GOP Policy Riders Complicate Year-End Spending Bill In Congress

As reported in Huffington Post 12/08/11 by Andrew Taylor

WASHINGTON — Conservative flashpoint issues from abortion and abstinence education to President Barack Obama’s health care law are the biggest obstacles to Congress completing a massive year-end spending bill next week that would keep the government running through next September.

Going into end-game negotiations this weekend on the $900-plus billion bill, Republicans expect to lose on most of the policy provisions, or “riders,” they added to House versions of the must-do spending measures. But the White House and Democrats are poised to make concessions on some environmental rules, wetlands regulations and, in all likelihood, on continuing a ban on government-funded abortions in the nation’s capital city.

“We’re meeting heavy resistance from the White House and Democrats in the Senate,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., who is pressing for provisions to help the coal industry. “So, we’ll get as many as we possibly can.”

Among most popular targets for Republicans are environmental regulations they say hamper the economy, such as proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules on coal ash, large-scale discharges of hot water and greenhouse gases from electric power plants, and emissions from cement plants and oil refineries.

If past is prologue, most of the issues will end up on the chopping block. That’s what happened last spring during negotiations on a spending bill for the budget year that ended in September.

“There’s a lot of opposition to these and they know they need Democratic votes in the House to pass it,” said Rep. Norm Dicks of Washington, senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “So we have made this very clear to the other side. … If you expect our votes you’ve got to get rid of the controversial riders.”

But some riders will be needed to win GOP support for the measure in votes next week. And many of the provisions are important to powerful members of the appropriations panel in both parties.

“We don’t want to be wholly inflexible,” said Rep. James Moran of Virginia, top Democrat on the spending panel responsible for the EPA’s budget. That measure is studded with riders.

“Virtually every rule the EPA has come up with, they’re trying to come up with a rider to stop it,” said Scott Slesinger, legislative director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

// // The roster of environmental riders is indeed lengthy.

For coal interests, there is a rider to block clean water rules opposed by mining companies that blast the tops off mountains as well as a rider to block proposed labor rules to limit miners’ exposure to coal dust, which causes black-lung disease. Electric utilities would benefit from delays of rules on traditional air pollution and emissions of carbon dioxide. Painting contractors would benefit from a delay in a 2008 rule that requires them to be certified by the EPA in order to remove lead paint.

“We’re pretty clear that we find these riders as unacceptable,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. “We’re being very emphatic.”

On social issues, there are proposals to ban needle exchange programs that help stem the spread of HIV among drug users; cut off federal funding to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading provider of abortions; and adopt an abstinence-only approach for grants to reduce teen pregnancy.

Those riders, in addition to GOP efforts to block implementation of the new health care law – a nonstarter with Democrats and the White House – are among the reasons the labor, health and education chapter of the omnibus spending measure is at risk of being left out of the final bill.

“It’s from soup to nuts,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. “They just designed an ideological agenda.”

In addition to proposing to eliminate federal family planning funding, Republicans would block the District of Columbia government from providing abortions to poor women, which is a top priority of anti-abortion activists.

The D.C. abortion rider was in place when Republicans controlled the White House but was lifted after Obama took office. He reluctantly agreed to reinstate the funding ban this year, prompting Washington’s mayor and city council members to march on Capitol Hill. Democrats continue to fight the rider, but GOP leaders are likely to insist on it.

At the same time, Republicans are trying to reverse a loss earlier this year when they tried to block taxpayer money from going to Washington’s needle exchange program.

Some of the riders aren’t contentious. For instance, even though the EPA has no interest in regulating methane emissions from cow burps and flatulence, there’s a rider to block the agency from doing so. That’s fine with Democrats.

Then there are riders that have no practical effect but set a precedent that agencies would prefer to avoid. One would block the EPA from officially delineating any new wetlands in counties affected by flooding this year. It turns out that the agency has no plans to do so, so this might be a rider Democrats and the White House would accept.

Another battle involves an attempt to block the Obama administration’s 2009 policy lifting restrictions on travel and money transfers by Cuban-Americans to families remaining in Cuba. That provision drew an explicit Obama veto threat earlier this year and will probably be dropped in end-stage negotiations.

The White House warned last week it’ll play a strong hand in trying to keep the final measure as free of riders as possible. “There should be no miscalculation about the intensity of (Obama’s) feelings,” White House budget director Jacob Lew told reporters.

 

Balance the U.S. budget? I did it in under a minute

James
Pethokoukis

Politics and policy from inside Washington

 

So I took a crack at the budget
simulator cooked up over at the NYTimes Web site. It starts out with a
projected 2015 deficit of $418 billion and a projected 2030 deficit of $1.355
trillion. My goal was to do it through 100 percent spending cuts.

Here is what I did:

1.  Eliminated earmarks  ($14 billion)

2. Cut the pay of civilian workers by 5 percent ($17 billion)

3. Reduced the federal workforce by 10 percent ($15 billion)

4. Reduced nuclear arsenal and space spending  ($38 billion)

5. Reduce military to pre-Iraq War size and further reduce troops in Asia and
Europe ($49 billion)

6. Reduce Navy and Air Force fleets ($24 billion)

7.  Cancel or delay some weapons programs ($18 billion)

8. Reduce the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 60,000 by 2015
($149 billion)

9. Enact medical malpractice reform ($13 billion)

10. Increase the Medicare eligibility age to 68  ($56 billion)

11. Reduce the tax break for employer-provided health insurance ($157
billion)

12. Cap Medicare growth starting in 2013 ($562 billion)

13. Raise the Social Security retirement age to 70 ($247 billion)

14. Reduce Social Security benefits for those with high incomes ($54
billion)

15. Tighten eligibility for disability ($17 billion)

16. Use an alternate measure for inflation ($82 billion)

In the end, my budget would have a minuscule 2015 deficit of $80 billion and
a 2030 surplus of $187 billion. Now I would have preferred an option for deeper
domestic spending cuts. The Heritage
Foundation has ideas for over $300 billion worth. And I think eliminating
hundreds of billions of tax breaks and lowering tax rates across the board would
boost growth and revenue. The simulator only lets me use the Bowles-Simpson plan
which would lower rates by cutting tax expenditures —  but uses some of the
dough for deficit reduction. Plus, the simulator assumes no impact on growth
from higher taxes or lower taxes. Also, there is no doubt the Medicare cuts
would be rightly labeled as “rationing.”  But Americans really have only two
choices, I think: severe government healthcare rationing (since right now
healthcare costs are rising much faster than GDP growth) or voucherization.

The simulator also shows how tough it is to balance the budget through tax
increases alone. If you went for every tax increased offered, you would still
have a slight deficit in 2030. And again, that assumes zero impact on economic
growth from a) letting all the Bush tax cuts expire; b) eliminating tax breaks;
c) adding a national sales tax, carbon tax and bank tax. That is a fantasy.
Letting all the Bush tax cuts expire, for instance, would probably knock 2-3
percentage points from GDP next year.

For Our Own Deficit

Well……. we did avoid a government shutdown.

Thanks to some last minute wrangling down and DC,

the US economy lives on…..

limping until the end of September 2011.

All eyes now have turned to the vote on raising the debt ceiling.

Officially, the government states we should pass the debt limit sometime in early to mid-May.

What would happen if the Congress votes not to raise the debt ceiling?

Steps can be taken at that time to start shuffling who and what to pay…..

That should buy us another month.

Reports are that if the debt ceiling is not raised by the beginning of July,

The US will go into default.

What would happen should the US go into default?

• The United States would default on its bond payments and would see its credit rating fall dramatically
• Bondholders’ would be unable to receive interest payments
• Investors would have a difficult time trusting the United States to honor its obligations and demand for long term United States debt would fall.
• Senior citizen would not receive their Social Security checks
• loss of these dollars would likely further hurt domestic consumption in the United States and place an undue strain on the budgets of senior citizens
• A default will lead to increased risks for owning U.S. bonds.
• Increased risks equal higher rates
• Business loan borrowers and individuals looking for personal loans would see their borrowing costs rise astronomically
• home or auto loan rates will be drastically higher, since access to credit would be at a premium

           

That’s just a snap shot of what to expect.

We made it thru the Great Recession.

Many experts feel this would throw the US into another Great Depression.

.

Not much time to dawdle!!!

Several weeks ago….

Standard and Poors, for the first time lowered its long term outlook for the federal government’s fiscal health……

From stable

To negative……..

They warned of serious consequences

If the lawmakers fail to reach a deal to control the massive federal deficit

So when is Congress expected to start tackling this issue?

It is reported they will start meeting on this issue sometime in June.

Congress just passed the 2011 budget!!!!

Heck, we still have 5 months left until the 2011 fiscal year is over.

Yet they will resolve the debt issue in 30 days?

America is a great country

No matter what is said

There is no place better to live

Everyone would love to enjoy

The freedoms we take for granted.

The debt ceiling and the deficit…….

Should not be a political issue

It is not going to go away

What are we doing to provide a secure future for the next generation?

We must carefully look at all the programs

Analyze what works

And put a true dollar value on sustainability

We are at a fork in the road

And the decisions we make

Will determine what path we go down

The Unwisdom of Elites

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: May 8, 2011

 

The past three years have been a disaster for most Western economies. The United States has mass long-term unemployment for the first time since the 1930s. Meanwhile, Europe’s single currency is coming apart at the seams. How did it all go so wrong?

Well, what I’ve been hearing with growing frequency from members of the policy elite — self-appointed wise men, officials, and pundits in good standing — is the claim that it’s mostly the public’s fault. The idea is that we got into this mess because voters wanted something for nothing, and weak-minded politicians catered to the electorate’s foolishness.

So this seems like a good time to point out that this blame-the-public view isn’t just self-serving, it’s dead wrong.

The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

Let me focus mainly on what happened in the United States, then say a few words about Europe.

These days Americans get constant lectures about the need to reduce the budget deficit. That focus in itself represents distorted priorities, since our immediate concern should be job creation. But suppose we restrict ourselves to talking about the deficit, and ask: What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000?

The answer is, three main things. First, there were the Bush tax cuts, which added roughly $2 trillion to the national debt over the last decade. Second, there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which added an additional $1.1 trillion or so. And third was the Great Recession, which led both to a collapse in revenue and to a sharp rise in spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs.

So who was responsible for these budget busters? It wasn’t the man in the street.

President George W. Bush cut taxes in the service of his party’s ideology, not in response to a groundswell of popular demand — and the bulk of the cuts went to a small, affluent minority.

Similarly, Mr. Bush chose to invade Iraq because that was something he and his advisers wanted to do, not because Americans were clamoring for war against a regime that had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact, it took a highly deceptive sales campaign to get Americans to support the invasion, and even so, voters were never as solidly behind the war as America’s political and pundit elite.

Finally, the Great Recession was brought on by a runaway financial sector, empowered by reckless deregulation. And who was responsible for that deregulation? Powerful people in Washington with close ties to the financial industry, that’s who. Let me give a particular shout-out to Alan Greenspan, who played a crucial role both in financial deregulation and in the passage of the Bush tax cuts — and who is now, of course, among those hectoring us about the deficit.

So it was the bad judgment of the elite, not the greediness of the common man, that caused America’s deficit. And much the same is true of the European crisis.

Needless to say, that’s not what you hear from European policy makers. The official story in Europe these days is that governments of troubled nations catered too much to the masses, promising too much to voters while collecting too little in taxes. And that is, to be fair, a reasonably accurate story for Greece. But it’s not at all what happened in Ireland and Spain, both of which had low debt and budget surpluses on the eve of the crisis.

The real story of Europe’s crisis is that leaders created a single currency, the euro, without creating the institutions that were needed to cope with booms and busts within the euro zone. And the drive for a single European currency was the ultimate top-down project, an elite vision imposed on highly reluctant voters.

Does any of this matter? Why should we be concerned about the effort to shift the blame for bad policies onto the general public?

One answer is simple accountability. People who advocated budget-busting policies during the Bush years shouldn’t be allowed to pass themselves off as deficit hawks; people who praised Ireland as a role model shouldn’t be giving lectures on responsible government.

But the larger answer, I’d argue, is that by making up stories about our current predicament that absolve the people who put us here there, we cut off any chance to learn from the crisis. We need to place the blame where it belongs, to chasten our policy elites. Otherwise, they’ll do even more damage in the years ahead.

Trying to Make Sense of It

WASHINGTON — Congressional negotiators held what were described as “productive” talks Tuesday afternoon in an effort to pass a spending measure that would cut tens of billions of dollars from the federal budget. But with just days remaining before the federal government runs out of money, there was only muted optimism that lawmakers would be able to avert a government shutdown.

The above paragraph was ripped from the headlines on Wednesday April 6^th. 

What do you make of all this talk?

You can turn on any cable channel and the coverage is 24/7. The American press seems to be obsessed with the moment.

Japan??? ………That happened over a month ago

Libya…….That sound bite may last 30 seconds

Now we are faced with a Government shutdown!!!!….

Is it possible?

Will it happen?

I found myself being drawn to this topic. Numbers are constantly being discussed.

What are we really dealing with?

Can we just focus on making cuts to 12% of the budget and tackle the deficit issues?

What about the sacred cows!!!!!!

Defense….Social Security….Medicare…..Medicaid

Let’s look at some numbers:

On February 14, 2011, President Obama released his 2012 Federal Budget.

The report updated the projected 2011 deficit to be $1.645 trillion.

This is based on estimated revenues of $2.173 trillion and outlays of $3.818 trillion.

Observations

The federal deficit of $1.645 trillion is for 1 year (2011)

The federal deficit of $1.645 trillion is 75.7% of the $2.173 trillion total revenue the Government brought in last year.

The US Government is currently funding only 56.9% of their current expenses ($3.818 trillion) with the total revenue they received ($2.173 trillion).

The federal deficit of $1.645 trillion helps fund 43.1% of the $3.818 trillion in expenses.

You hear Congress arguing over whether to cut $30 billion or $40 billion in expenses.

That number may seems like a large amount, but what is it in the scheme of things?

Let’s take a quick look at where we are spending this money.

The federal budget in 2011 was projected at $3.83 trillion in total spending.

Below is a breakdown of the budgeted expenses for 2011. (This budget has never been passed, yet!!!)  

Obama’s new 2012 budget calls for reducing these cost by $12 billion dollars to $3.818 trillion from the proposed 2011 figure of $3.83 trillion.

You can now……. all play along….

Where do you want to take the $12 billion from?

$787.6 billion in pensions, $898 billion in health care expenditures, $140.9 billion for education, $928.5 billion in defense spending, $464.6 billion in welfare spending, $57.3 billion in protective services such as police, fire, law courts, $104.2 billion for transportation, $29 billion in general government expenses, $151.4 billion in other spending including basic research, and          $250.7 billion on interest payments.

Let’s not get too aggressive…..

What are our options?

 

How do we reduce cost and lower the deficit?

There is some talk of cutting all the expenses, 5%  across the board.

They’ll be no discrimination, everyone will take a hit.

That would reduce overall cost by $190.9 billion.

Guess what…..

the deficit would still be $1,454.1 trillion for this year.

Now what?

…………..I’m thinking…….I’m thinking

More factors to think about

 

The overall deficit is just under $15 trillion,

Our existing $1.645 trillion deficit makes up just under 11% of the overall deficit.

Recently, Robert Gates said the Pentagon has identified $178 billion in cuts for the five years from fiscal year 2012 to 2016. The Pentagon plans to reinvest about $100 billion of that into its own services, leaving the remainder for deficit reduction.

Hmmmmm!

Gates can identify $178 billion in cuts but wants to keep 57% of it?

This week, Portugal was looking to raise money by selling 6 month T -Bills for 5.117%.

Just 60 days ago the same T Bill was selling for 2.984%.

The US is currently selling T Bills for under 0.5%.

What do you think will happen if there is a Government shutdown?

There is the looming question of raising the debt ceiling.

How long before the world loses confidence in our ability to control cost?

Somehow I think we really took our eye off the ball.

Just this morning, experts were discussing the fact that the Government is expected to run with a deficit,

But……. $4 to $5 trillion is a more acceptable number.

How do we get from $15 trillion to $5 trillion?

Let’s try cutting the deficit by $1 trillion a year.

That means ………

In 10 years we can be within the acceptable numbers.

If we have already budgeted for a deficit of $1.645 trillion; to save $1 trillion this year, we would have to cut expenses $2.645 trillion dollars.

That means, we cut expenses from $3.818 trillion to $1.173 trillion.

We would only have to cut expenses by 70%!!!!

That doesn’t sound too promising!

How about we take 20 years to get the deficit from $15 trillion to $5 trillion?

Then we would only have to cut expenses 35%.

Do I hear 30 years?

Where am I going with all this fuzzy math?

I wish I knew!!!

No one seems to want to stand up and address any of these questions?

Ask anyone, we already feel we pay our fair share of taxes.

Can the American public be asked to pay more?

If you want to get reelected,

you better not be talking about raising taxes!

Cut our taxes but don’t dare cut our programs….

Is the US Government up for the challenge?

Will they be able to make the tough choices?

Or will the push the ball forward.

At HBS we pride ourselves on providing Smart Solutions for Smart Business

I am not sure where we would place this budget category?

I am just trying to make some sense of it.

Your comments are welcomed.

You may email george@hbsadvantage.com

Visit us on the web www.hutchinsonbusinesssolutions.com