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Republican Budget, Once Again, Gives Democrats Everything
Despite campaign promises to return to “regular order” (i.e., submit each Federal Department’s budget as a separate {fiscally responsible} bill), the Republican majority has once again crammed everything into a single, bloated omnibus spending bill. And like every other “Bipartisan Budget Deal,” it represents an utter capitulation to Democrats on spending greased by extra pork for the Republican Donor Class. Here are the key features of its 2,200+ pages.
- Record levels of spending across all departments. Conservatives are supposed to be happy because it increases military spending. Are you happy enough that the military gets another $60 billion that you don’t care about the other spending and bloat?
- Chuck Schumer’s NY Transit pork project gets funded, albeit indirectly, Donald Trump’s border wall does not. There is a piddling $1.6 Billion for Border Security, which is mostly limited to repairs to existing fencing and ineffective pedestrian obstacles. Only 33 miles of the border will get new fencing.
- Also, the H2-B Visa American-Worker-substitution-program is vastly expanded (page 1,760 of the bill).
- No budget cuts to the EPA. Big increases at the Department of Energy for “Clean Energy Research.”
- Sanctuary Cities are fully-funded.
- Planned Parenthood is fully funded.
- No cuts to Obamacare. A $70 billion Bipartisan Obamacare bailout will be voted on separately.
The national debt has expanded another trillion dollars since Trump was elected. About the only hope we have left is that government growth is eventually canceled out by complete fiscal bankruptcy. So far, though, debt does not seem to matter. Leviathan feeds and grows.
This bill sucks as much as any spending bill has ever sucked. Republicans only get away with this because so few people pay attention. While Democrats fight every single day for evermore spending, the Republican party derides fiscal conservatives as “whacko-birds,” concedes everything, and then claims they had no choice but to “compromise.” And their compromises are invariable 95% sell-out to Democrats, 5% lip-service to conservative constituencies.
Is there any point to the Republican Party beyond slowing the erosion of gun rights?
Published in Politics
Former conservative budget guru and deficit hawk Paul Ryan needed 218. To get that he did not go to fiscal conservatives with restraint in mind but to Democrats to increase spending.
that tells me Republicans are not a serious party.
I’m starting to think this fall’s elections are going to be a blowout. Up until now, I’ve dismissed all the gloom and doom about how Trump’s polling numbers mean a Democrat landslide. First, I don’t put too much faith in polls. Second, I put even less faith in the ability of the various pundits making these claims to accurately predict American politics, especially where Trump is concerned.
But the GOP congress just threw a bucket of warm spit on the morale of every fiscal conservative in the country. I have no doubt they’ll double up during the next budget go-round. Then when millions of conservatives stay home in November, mumbling “what’s the use?” into their cornflakes, it’ll be spun as all Trump’s fault.
If I were more cynical, I might think this was a big setup to punish those of us who voted for such a non-approved candidate, to teach us not to do anything like this again.
What’s that? Yes, it’s possible for me to be more cynical. A little bit, anyway.
Well, they’re serious about increasing spending, anyway. You might say they’re absolutists about it.
OK – I understand that the GOPe does not have a large majority in either party, but they do have a majority. That is more than Chuck and Nancy have, so why do they get what they want? If it is the threat to “shut the government down”, I say go ahead and do that.
“No matter how cynical I become, I just can’t keep up.” —att. to Lily Tomlin
The so-called “Freedom Caucus” will withhold its votes as a block, forcing us to negotiate with the Dems. There are 32 members of the Freedom Caucus, and only 240 Republicans. There is a 218 vote needed to carry the 435 House of Representatives. The Freedom Caucus would prefer to be pure, than to cut a deal. They (and Trump) are the worst negotiators I have ever seen.
If Trump had not been nominated, President Cruz would be pressing for a filibuster-proof majority. But with Trump as President, independents, women and Suburban voters feel a need to check Trump.
Because it’s better to give the Democrats what they want than to give the Freedom Caucus what they want. That’s the only possible way to interpret this. That says all that needs saying about the priorities of the GOP leadership.
Worse negotiators are the Republicans who come to every budget negotiation with increased spending (baseline budgeting) as their starting position, while the Democrats start by demanding pie-in-the-sky spending. “Sorry – spending going up again. Nothing we could do.”
Of course, I might be being unfair here. If their actual goal was to increase spending to begin with, that’d make them great negotiators. But for the sake of argument, I’m taking them at their word that they want to be more fiscally responsible.
You keep accusing the “Freedom Caucus” of being absolutists because they stand firm on their desire to hold a line on spending. But the leadership is just as absolutist in their insistence that spending increase, even to the point of caucusing with the opposition in order to get their way. I’m reminded of Obama, calling “radical” every opposition to his radical ideas.
Despite the fact that it was unfortunately posted twice due to a glitch, you don’t seem to want to address my earlier post noting that 90 Republicans voted against this abomination, considerably more than belong to the Freedom Caucus. You probably should stop using the caucus as a scapegoat for a bad bill.
That’s funny. I distinctly remember that back before Trump came on the scene, Cruz was the horrible absolutist who wouldn’t play ball with the powers-that-were. He just didn’t play well with others. Horrible man, he was.
Maybe they mean it. The budget only sucks, from their point of view, if they share our priorities. That’s looking to be a false premise.
I also remember Gary saying that Cruz was dead-last among the 16 Republicans he would have been willing to vote for in the general election.
Yes, offer to discuss and even offer some compromise or face saving, but for crying out loud they are still timid, incompetent, and duplicitous.
Because the Republicans never have majorities of 60 in the Senate and 260 in the House, which is what they need to dictate policy unilaterally- what Obama had in 2009. And because the voters demand certain things, whether or not Thomas Massie and Ted Cruz approve.
Would I like the world to be different, and everyone to see things my way? Sure. But in a pluralistic society, we have to compromise. And if you want to restore Defense (yes, I know that the isolationists don’t care and would rather reduce the DoD to a beefed up Coast Guard that is prohibited from interdicting drug shipments), the Dems will demand something as well.
There are always places for different efforts to try to cadge money- in competition with everything else. The lack of “never go” language for the NY-NJ tunnel does not mean that it gets money, just that it can compete. And the alternate sources of funds are nowhere near enough to do much of anything.
The House doesn’t need to worry about whether something can get 60 votes in the Senate.
I’ll repeat that.
The House doesn’t need to worry about whether something can get 60 votes in the Senate.
The Senate can pass whatever it can get passed the filibuster threshold, and the differences hashed out in the conference committee. The House should pass the best budget it can, low-balling as much as possible in order to have negotiating room in conference.
Ah, but there’s not enough time to do all that before tomorrow night’s deadline, you say? Tough. If we had real, conservative leadership in the House this would have been passed weeks ago. I’m convinced they held it up until the last minute so as to get as much spending in the bill as possible because they knew there wouldn’t be time to do things properly. This wasn’t a case of, “Oh darn! Time’s almost up! Better hammer something out!” This was all by design.
I have no idea what you mean by needing 260 votes in the House.
260 would be 60% of the House. There is no filibuster in the house so Ryan only needs to get. To 218. The Republicans have 238. So they can lose 20 conservative or moderate votes and still pass a bill. The Dems don’t have enough votes in the House to stop anything. This is the bill the Republicans wanted. This stuff, not any stupid Trump tweet is what might have me staying home in November. Let the Dems have House, Republicans aren’t doing anything with it
I hear you.
Snark and venom aside, I really don’t know what to make of all this.
I don’t take Ryan for an idiot. He’s been in the House for a long time, so he has to understand how the game is played. This isn’t like Rubio being played for a rube by Schumer. Ryan had to be in on the game of dragging these secret negotiations out until the last minute.
I see a few possibilities.
@duaneoyen mentioned above that “the voters demand certain things.” I get that, and have long realized I’m in a minority wanting smaller government. But this doesn’t excuse the current situation. There are 435 members of the House whose voters all demand certain things. Few of them were involved in the secret negotiations, so what their voters demand, more or less government, was immaterial to the process.
Enough of trying to reason it out. Being unreasonable has always worked for the Democrats.
To hell with being reasonable.
The bug is a #NeuterTrump #NeverTeaParty feature.
Yes. And. @jager is also right that Speaker Ryan chose to start from retreat and go on to Senate surrender, rather than giving “Senate Majority Leader” McConnell a better hand and then entering conference with a strong House bill and a weak but not quite terrible Senate bill. Which tells me the fix has always been in.
If Trump had not been nominated, President Clinton would be pressing for a filibuster-proof majority. Fixed it for you. And I was all in for Cruz, from his Senate run against the Bushes and McConnell, through his presidential primary campaign. And you know I’m right.
I’m not even talking about the content of the bill. I’m talking about the process. Why the Congress can’t get their act together enough to run separate appropriations bills through committee and to the floor, instead of jamming everything into a single bill. That’s much more discouraging than even the worst spending in the omnibus.
The simplest explanation is that Congress operates that way because Congress wants to operate that way. Just as the simplest explanation for the content of the spending bill is that it reflects the real spending priorities of the majority of Republican members of Congress.
Heroes: 90 Republicans who voted against the Omnibus. Some of these are no surprise: Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Tom Massey. Mia Love and Kristi Noem are kind of surprising, especially Noem. Both of them have had a soft spot for spending on previous occasions.
Note that Roger Marshall of Kansas’ “Big One” (1st District), who came in when the Powers That Be decided Tim Huelskamp should go, voted in favor. Mission accomplished there.
I think Ryan above all else is a pragmatist. He wants to govern and get stuff done. Doing the wrong thing is better than doing nothing. He is pretty much the embodiment of the Republican Party for generations. He has the knowledge of conservative economic principles, history, civics, etc. but they are no more important to him than game theory. He has no soul or wisdom attached to his academic understanding of basic issues.
Ryan is a “Conservatives” like Unitarians are “Christians”. They only know the object enough to believe that it only works if their self-perceived, immense intellect is allowed to change and mold it to a better form. Anyone who wishes to preserve the object in its original form and rejects their immense genius is an enemy of the object.
These folks have infected and destroyed conservatism and Christianity both for decades and recently the fruit of their activity has been made clear as both have been rendered impudent in popular culture with entirely predictable results. Both Christians and conservatives are generally a “live and let live” lot and let it happen. However, both cases are at the end of the line. Both are now being persecuted by the progressive, authoritarian, elites we allowed to metastasize among us.
The answer isn’t in destroying the whole. The answer is in identifying the cancer that is within us and what form it is taking by knowing the truth. We must know what conservatism is, what its principles are so that when someone says something like “Its the fault of the Freedom Caucus” we can know that they are in fact the enemy, not the entirety of the party.
We had 45 votes for a clean repeal of O-Care. That is how close we are! McCain will be dead soon and Flake and a couple others have already been drummed out of camp. This is a long fight but I think we are making progress. After November, we will almost assuredly have the votes to replace McConnell and of the House R’s that will get the ax, almost all are minimally conservative anyway and the Freedom Caucus will likely have the votes to cast out Ryan for a true conservative. In my opinion, a conservative minority in the House MAY be healthier than where we are now.
I have now had a night to sleep on this conversation – and try to set aside the disappointment & anger provoked by this budget. In particular to recognize that to say “Republicans aren’t” is to paint with a broad brush. Some Republicans are conservatives, some are not. How many are truly principled in ways with which we would agree? We can argue about it.
But I think, in the morning light I recognize that just letting the Democrats have it would make things worse: Again, we can argue about how much worse, but worse.
In any case, unless we are Democrats, can only vote for one Representative – some of us may also be able to vote for a Senator. I intend to vote in the Republican primary for the candidate that I am most confident will do the right thing. My congresswoman, Diane Black, isn’t running. There is a good alternative, though. Senator Corker, Lord willing, won’t be on the ballot and there is at least one potential replacement that is a considerable improvement. Come the general election, I will consider the names on the ballot and thoughtfully cast my vote. If I can’t vote for the Republican candidate, or if I am convinced my vote won’t make a difference, I may vote for the Conservative Party candidate. Or maybe Libertarian. Or possibly write-in: But I will vote.
Republicans are always conservative in the minority. It’s when they’re in the majority that all hell breaks loose.
Ironically, the same is mostly true of Democrats too. They pretend to be much more “conservative” when they’re in the minority.
Been a while and I haven’t gone back to study it again, but some of those 45 only voted for repeal knowing it would not be repealed: They got to have their cake and eat it too.