Harry Reid's latest screw up on government funding

Daniel Horowitz:
No wonder Democrats casually disregard our budget crisis.  They have a penchant to drop zeros from government expenditures!  Last month, Democrat congressional candidate Dave Weprin thought that the national debt stood at $4.0 trillion.  Now Harry Reid has filed cloture on his version of the FY 2012 CR that has a missing zero from some of the disaster aid expenditures.  According to CQ Politics, Reid’s bill, which contains $3.65 billion in emergency disaster aid – with no offsetting spending – misallocated funding for the Disaster Relief Fund at “$774,000,00,” and “$226,000,00” for the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and coastal emergencies.  These guys have a serious problem with arithmetic.
Senate Republicans must use this error as an opportunity to defeat Reid’s bill, while the House must stand firm on their version of the CR, which contains $1.5 billion in offsets.  House leaders have already compromised on the overall discretionary budget authority in this bill; a $24 billion increase from the universally venerated Ryan budget.  The only saving grace of this bill from a conservative perspective is that it eliminates a $1.5 billion DOE loan program for manufacturers of $100,000 electric cars and the $100 million solar energy loan grant that was responsible for Solar-gate.
On Friday, Harry Reid tabled the House-passed CR, and filed cloture on his own version, setting up a cloture vote for Monday night.  Although Democrats only have 53 votes, several Republicans have already supported an even higher level of disaster spending without offsets.  This is where Harry Reid’s math error will play a vital role.  Under Senate rules, once a senator has forced a roll call, that senator proposing the amendment cannot change the text without unanimous consent.  Harry Reid will need that consent in order to fix his mistake, in the hopes that he can get this done by Monday night and pressure House Republicans to cave, so they can all enjoy their scheduled recess.  Senate Republicans must deny that consent.
To that end, Reid would be forced to file a new cloture vote, thereby overshooting their entire recess – for a green program.  The longer this ordeal drags out the more Reid will be pressured to adopt the House bill.
... 
Reid's screw up is an opportunity  to add pressure on killing the wasteful spending.  I suspect there are many Republicans willing to deny him the unanimous consent he needs to go forward this evening.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more