Congress OKs $3.6 trillion Obama budget

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Congress OKs $3.6 trillion Obama budget

Plan lacks Republican support

Congress signed off on President Obama's $3.6 trillion budget largely along party lines Wednesday night, handing him a legislative victory that paves the way for a health care overhaul.

The Senate cleared the plan by a vote of 53 to 43 after the House passed it 223 to 193. Not a single Republican in either chamber voted for the measure. Democratic defections included Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Pennsylvania's former Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, all of whom joined 17 House Democrats in voting no.

The budget - a nonbinding resolution meant to guide congressional spending - includes a fast-track provision that would block a Senate filibuster on Mr. Obama's bid to transform the health care system, as well as his plan to change student lending.

In remarks prepared for his evening news conference, Mr. Obama said the budget "builds on the steps we've taken over the last 100 days to move this economy from recession to recovery and ultimately to prosperity."

House and Senate budget chiefs trimmed Mr. Obama's original $3.6 trillion budget proposal, leaving out certain items, such as additional bailout funding, and scaling back his "Make work pay" tax cut. Lawmakers also opted against reducing the level of charitable tax deductions taken by wealthy Americans.

But the blueprint preserves many of Mr. Obama's initiatives and tees up efforts by congressional committees to expand government-subsidized health care. It also implements an administration-backed plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions, though it stipulates that the final budget specify how to finance both reforms. Because health care was included under a procedural mechanism known as "reconciliation," Mr. Obama's health care plan will require only 51 votes to pass the Senate.

"I think it's a good beginning," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said after the vote. "I do think it is putting us on the right trajectory in the first five years and we have captured the president's major priorities."

However, North Dakota's Mr. Conrad noted, lawmakers must pass tax and entitlement reform "if we're going to get the country on a sustainable course."

The budget aims to cut the deficit from an expected $1.2 trillion this year to $523 billion by 2014. The total national debt would skyrocket from $11.2 trillion to $17 trillion.

Republicans, who have used reconciliation in the past to push through the Bush tax cuts and other items, protested its use for health care. They also seized on the budget's overall spending level, saying it threatens future generations.

"I don't want a legacy of stealing opportunity from my grandchildren or anybody else's," said Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, who described the plan as "an escape from responsibility."

A deal on the budget was only reached after Democrats agreed to demands from conservative Blue Dogs to consider legislation, known as pay-go, to help control spending. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland have pledged to do so in a letter, while Mr. Obama has reportedly promised to help push the cause in the Senate.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/a...n-obama-budget/

[Peikko 1,575]

US politics is screwed.

At least at the Federal level. It's ok in CA though, we have Arnie.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

US politics is screwed.

At least at the Federal level. It's ok in CA though, we have Arnie.

I just mailed in my ballot. We have become a nation of idiots.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

(exerpt) from

The Costs of Expanding the Government's Economic Role

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

"The scientific discipline known as public economics describes why government is needed alongside markets to allocate resources. These reasons include: the protection of the poor through a social safety net; the correction of externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions; the provision of merit goods such as health care and education that society deems to be essential for all of its members; and the financing of scientific and technological research that cannot be efficiently captured by private investors. In all these circumstances, the free-market system tends to underprovide the resource in question whether income support for the poor, abatement of carbon emissions, low-cost primary health care, or R&D for renewable energy.

After a decade of macroeconomic instability, Reagan came to office in 1981 on a platform of shrinking the public sector to free resources for market-based allocation. Federal revenues and outlays remained relatively unchanged as a share of national income from 1981 to 2008, at around 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for revenues and around 21 percent of GDP for outlays. The U.S. ran budget deficits during most of that period, with a long and chronic stalemate between those who would raise taxes and those who would cut spending. By and large, the public resisted cuts to spending programs but also resisted calls for tax increases.

The result is in strong contrast with Europe, where both taxes and spending are notably higher. Counting all levels of government (federal, state, and local), government revenues in the U.S. are about 33 percent of GDP, compared with 45 percent in Europe; spending stands at 38 percent of GDP in the U.S. and 46 percent in Europe. Yet because U.S. taxes are even lower than spending as a share of GDP, U.S. deficits are chronically higher. The main predictions of public economics are also supported. The U.S. lags behind Europe in several areas where public spending makes a vast difference: U.S. health outcomes are worse (for example, lower life expectancy with a much more costly private system); U.S. poverty is much higher; U.S. educational outcomes are worse (poorer outcomes in science, math, and functional literacy); and public infrastructure is superior in many European countries (for example, better mass transit and broadband penetration)."

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cost-g...t-economic-role

Edited April 30, 2009 by Col. 'Bat' Guano

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Well Bush had his uber majority in his first term, this isn't all that much different. Though it is messed up.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

The result is in strong contrast with Europe, where both taxes and spending are notably higher. Counting all levels of government (federal, state, and local), government revenues in the U.S. are about 33 percent of GDP, compared with 45 percent in Europe; spending stands at 38 percent of GDP in the U.S. and 46 percent in Europe.

So, we still have a long ways to go before we are as screwed up as Europe? Well, we better get a move on then!

Edited April 30, 2009 by Mister_Bill

[Peikko 1,575]

US politics is screwed.

At least at the Federal level. It's ok in CA though, we have Arnie.

I just mailed in my ballot. We have become a nation of idiots.

I blame the interwebz. That and the quality of exam papers. In MY day, each question was beautifully crafted to be barely intelligible. Now the questions have been so simplified that the dog could probably get an A.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

The result is in strong contrast with Europe, where both taxes and spending are notably higher. Counting all levels of government (federal, state, and local), government revenues in the U.S. are about 33 percent of GDP, compared with 45 percent in Europe; spending stands at 38 percent of GDP in the U.S. and 46 percent in Europe.

So, we still have a long ways to go before we are as screwed up as Europe? Well, we better get a move on then!

When it comes to education, healthcare or mass transit - we should be striving to be number one, don't you think?

[Peikko 1,575]

Not that I have a dog...

Or even want one - not even a presidentially appointed Portuguese water dog!

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

The result is in strong contrast with Europe, where both taxes and spending are notably higher. Counting all levels of government (federal, state, and local), government revenues in the U.S. are about 33 percent of GDP, compared with 45 percent in Europe; spending stands at 38 percent of GDP in the U.S. and 46 percent in Europe.

So, we still have a long ways to go before we are as screwed up as Europe? Well, we better get a move on then!

When it comes to education, healthcare or mass transit - we should be striving to be number one, don't you think?

Perhaps the American experiment was a failure, and now, we have to bow again to our European masters? I repeat:

[one...two...tree 2,762]

The result is in strong contrast with Europe, where both taxes and spending are notably higher. Counting all levels of government (federal, state, and local), government revenues in the U.S. are about 33 percent of GDP, compared with 45 percent in Europe; spending stands at 38 percent of GDP in the U.S. and 46 percent in Europe.

So, we still have a long ways to go before we are as screwed up as Europe? Well, we better get a move on then!

When it comes to education, healthcare or mass transit - we should be striving to be number one, don't you think?

Perhaps the American experiment was a failure, and now, we have to bow again to our European masters? I repeat:

American experiment? Does the Republican Party have a patent on that term?

[Peikko 1,575]

Certain aspects of the 'American experiment' have most certainly failed

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Certain aspects of the 'American experiment' have most certainly failed

As a fellow American, I'd rather we assign responsibility on the ones who actually did the failing, without it sounding like a condemnation on America's ideals itself, which is what Bill is eluding to.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

The result is in strong contrast with Europe, where both taxes and spending are notably higher. Counting all levels of government (federal, state, and local), government revenues in the U.S. are about 33 percent of GDP, compared with 45 percent in Europe; spending stands at 38 percent of GDP in the U.S. and 46 percent in Europe.

So, we still have a long ways to go before we are as screwed up as Europe? Well, we better get a move on then!

When it comes to education, healthcare or mass transit - we should be striving to be number one, don't you think?

Perhaps the American experiment was a failure, and now, we have to bow again to our European masters? I repeat:

American experiment? Does the Republican Party have a patent on that term?

It was a Frenchman that coined that term, I believe, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocqueville#D...racy_in_America

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money"

http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/3909

Edited April 30, 2009 by Mister_Bill

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Certain aspects of the 'American experiment' have most certainly failed

As a fellow American, I'd rather we assign responsibility on the ones who actually did the failing, without it sounding like a condemnation on America's ideals itself, which is what Bill is eluding to.

What failed America was the creation of the welfare state, the social contract, and the end of personal responsibility.