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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
My R representative in AZ voted against it. The flaming progressive rep from my former district in CT voted for it.
Understood. I just don’t agree though. I still think we have 45-ish excellent conservatives in the Senate and another 40-50 in the House and another 3-4 in the Supreme Court. We haven’t had those numbers in any of our lifetimes. It just isn’t enough if we don’t have the magic numbers. The reason it seems so awful is that we have more voices saying actual conservative things and fighting for what we want and yet we seem no closer. I understand how bad it stinks to keep hearing the same refrain of “wait till……”. Believe me, I’m pissed but I think we are closer than even the Reagan years to moving things in the right direction. We just have to win the day in November.
I wish I could understand why a handful of folks in leadership can’t put the screws to people like the Dem leadership does. Collins, Flake and a few others should be squealing like pigs. It should be noted that many of these lowlifes are headed for stage right!
The problem with this view is that it ignores the entire history of presidents and their role in leading their party in congress. Trump is the leader of the Republican party, and I think much of the dysfunction of the congressional Republicans is attributable to the dysfunction of the Republican party in general. Right now because the Republicans control congress this means that their problems are the congresses problems. It isn’t Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnel who are in charge of the party.
On what are you basing this opinion? It doesn’t seem self-evident to me.
Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnel are in charge of their party in their respective chambers, which is where the spending bills are crafted. Are you saying Trump would have vetoed spending bills if sent to him via Regular Order, or if it didn’t include a bunch of Democrat spending priorities? I must have missed that tweet.
None of the current GOP congress campaigned on, “I’ll fight for Fiscal Responsibility, unless the President declines to crack the whip on us, in which case, we’ll just keep raising the debt ceiling.”
Yuval Levin found something good.
I’d complain to my representatives but as a conservative living in western Washington, it is a waste of breath and or digital strokes. My Senators are Patty Murray (D-Dimbulb) and her mini-me Maria Cantwell (D-Tech$), and my lone GOP representative is Dave Reichert who has announced his intention to retire so he has no incentive not to just go along, which is what I think he did the last time there was a last-minute spending bill. Sigh.
We got more money for defense than non-defense. We did not get all that we wanted.
We got what we could with the Freedom Caucus being pure and refusing to vote for the budget, meaning that we have to rely on Dem votes in the House.
We have only 51 senators in the Senate, since we were stupid enough to nominate Roy Moore..
I think that we are congenitally inclined to complain. I am frankly very, very tired of us always saying that we were sold out.
Give Ryan and McConnell more votes, and they would produce better results.
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OK Mr President, how about a veto?!? What did you get out of this bill, Donald J Trump? What campaign promise, name even one, that this absurd spending bill fulfills. It’s time to hitch up those big boy CEO pants. You ran as an outsider. Now’s the time to prove it. You got 2 billion for the wall???? That’s it??? Unbelievable.
Or maybe they could have included some the Freedom Caucus’ priorities so they wouldn’t have needed the Democrat votes.
Just spit-balling here…
Naw, that’s crazy talk. Everyone knows the Freedom Caucus has cooties. We wouldn’t want to be associated with them!
They are a mess because they don’t have any specific bills or plans that they want to enact. What is their goal other than reelection and keeping their heads down? If they actually wanted something specific they could negotiate their way to it. But what they want is to just not be blamed for anything and to have no responsibility. As president Trump could try to focus them by himself having a clear agenda on all these various budget issues. But for the most part he is happy to pass it off to them. Again no focus.
What does the Republican party stand for? Honestly? What is the parties legislative goals? If you can’t tell from their actions it is because they don’t have any. They have a platform and campaign rhetoric but those are just glamors. So you should be mad at them. But, as I have said Trump is the king of Republicans so really he is the one guy who can fix it (maybe).
They run nice cruises?
We need a lot more like Amash.
Seriously Gary, do you really prefer caving to the Democrats rather than throwing the Freedom Caucus a couple of bones? Seriously?
I think the congressional leadership feels the same way. They prefer Democrats to conservatives.
Or maybe they could have included some of the Freedom Caucus’ priorities so they wouldn’t have needed the Democrat votes.
Just spit-balling here…
Naw, that’s crazy talk. Everyone knows the Freedom Caucus has cooties. We wouldn’t want to be associated with them!
Seriously Gary, do you really prefer caving to the Democrats rather than throwing the Freedom Caucus a couple of bones? Seriously?
I think the congressional leadership feels the same way. They prefer Democrats to conservatives.
No, not really. What happened to all the Tea Partiers? Republicans have no spine.
Ryan was going to go for 218 votes. That is what a Speaker does. The first repeal of Obama Care failed in the House due to the opposition of the so-called “Freedom Caucus.” Because of the first repeal failed, the Dems had their chance to organize and flip Murkowski and McCain after the second repeal passed the House.
The “Freedom Caucus” is filled with absolutists. They have never heard the saying of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Republicans in the House did not need Democrat votes to pass a budget. They are the majority, they could pass any bill without a single Democrat.
Republicans in the House did need Democrats to pass this specific bill as written. That should tell you that it is not the greatest budget ever. The House needs to stop worrying about what can pass the Senate. That is what the conference is for, to merge the House and Senate bills. Ryan the former budget guy should pass a good bill, then work backwards to get it through the Senate. Instead we pass garbage.
And the rest of the GOP in congress is filled with squishes who think it’s better to caucus with the Dems than catch conservative cooties.
Seriously, they could have let the Freedom Caucus write the darn bill, pass it on a party line vote, then hash things out with the Senate in the conference committee. They’d at least be coming to the committee from a position of strength rather than spinelessness.
One more ugly feature of this monstrosity — it covers only the next 6 months.
So when do we get to watch the same panic lead to more backroom deals and concessions?
Why, just a few weeks before the 2018 elections, that’s when. Yippee. Way to go, leadership.
Let’s start with some facts. Ninety Republicans in the House voted in opposition. Your bete noir, the Freedom Caucus, has about three dozen members. Clearly, this bill was sufficiently loathsome that the Freedom Caucus was not even close to the reason why so many Democratic votes were needed. It appears that, in addition to the caucus, there were other reps worthy of being considered conservatives. Then there are those who voted Yay.
Let’s start with some facts. Ninety Republicans in the House voted in opposition. Your bete noir, the Freedom Caucus, has about three dozen members. Clearly, this bill was sufficiently loathsome that the Freedom Caucus was not even close to the reason why so many Democratic votes were needed. It appears that, in addition to the caucus, there were many other reps worthy of being considered conservatives. Then there are those who voted Yay.
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President Trump should know by now that if he wants anything from Congress he must tell them in some detail and make it compelling backed with popular support and threats. The cabinet secretaries have to be told to cut and to do that they have to be told to start at zero and that if they can’t submit at least a 10% real cut, with some, such as education, cutting much more, to request the resignations of all DAS’s and agency heads that don’t comply. Congress does pork and they log roll. They know nothing else and if a President doesn’t demand more and sell it to the public with details about pork and foolishness and corruption, and a threat– a simple story to command the narrative, Congress will give him the only thing they know how to do.
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Apologies to all. @marcin noted issues with editing earlier and I seem to be having the same issue.
Me, too.