In a refreshing break from tradition, the House Appropriations Committee approved a $967 billion discretionary spending plan that would stay within the fiscal year 2014 sequestration spending levels. The measure would protect defense from further cuts and instead deliver the total savings through reductions to domestic discretionary programs. It was …
When the President’s budget comes out Wednesday, it will complete the last piece of the budget puzzle, as the House and Senate have each duly passed a budget according to law. Never mind that the President’s budget is supposed to lead Washington budget discussions, rather than follow. The key question …
At first look, the budget unveiled today by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan (R-WI) advances much-needed reforms and importantly accomplishes the crucial goal of balancing the budget within the decade, though this is partially on the coattails of Obama’s tax increases. Not a silver bullet, it is more …
The debt ceiling is bearing down on Washington. As with most such momentous occasions, plenty of partisan potshots have been exchanged, like this whopper from the White House: that House Republicans who are demanding spending reductions in exchange for increasing the debt limit would compromise the full faith and credit …
Volleys of negotiating counter-offers are coming in faster now that Christmas break and the looming fiscal cliff are just around the corner. While there is much unsatisfactory with Speaker of the House John Boehner’s (R–OH) Sunday night proposal, let us not forget that the reason we are watching this needless, …
The latest fiscal cliff proposal by Speaker of the House John Boehner (R–OH) is infuriatingly frustrating to conservatives, again. In exchange for $1 trillion in tax hikes—including the President’s immediate tax rate hike on the wealthy—Boehner asked for just $1 trillion in spending cuts. And, to sweeten the pot for …
Late Monday afternoon, the House Republican leadership lofted its latest offering to address the fiscal cliff. The kindest conservative response possible to this proposal is that it was “a dud.” It was much worse than a dud, however, as Heritage described in its initial response to the House proposal. Not …
The House Republican leadership has offered a substantive counteroffer to President Obama’s frivolous fiscal cliff proposal of last week. At first blush, it appears little more than categorical, pre-emptive capitulation. To be fair, the details of the Republican proposal are extraordinarily vague. Nor is much clarity or comfort gained from …
