-page, $1.1 trillion government spending bill before he voted for it yesterday, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said, “Nobody did!”

Read more at CNS News

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City spending, analytics & setting priorities

John Detweiler has submitted a letter to the editor regarding the City of Corvallis' desire to reopen Fire Station #5. The letter reads:

As I have said many times, there will never be enough money to fund everything. Therefore, we need to set priorities and make choices. Moreover, we need to support those choices with appropriate analytical work.

The City Council is considering reopening fire station five. Yet, the Corvallis Fire Department Response Time Simulation Study, dated April 25, 2012, tells us that we gained an average ten seconds in EMS response time and lost eleven seconds in average fire initial response time when we closed station five - a trivial amount of time. Are we conveniently ignoring this study now?

The Police Department is still trying to justify more officers by saying comparable cities have so many sworn officers per population, therefore Corvallis should have the same number. The underlying assumption being that the demand for service in the comparable cities is equal to that in Corvallis. Nothing is being said about the demand for service in Corvallis that Matrix Consulting Group quantified in 2008. Considering the growth in demand for service because of the OSU expansion, that quantification needs to be updated. Moreover, we need to establish the current relationship between the response time and the number of officers we deploy as I did in 2009 with the Matrix data - see my web site: www.peak.org/~detweij.

Any reduction in, or failure to increase, services will have adverse effects on public safety. But, since we can't afford everything, risk needs to be balanced against costs. That is what good governing is all about.

John H. Detweiler

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Fiscal Cliff Deal: $1 in Spending Cuts for Every $41 in Tax Increases

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the last-minute fiscal cliff deal reached by congressional leaders and President Barack Obama cuts only $15 billion in spending while increasing tax revenues by $620 billion—a 41:1 ratio of tax increases to spending cuts.

When Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush increased taxes in return for spending cuts—cuts that never ultimately came—they did so at ratios of 3:1 and 2:1.

“In 1982, President Reagan was promised $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes,” Americans for Tax Reform says of those two incidents. “The tax hikes went through, but the spending cuts did not materialize. President Reagan later said that signing onto this deal was the biggest mistake of his presidency.

"In 1990, President George H.W. Bush agreed to $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes. The tax hikes went through, and we are still paying them today. Not a single penny of the promised spending cuts actually happened.”

Read more at Breitbart.com Read More......

Obama: ‘I Cut Spending by Over a Trillion Dollars in 2011’

(CNSNews.com) - Appearing on NBCs “Meet the Press” on Sunday, President Barack Obama said that he cut spending by more than $1 trillion in 2011. However, the White House Office of Management and Budget says that federal spending increased by $147 billion from fiscal 2010 to fiscal 2011.

Host David Gregory asked Obama: “Well, you talk about dysfunction in Washington. You signed this legislation setting up the fiscal cliff 17 months ago. How accountable are you for the fact that Washington can't get anything done and that we are at this deadline again?”

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Henninger: Obama's Ruinous Course

Daniel Henninger: Where in his career did Barack Obama ever learn the art of the political deal? Nowhere. ✧ Barack Obama says his election victory is a mandate to pursue the policy course he's insisting on in negotiations with Republicans on the fiscal cliff. He wants a tax increase of $1.6 trillion, $50 billion of new and immediate stimulus spending and the end of congressional approval to raise the ceiling on U.S. debt—the debt that a ratings agency downgraded in 2011. Read more at the Wall Street Journal...

Note: Since the House is still in Republican control, Obama did NOT get a mandate. Spread this news whenever you hear the mandate claim! --bc Read More......

Mark Steyn: Obama’s magical thinking on green jobs

Pass this bill now, or I’ll say “Pass this bill now!” another two dozen times! With this latest inspiration, Obama has taken the post-modern phase of democratic politics to a whole new level. “Pass this jobs bill”? Simply as a matter of humdrum reality, there is no bill, it won’t “create” any jobs, and it will be paid for with money we don’t have. But the smartest president in history has calculated that, if he says the same four monosyllables over and over, a nonexistent bill to create nonexistent jobs with nonexistent money will be yet another legislative triumph in the grand tradition of his first stimulus (the original Dumb And Dumber to the sequel’s Stimulus And Stimulusser). Read more at the Orange County Register...

(Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) Read More......

The Spending Threat to Our National Defense

Consider it a warning from the highest levels of the U.S. government. Yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta held a joint press event in Washington in which they cautioned that U.S. debt is jeopardizing America’s ability to ensure national security and preserve its interests abroad. Read more at the Heritage Foundation's Morning Bell ... Read More......

Connie Mack: Trying to Balance the Budget a Few (Trillion) Pennies at a Time

By Ashton Ellis - What if a bill could provide a fail-safe way to reduce federal spending by one percent a year, cap spending at a historically sustainable level and balance the budget in eight years? ✧ If it sounds too good to be true, it isn’t. But it does need a grassroots movement to demand a vote on it in the House and Senate. Read more at Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF)... Read More......

GOP.com: Obama By The Numbers

7/11/2011 - Obama’s Treasury Secretary Says It Is “Ridiculous” To Judge The President Based On The Facts – You Be The Judge... GOP.com/PDF

Eye-popping numbers! --bc
(Hat tip: D'Ann Mathews) Read More......

NumbersUSA: 10 Sweeping Victories in the House

NumbersUSA Newsletter, 6/3/2011 (Re: IMMIGRATION) - [Excerpts] We didn't have just 1 victory in the House of Representatives this week, BUT 10 VICTORIES IN ALL!!! ∴ In fact, every immigration amendment vote to the 2012 Homeland Security spending bill the past two days went our way. ∴ Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado wrapped and delivered a great present to us when he requested a roll call vote on his amendment to end the 287(g) local enforcement program. His amendment was defeated with broad bi-partisan support with 75% of the votes cast opposing his amendment!

Read Roy [Beck's] detailed descriptions of all the votes.

All in all, the House passed amendments to:

• set aside funding for Border Patrol to eliminate look-out posts along the U.S.-Mexico border;
  
• set aside funding to hire additional Shadow Wolves who track down smugglers along the border;
  
• reallocate funds to increase funding for the 287(g) program by nearly 20%;
  
• reallocate funding to increase support for the Law Enforcement Support Center;
  
• ensure that funding provided in the spending bill is used to enforce existing federal law requiring the detention of illegal aliens who are violent criminals awaiting deportation;
  
• withhold funding from cities that have sanctuary city policies in place;
  
• prohibit the Administration from offering amnesty through "deferred action";
  
• require all DHS contractors to use E-Verify to check new hires; and
  
• reallocate funds to build cell towers providing full service along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

For any of our activists who are concerned about the federal budget and homeland security, all of the amendments are budget neutral and only reallocate funding that was set aside for executive management of the department. Read More......

House Rules Revisited: An early defeat for the spending cutters.

WALL STREET JOURNAL/REVIEW & OUTLOOK, 1/11/2011, (Hat tip: Linda Bartcher, ONE WEEK INTO THE 112TH CONGRESS...) - "A week ago we praised the House rules offered by the new Republican majority to make it harder to tax and spend. There's a less hopeful coda to that story that is worth reporting to keep the spending-cut pressure on the GOP.

We praised new 'spending reduction accounts' designed to hold money from specific spending cuts rather than let that cash be spent on something else. The idea is that if, say, the House killed a $100 million earmark for a bridge to nowhere from a spending bill, the $100 million would go to reduce the deficit rather than return to the spending pool.

In last week's House GOP conference, however, a group of fiscal hawks led by Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake tried to strengthen the enforcement on those accounts so they'd be harder for Members of the Appropriations Committee to raid. The current rule puts the accounts under the control of Appropriators˜the spenders in chief˜and requires only that they inform the House of what they do with the money.

Mr. Flake˜and allies Jim Jordan of Ohio, Tom Graves of Georgia and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin˜offered an amendment to sequester the accounts until the end of the budget year and then allow the money to be spent elsewhere only with a vote of the entire House.

Notably, the reformers were opposed by Speaker John Boehner and the leadership and lost on a voice vote. Mr. Ryan, the House Budget Chairman who has credibility with new Members, was just about to speak on behalf of the amendment when Mr. Boehner abruptly intervened and called for the vote."

Mr. Boehner asked Republicans to trust him and his fellow leaders, saying that they and the Appropriators have got the message and are determined to cut spending. As a sign of his good faith, new Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers even cut his committee's budget by 9%, or four percentage points more than the 5% ordered by the GOP. But Mr. Rogers also lobbied Mr. Boehner against the Flake-Ryan amendment as an affront to his committee's authority.

We realize this is inside baseball, but of such details is the spending problem made. As Mr. Flake notes, the reason to support strict anti-spending rules is because the communal pressure in Congress to spend is so great. Appropriators try to limit access to specific budget information, all the while asserting that cutting this or that program isn't worth the effort because the money will be spent elsewhere in any case. Mr. Flake's rule would have made that harder.

Messrs. Boehner and Rogers will no doubt abide by the spirit of the new rule in the short run. But as public pressure and media scrutiny ebb, the temptation to return to spending as usual will be enormous. We report all this so readers know what happened, and also so Messrs. Boehner and Rogers realize that some of us will keep paying attention." Read More......

Letter: City government’s costs, spending have run amok

CORVALLIS GAZETTE-TIMES/OPINION, 12/22/2010, Letter submitted by Eldon Carr - City government’s costs, spending have run amok.

Jean Nelson comments: Thanks to the Corvallis Gazette-Times for printing Mr. Carr's excellent letter to the editor. Most people don't realize how government operates... take last year's budget and ask for increases above last year's spending, rather than deciding what can be cut to make allowances for what's necessary for the coming year. The public must insist that our city and state policy makers stop deceiving the public in order to grow government. Read More......

Sign of the times or time to do something?

Here are some interesting places to visit:

• Faces of Lawsuit Abuse
  
• Hugh Jidette for President
  
• Peter Peterson Foundation

Read More......

Lawmakers advise new Congress

CONGRESS.ORG - Outgoing members say Capitol Hill needs to change its ways. EXCERPT: "When it's difficult to get Congress to lower taxes and increase spending," Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Texas) said, referring to the recent tax deal, "the real question is how hard will it be to get bipartisanship to raise taxes and lower spending." ∴ Edwards and several other lawmakers who lost in the midterm elections offered their advice for breaking partisan gridlock during a panel at the Bipartisan Policy Center this week. ∴ They suggested Congress needs:

Read more at Congress.org...

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Our burgeoning budget and the politics of avoidance

WASHINGTON POST, 11/22/2010 by Robert J. Samuelson (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - America's budget problem boils down to a simple question: How much will we let programs for the elderly displace other government functions - national defense, education, transportation and many others - and raise taxes to levels that would, almost certainly, reduce economic growth? What's depressing is that this question has been obvious for decades, but our political leaders have consistently evaded it. This includes and indicts Democrats, Republicans, conservatives, liberals and every president since Jimmy Carter, particularly Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who clearly understood the problem. Read more at Washington Post...

"Our political culture prefers delusion to candor." Could Samuelson be talking about Corvallis? --JHD
Did Samuelson forget that GWB crossed the country stumping for SS reform, which fell on deaf ears? --bc Read More......