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FIRST SENATE BUDGET IN FOUR YEARS!!!!

Mike

Well-known member
And it sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Senate passes its first budget in four years on 50 to 49 vote
By Erik Wasson - 03/23/13 05:00 AM ET

The Senate early Saturday passed its first budget in four years by a vote of 50 to 49.

The close vote was a big victory for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who had to overcome large differences within their caucus to push the resolution through.
Centrist Sens. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.) were all non-committal up until the end.
Baucus, Begich, Hagan and Pryor joined the entire GOP caucus in voting against the budget resolution. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) missed the vote.
All the Democratic senators who voted "no" are up for reelection in 2014 in states that voted for GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
Democrats had been dogged by criticism for failing to approve a budget resolution since 2009 and the vote removes that GOP talking point from the political scene.
Had the budget failed, it would have been a significant setback for the Democrats and raised questions about the party’s ability to govern.
“I am proud of the work we did in the Budget Committee and on the Senate floor to write, debate, and pass a responsible budget plan that puts economic growth and the middle class first," Murray said in a post-vote statement. “The Senate Budget takes the balanced and responsible approach to tackling our fiscal and economic challenges that the vast majority of families across the country support."

Vulnerable Senate Democrats Mary Landrieu (La.), Mark Warner (Va.) and Tim Johnson (S.D.) could pay the price in the 2014 elections for supporting the budget, however. The Democrats who voted "no" on the overall budget could be hurt in next year's campaign season by numerous controversial budget amendments and motions, including by voting against one calling for a balanced budget by 2023.

The body approved a plan that relies heavily on $975 billion in new tax revenue to stabilize the growth of the national debt within the next ten years. The budget does not balance, however, and has a deficit of $566 billion in 2023.
The Murray budget contains $975 billion in spending cuts, including $275 billion in new cuts to Medicare and Medicaid spending. But it also turns off $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts scheduled over nine years. Factoring that in, the budget does not constitute a net spending cut.
“Now that the Senate majority has written a plan we can finally begin this conversation: Do we balance the budget and grow the economy for all Americans? Or do we continue to enrich the bureaucracy at the expense of the people?” Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said after the budget passed.
"This budget is a rehash of the extreme policies that continue to hobble the economy and crush the middle class," Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said. "The only good news is that the fiscal path the Democrats laid out in their Budget Resolution won’t become law.”
Passage of the budget at approximately 5 a.m. came after a marathon “vote-a-rama” on the floor during which leaders tried to tackle 562 filed amendments.
McConnell called the session “one of the Senate's finest days in recent years.”

Democrats argue that America cares first and foremost about economic growth, and their approach eschews austerity that could cost millions of jobs. They argue that the budget is a “balanced approach,” like the one that President Obama ran on during his reelection campaign.
Officially, the House and Senate can now conference the Murray budget with the budget of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), which passed the House on a 221 to 207 party-line vote on Thursday.
Reconciling the budgets would bring order to the annual appropriations process for 2014 by settling the top-line spending number. As it stands, the number reflects the automatic spending cuts and would be about $966 billion, a cut from this year. A concurrent budget resolution could also become the vehicle for tax reform, since it cannot be filibustered.
In practice, the Murray and Ryan budgets are so different, there is little chance they can be reconciled. Ryan’s budget cuts spending by $5.7 trillion compared to the Congressional Budget Office baseline, an amount Democrats say would destroy government services and severely harm the poor.
Murray vowed to try to now reconcile her budget with the House-passed budget.
K Street lobbyists and political campaign consultants were chomping at the bit for results of votes on energy, gun, tax and immigration policy. The hundreds of amendments are otherwise largely symbolic, because even if the liberal Senate Democratic budget gets reconciled with the conservative House Republican budget, the overall resolution will never have the force of law.
Key amendment votes put the Senate on record—by a vote of 79 to 20--supporting the repeal of a 2.3 percent medical device tax that passed as part of Obama’s healthcare reform, and on record—by a vote of 75 to 24--allowing states to collect online sales taxes.
These strong votes could provoke actual legislation this year.
Another amendment backed construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. The 62-37 vote gives supporters another argument with which to pressure the Obama administration to approve the Canada-to-Gulf pipe, which is opposed by environmentalists.


Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/289989-senate-passes-first-budget-in-four-years#ixzz2ONJprM3Y
Follow us: @thehill on Twitter | TheHill on Facebook

Seventeen Democrats joined Republicans to endorse the Keystone XL pipeline that is to carry oil from Canada to Texas oil refineries.

None of it is binding. Buckwheat's unlawfully late, late, late budget will be offered in about two weeks...............................
 

Mike

Well-known member
New York Times - By JONATHAN WEISMAN
Published: March 23, 2013


WASHINGTON — After an all-night debate that ended just before 5 a.m., the Senate on Saturday adopted its first budget in four years, a $3.7 trillion blueprint for 2014 that would provide a fast track for passage of tax increases, trim spending modestly and leave the government still deeply in the red a decade from now.


The roll call voting records for the amendments to the budget resolution were placed on a table at the Senate Press Gallery.
The 50-to-49 vote in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, sets up contentious — and potentially fruitless — negotiations with the Republican-controlled House in April to reconcile two vastly different plans for dealing with the nation’s economic and budgetary problems. No Republicans voted for the Senate plan, and four Democrats opposed it: Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Begich of Alaska and Max Baucus of Montana. All four are from red states and are up for re-election in 2014.

But the sleepy bonhomie did not bridge the budgetary divide between the parties. Senate Republicans and Democrats could not even agree on what was in the Democratic budget. Ms. Murray said the plan matched its $975 billion in revenue increases with cuts and interest savings of equal size. But Republicans said it did not, since it reversed $1 trillion in across-the-board cuts but did not count that against their spending cuts.

Those differences did not lend themselves to much optimism about the coming budget negotiations.

“The only good news is that the fiscal path the Democrats laid out in their budget resolution won’t become law,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.
 

Mike

Well-known member
In a statement released at 5 a.m. today, Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, blasts the budget the Senate passed very early this morning. Sessions's main concern is that the budget "has zero real deficit reduction" and "never balances."


“The content of the plan the majority has now approved demonstrates why they were unwilling to reveal it for so long: their proposal, once accurately understood, cannot be publicly defended," says Sessions.

The senator from Alabama continues, "Honest people can disagree on policy. But where there can be no honest disagreement is the need to change our nation’s debt course. The singular truth that no one can escape is that the House budget changes our debt course while the Senate budget does not. The Senate budget increases taxes, increases spending, and adds $7.3 trillion to our debt. It has zero real deficit reduction."

And Sessions goes, "Most significantly, it never balances. Republicans gave Senate Democrats chance after chance to balance the budget. But they refused. They have declared to the whole nation their refusal to balance the federal budget.

"The massive debt we have racked up to finance our wasteful government is pulling down growth today. Gross debt over 90 percent of GDP weakens growth now. Not tomorrow—now.

"In other words, the more money we borrow to mail out government checks, the more and more people there are that will need government checks. This is why we can no longer define compassion as borrow-and-spend. Our goal should be to help more Americans find jobs, better wages, and to achieve financial independence. Is that not a better goal with a superior moral foundation?
 

Tam

Well-known member
The Democrats will NEVER balance a budget as that means they will not have the money to BUY VOTES.

And when they have a so called leader like this who really expects any of them to try :x

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHAx2WQJZlg
 

Tom in TN

Well-known member
This proposed "budget" is so ridiculous that I didn't bother to read the whole thing. I got to the point where it said that the proposed spending will be 3.7 trillion dollars. The income that the Federal Government receives annually is about 2.3 trillion.

I wonder where the other 1.4 trillion is going to come from?

Are there any adults left in Washington, DC?

Tom in TN
 

Mike

Well-known member
Tom in TN said:
This proposed "budget" is so ridiculous that I didn't bother to read the whole thing. I got to the point where it said that the proposed spending will be 3.7 trillion dollars. The income that the Federal Government receives annually is about 2.3 trillion.

I wonder where the other 1.4 trillion is going to come from?

Are there any adults left in Washington, DC?

Tom in TN

The only candidates for that honor will be included in the 49 votes against. :wink:
 
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