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katyshannon

Obama budget rejected by House Republicans - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

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obama budget republicans house proposal politics US crisis

shared by katyshannon on 10 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • President Barack Obama checked off another "last" of his White House tenure Tuesday, submitting his final budget proposal to Congress amid the growing din from the campaign trail.
  • The $4.1 trillion annual budget plan -- nearly always deemed "dead on arrival" to the Republican-controlled Congress -- appeared particularly lifeless this year: Republicans said before the document even arrived they would break the long precedent of hearing from the President's budget chief as they draft their own fiscal blueprint.
  • Like lame-duck presidents before him, Obama submitted a final budget that includes funding for his top legacy priorities, including combating climate change and expanding health insurance coverage. The plan seeks to increase revenue from taxes by $2.6 trillion over the next decade, largely by changing tax laws.
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  • Obama's budget drafters said the deficit would decrease in the next fiscal year, which begins in October, going from $616 billion to $503 billion. Over the next decade, though, they said the deficit would increase amid increased spending on older Americans' health care.
  • "The budget is a road map to a future that embodies America's values and aspirations: a future of opportunity and security for all of our families; a rising standard of living; and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids," Obama wrote in a message to lawmakers. "This future is within our reach. But just as it took the collective efforts of the American people to rise from the recession and rebuild an even stronger economy, so will it take all of us working together to meet the challenges that lie ahead."
  • "It is clear that this President will not put forth the budget effort that our times and our country require. Instead of hearing from an administration unconcerned with our $19 trillion in debt, we should focus on how to reform America's broken budget process and restore the trust of hardworking taxpayers," the Senate Budget Chairman Sen. Mike Enzi wrote.
  • $1 billion in new funding for treating opioid addiction, a national epidemic that's taken prominence on the presidential campaign trail, and another billion for cancer research as part of Vice President Joe Biden's "moonshot" initiative.
  • also includes bolstering spending on national security priorities, including $7.5 billion in new spending to combat ISIS and $3.4 billion to step up military presence in Europe in a bid to counter Russian President Vladimir Putin. Another $19 billion would go toward bolstering the country's cybersecurity through updating information technology systems.
  • The Republican chairmen of the Senate and House budget committees said last week they were forgoing the decades-long tradition of hearing testimony from the director of the Office of Management and Budget, claiming they expected Obama's budget to offer little in debt reduction.
  • In parts, the document reads like a "good riddance" letter to a GOP-led Congress that's offered Obama little in terms of bipartisan compromise. A $10.25-per-barrel fee on oil, meant to pay for needed infrastructure projects and a transition to green transportation systems, only enraged Republicans when it was announced last week. An increase in funding to Wall Street regulators is also unlikely to meet approval from the GOP, as is a $1.3 billion request for accelerating the use of clean energy sources.
  • The decision enraged Democrats, who said the decision broke four decades of precedent. Democrats on the Senate Budget panel noted that a hearing on the President's budget request was held even in 2004, when toxic ricin was found in a Senate office mail room."Even under those extraordinary circumstances, the committee carried out its duties," the panel's Democrats said. "The year, with no unusual circumstances to prevent us from doing our work, we have been provided with no reasonable explanation for the decision not to hold a hearing," wrote Democratic members of the House Budget panel.
hannahcarter11

President Biden has released his $6 trillion budget. Here's what's in it. - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

biden budget

shared by hannahcarter11 on 31 May 21 - No Cached
  • President Joe Biden on Friday proposed a $6 trillion budget for fiscal year 2022, laying out details of a proposed dramatic increase in federal spending that serves as the underpinning of an economic agenda that seeks to transform the American economy as the country emerges from dual public health and economic crises.
  • The budget proposal, which is an opening bid in negotiations with Congress and is expected to change before being signed into law, calls for the most sustained period of spending in more than half a century. The White House budget serves more as a marker of administration priorities than a policy blueprint destined to be signed into law. It would invest heavily in Biden's top priority areas including infrastructure, education, research, public health, paid family leave and childcare.
  • The proposal includes the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan, the $4 trillion infrastructure, jobs and economic proposal that the President had previously laid out and is negotiating with lawmakers. It also outlines additional funds to launch a new health research agency to focus on diseases like cancer, and funds to address gun violence, tackle the climate crisis, help end homelessness and curb the opioid epidemic.
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  • The scale of the spending, which Biden has made the center of his economic plans, is an intentional effort to transform an economy the President has repeatedly said leaves too many behind and, just as importantly, has made the US less competitive in the face of an ascendant China.
  • At its core, the budget underscores the fundamental divide in viewpoints between the two parties in the wake of the pandemic -- as well as the clear shift in the Democratic Party towards an embrace of ramping up spending and tax increases on corporations in the wealthy in order to expand the federal government's role in assisting those on the lower-end of the income scale.
  • Biden is asking Congress for $932 billion for discretionary, non-defense programs for fiscal year 2022 -- a significant increase from last year. The President has proposed $756 billion in defense funding, which is also an uptick from last year
  • Young argued the investments are "front-loaded" and would be "more than paid for" by the reforms to the tax code that would require the wealthiest of Americans and corporations to pay higher taxes. The President has repeatedly pledged that Americans making less than $400,000 would not have to pay increased taxes.
  • Biden has made racial equity a top focus of his administration, but there is no specific line item in the budget focused on addressing racial inequality. Young argued it wasn't necessary because Biden has directed the entire federal government to address racial inequality as it implements all of its programs.
  • In addition to the American Jobs Plan and the American Families plan, the budget proposal calls for:
  • The presidential budget did not include the Hyde amendment -- a four-decade-old ban on federal dollars being used for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the woman's life is in danger -- which Biden previously supported before reversing course and denouncing during the Democratic primary. Abortion rights supporters had long called for Biden to drop the measure.
  • In his budget overview, the President calls on Congress to enact several of his major health care initiatives, including lowering prescription drug costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices, creating a public health insurance option, giving those age 60 and older the option to enroll in Medicare and closing the Medicaid coverage gap.
  • Instead, the White House budget focuses on the health care measures contained in the American Families Plan, which would make permanent enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that were contained in the Democrats' $1.9 trillion rescue plan that Biden signed into law in March. That boost to the federal subsidies currently lasts only two years.
  • The budget also doesn't include increasing the national minimum wage to $15 an hour, which Biden had included in his $1.9 trillion relief proposal. But the measure was dropped from the Senate version after the parliamentarian ruled it did not meet a strict set of guidelines needed to move forward in the Senate's reconciliation process.
  • What is in the budget is setting the hourly minimum wage at $15 for federal contractors. This process is already underway, thanks to an executive order Biden signed in late April.
Javier E

Balanced Budget Fight Is Philosophical and Fiscal - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-philosophical-and-fiscal.html

balanced budget fiscal economics economy debt debate

shared by Javier E on 13 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • While economists generally agree that narrowing the government’s deficit and limiting the size of the debt are necessary in the long run, most argue that balancing the budget would not restore the nation’s still-weak economy to health in the near term. Indeed, rushing to do so with unemployment still elevated and the economy growing at only a sluggish pace could even set back the effort to reduce the deficit.
  • “The really important thing is to keep the debt from growing faster than the economy.”
  • Mr. Ryan, whose previous budget proposals did not bring spending below revenue for decades, vowed this time to do so by 2023, in part to satisfy the demands of the more conservative members of the Republican Caucus.
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  • “This is an invitation. Show us how to balance the budget,” Mr. Ryan said. “If you don’t like the way we’re proposing to balance our budget, how do you propose to balance the budget?”
  • Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Tuesday. “It is important to bring our deficits down and to reduce our deficit-to-G.D.P. But they are part of — those goals are part of the broader purpose here, which is to grow the economy and strengthen the middle class.”
  • Economists offered more nuanced views. Closing the budget gap over the longer term could be vital to sustaining economic health, some stressed, by ensuring that the government did not crowd out private investment and by helping to keep interest rates low. But that does not make it an immediate necessity.
  • you suffer some short-run pain, and you don’t want to inflict that when the unemployment rate is already high, the economy is still recovering from the legacy of the Great Recession, and the Federal Reserve has used up most of what’s in its quiver.”
  • Other goals — including stabilizing debt as a proportion of economic output, rationalizing the tax code and tackling the long-term fiscal challenge posed by entitlement programs — might prove more important in the coming years, several experts said.
  • As sensible as a balanced budget might sound — much like a balanced checkbook for a family — countries are generally able to run modest deficits for years on end while still keeping debt stable as a share of economic output. One year’s deficit is effectively paid off by later economic growth,
  • The Senate Democratic proposal does not balance the budget, but it does reduce deficits to below 3 percent of economic output — a level that would stabilize the debt, economists said. During the 10-year budget window, the debt would start to shrink as a proportion of the economy.
  • A broader question, economists said, is the long-term effect the country’s debt load might impose on the economy. In the past few years, a number of broad-based studies have suggested that having government debt equivalent to or greater than about 85 or 90 percent of economic output might eventually cut into growth. Currently, public debt in the United States is about 76 percent of the size of the economy. Including debts the government owes itself, like in the Social Security Trust Fund, the total load is in fact bigger than a whole year’s economic output.
  • “The people who say the debt is irrelevant — that’s going too far,” said Mr. Rogoff, who along with Carmen Reinhart of Harvard produced a study of the interplay between debt and growth. “It’s a very rarefied air that we’re in already. And it could be a problem. You can’t turn your debt around in a year, and you cannot reduce debt quickly and easily.”
  • Now, how and whether to get back to a balanced budget seems to be a new fight between Democrats and Republicans. “It will generate a debate over the appropriate goal of long-term fiscal policy,” wrote William A. Galston of the Brookings Institution in an analysis of Mr. Ryan’s budget plan. “Is it to eliminate the deficit and the debt, to ensure that the debt does not rise as a share of G.D.P., or something in between?”
Javier E

GOP's Long-Predicted Comeuppance Has Arrived | TPM Editors Blog - 0 views

talkingpointsmemo.com/...ed_comeuppance_has_arrived.php

republicans budget government coalition

shared by Javier E on 02 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • TPM Editor’s Blog GOP’s Long-Predicted Comeuppance Has Arrived Share this story on Facebook Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Tweet this story Email this story to a friend Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., right, the Republican Conference Chair, arrive at the House of Representatives. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Brian Beutler July 31, 2013, 5:55 PM 65028 Republicans have dealt with some embarrassing moments on the House floor over the past year, but none so revealing or damning as today’s snafu, when they yanked a bill to fund the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Even the recent farm bill fiasco wasn’t as significant an indictment of the GOP’s governing potential. It might look like a minor hiccup, or a symbolic error. But it spells doom for the party’s near-term budget strategy and underscores just how bogus the party’s broader agenda really is and has been for the last four years. In normal times, the House and Senate would each pass a budget, the differences between those budgets would be resolved, and appropriators in both chambers would have binding limits both on how much money to spend, and on which large executive agencies to spend it. But these aren’t normal times. Republicans have refused to negotiate away their budget differences with Democrats, and have instead instructed their appropriators to use the House GOP budget as a blueprint for funding the government beyond September. Like all recent GOP budgets, this year’s proposes lots of spending on defense and security, at the expense of all other programs. Specifically, it sets the total pool of discretionary dollars at sequestration levels, then funnels money from thinly stretched domestic departments (like Transportation and HUD) to the Pentagon and a few other agencies. But that’s all the budget says. It doesn’t say how to allocate the dollars, nor does it grapple in any way with the possibility that cutting domestic spending so profoundly might be unworkable. It’s an abstraction.
  • It turns out that when you draft bills enumerating all the specific cuts required to comply with the budget’s parameters, they don’t come anywhere close to having enough political support to pass. Even in the GOP House.
  • many close Congress watchers — and indeed many Congressional Democrats — have long suspected that their votes for Ryan’s budgets were a form of cheap talk. That Republicans would chicken out if it ever came time to fill in the blanks. Particularly the calls for deep but unspecified domestic discretionary spending cuts.
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  • “With this action, the House has declined to proceed on the implementation of the very budget it adopted three months ago,” said an angry appropriations chair Hal Rogers (R-KY). “Thus I believe that the House has made its choice: sequestration — and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts — must be brought to an end.”
  • It also suggests that the GOP’s preference for permanent sequestration-level spending, particularly relative to increasing taxes, is not politically viable. If they want to lift the defense cuts, they’re going to have to either return to budget negotiations with Democrats, or agree to rescind sequestration altogether.
Javier E

Germany Gets Honest About What Net Zero Will Cost - WSJ - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...limate-prices-economy-145430ac

germany climate funding financing budget costs green

shared by Javier E on 02 Dec 23 - No Cached
  • Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration is falling apart because it turns out someone will have to pay for decarbonizing the eurozone’s largest economy.
  • This shocking and horrifying revelation is brought to you by Germany’s highest constitutional court, which ruled in mid-November that Berlin’s favorite budget gimmick violates the balanced-budget amendment. The amendment, known as the debt brake, limits the federal general-budget deficit to 0.35% of gross domestic product in any year unless Parliament declares an emergency.
  • German governments devised a workaround even before the amendment forced them to. By establishing special funds—called Sondervermögen—with their own revenue streams and borrowing authority, the government could shift a portion of its expenditures off its balance sheet.
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  • A big portion. There now are 29 special funds, with the largest among them allowed to borrow and spend over multiyear periods up to €869 billion, all of it backstopped by taxpayers but none of it folded into the general budget, where it would be subject to the debt brake
  • Before the court ruling, special-fund net borrowing in 2023 was expected to reach €147 billion, compared with on-balance-sheet borrowing of €45.6 billion. The constitutional court finally has caught on.
  • At a stroke, €60 billion has vanished from the budget. And that might not be the only disappearing cash. Finance Minister Christian Lindner—never enthusiastic about any of this spending anyway—believes a separate pot of money slated for energy-price subsidies also may run afoul of the newly articulated constitutional requirement. The size of that fund: €200 billion
  • Industry is fleeing Germany. The new green jobs the net-zero left promised require enormous subsidies. And Berlin must offer generous handouts, probably permanent, to individual households to shield them from the crippling energy-price consequences of decades of accumulated policy errors.
  • Ameliorating all of this was meant to be paid for on the sly via borrowing concealed in various Sondervermögen. No longer
  • Germany long ago perfected the art of green virtue signaling. Now it will have to conduct a substantive debate about whether the negligible global benefits of Germany’s slashing carbon emissions are worth the costs, especially if money must be diverted from other policy priorities such as social welfare.
  • Critics on the left will argue this all could be solved easily if only those hidebound Teutons weren’t so neurotic about budget balance. This crowd will note that Berlin could simply borrow more on the general budget, which it still can do relatively cheaply, and use the proceeds to sustain the net-zero transition and much other spending. Politico was quick off the mark, calling this a “make-believe debt crisis.”
  • Mr. Scholz is in political trouble because it was never clear how his center-left Social Democrats could govern in a coalition with Mr. Lindner’s free-market Free Democratic Party and the eco-leftist Greens. The special-budget trick was politically essential because it allowed all three parties to skirt the budget bargaining that would expose their deep ideological differences.
  • Those splits are out in the open now. Berlin is going to have to cut spending (on what?) or raise revenue (from where?) or borrow (how much?) to fill the net-zero funding gap—or, not impossible, conclude Germans don’t care that much about net zero after all
  • The key point is that Berlin’s budget process is no more dysfunctional than any other Western government’s. It’s merely more honest, at least now that the court has stepped in.
anonymous

White House confirms 'dramatic' cuts proposed to US foreign aid budget | US news | The ... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...amatic-cuts-foreign-aid-budget

white house cuts budget politics us trump

shared by anonymous on 04 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • White House confirms 'dramatic' cuts proposed to US foreign aid budget
  • The White House budget director confirmed on Saturday that the Trump administration will propose “fairly dramatic reductions” in the US foreign aid budget later this month.
  • It was reported earlier this week that the administration plans to propose to Congress cuts in the budgets for the state department and Agency for International Development (USAID) by about one third. “We are going to propose to reduce foreign aid and we are going to propose to spend that money here,” White House Office of Management Budget director Mick Mulvaney told Fox News, adding the proposed cuts would include “fairly dramatic reductions in foreign aid”.
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  • Mulvaney said the Trump administration will release its budget proposal on 16 March. Reuters has reported the administration plans significant proposed cuts in many other domestic programs. 
yehbru

Biden budget would give CDC biggest funding boost in nearly 20 years - 0 views

www.cnbc.com/...-boost-in-nearly-20-years.html

US Politics Biden CDC Funding

shared by yehbru on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The budget blueprint for fiscal 2022 would include $8.7 billion in discretionary funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to budget documents shared by the Office of Management and Budget.
  • The agency said that budget bump would build on the CDC investments doled out in the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan that Biden signed into law in March.
  • The new funding would be used to “support core public health capacity improvements in States and Territories, modernize public health data collection nationwide, train new epidemiologists and other public health experts, and rebuild international capacity to detect, prepare for, and respond to emerging global threats,” the OMB said.
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  • While the CDC funding request is a big increase from recent years, it comprises just a small slice of Biden’s $6 trillion budget proposal for 2022.
  • The budget materials say $153 million would be allocated for the CDC’s Social Determinants of Health program to work on “improving health equity and data collection for racial and ethnic populations.”
  • The government would also provide $100 million for the CDC’s Climate and Health program as part of a $1.2 billion investment in strengthening resilience to wildfires, floods, droughts and other climate-related disasters.
  • Overall, HHS is requesting $133.7 billion in discretionary funding — a $25.3 billion, or 23.4%, bump from the enacted budget of fiscal 2021.
grayton downing

BBC News - EU negotiators clinch deal on 2014 budget - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...world-europe-24909708

budget economics policy

shared by grayton downing on 12 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Negotiators in Brussels have clinched a deal on the 2014 EU budget after a night of hard talks, cutting spending by about 6% compared to 2013.
  • Spending will total 135.5bn euros (£113.3; $181.3bn), or 0.5bn less than the Commission sought and 0.9bn short of the European Parliament's target.
  • There will be greater funding for economic growth, jobs, innovation and humanitarian aid, Lithuania's Deputy Finance Minister Algimantas Rimkunas said in a statement. His country currently holds the six-month rotating EU presidency.
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  • About two-thirds of the budget will go on subsidies for farmers and on development projects in the EU's poorer regions, as in previous years. But the spending on such projects - called the "cohesion" budget - is being cut by about 7bn euros.
  • He said that "alongside the historic 3.8% reduction which we have secured on the EU's long-term budget, this is further evidence of us bringing genuine discipline to EU spending".
  • "With the budget to be reduced 6% compared with 2013, the outcome is not only devoid of ambition, it will also lead to a situation again next year where the EU is facing budget shortfalls compared with programmed spending."
  • The deal, once signed off, should pave the way for the European Parliament to adopt the EU's long-term trillion-euro budget for 2014-2020.
  • An additional 400.5m euros will also be spent from the EU "solidarity" fund to help areas of Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria and Romania which were hit by flooding this year.
Javier E

The Federal Budget Deficit Is Back to Normal - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ngering-attention-deficit.html

deficit federal fiscal policy

shared by Javier E on 12 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • With the government’s budget year having concluded at the end of September, the Congressional Budget Office now estimates that the deficit for 2014 was 2.8 percent of G.D.P., down from 4.1 percent last year
  • The deficit is now smaller than its average over the past 40 years of 3.1 percent.
  • The deficit has declined in each of the past five years, and is now markedly smaller than the deficit (9.8 percent) registered in the 2008-09 fiscal year.
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  • As the economic recovery continues, the deficit is expected to narrow even further next year. Based on current projections, the average deficit through President Obama’s second term will be smaller than it was through President Reagan’s second term.
  • These latest deficit numbers arrive while voters claim to be highly engaged by the federal budget. A recent Gallup poll shows that 73 percent of registered voters say that the federal budget deficit is either “very important” or “extremely important” to their vote for in next month’s midterm elections, and the share is even higher among Republican voters.
  • The harder question is not whether fiscal policy is relatively tight — it is — but rather whether tight fiscal policy is appropriate.
  • In terms of political implications, the Democrats may try to use the shrinking budget deficit as an argument to try to win support from fiscally conservative Republicans. But the reality of recent budget numbers is unlikely to win them much, because it stands so starkly at odds with the broader public perception that the deficit remains much larger than it really is.
millerco

Senate Approves Budget Plan That Smooths Path Toward Tax Cut - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...budget-vote-senate.html

Us history senate budget plan republicans democrats politics Trump

shared by millerco on 20 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • The Senate took a significant step toward rewriting the tax code on Thursday night with the passage of a budget blueprint that would protect a $1.5 trillion tax cut from a Democratic filibuster.
  • The budget resolution could also pave the way for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil exploration by ensuring that drilling legislation can pass with only Republican votes.
  • Despite having full control of the government, Republicans have so far been unable to produce a marquee legislative achievement in the first year of President Trump’s tenure, putting even more pressure on lawmakers to succeed in passing a tax bill.
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  • The budget’s passage could keep Republicans on track to approve a tax package late this year or early in 2018.
  • As early as next week, the House plans to take up the budget blueprint that the Senate approved on Thursday by a 51 to 49 vote. Doing so would allow for the tax overhaul to move ahead quickly.
  • Speaker Paul D. Ryan will need most House Republicans to back the blueprint without changes; in the Senate, Rand Paul of Kentucky was the lone Republican to vote against the measure on Thursday, in protest of what he deemed excessive spending.
  • If House Republicans were to insist on negotiating a compromise that melds the Senate and House budget plans, tax legislation could be delayed.
  • “This is the last, best chance we will have to cut taxes,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a member of the Budget Committee, who warned that the consequences would be ruinous if the party failed.
  • “That will be the end of us as a party,” he said, “because if you’re a Republican and you don’t want to simplify the tax code and cut taxes, what good are you to anybody?”
malonema1

Trump Unveils a 'Hard Power' Budget - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...519702

US trump economics

shared by malonema1 on 12 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • If Americans were taken aback by the restrained, highly scripted President Trump that addressed Congress last month, they should recognize a lot more of the blustery, law-and-order candidate they elected in the budget blueprint the White House released on Thursday.
  • Trump is asking Congress for a down payment of more than $4 billion to fund his border wall, part of a $30 billion supplemental appropriations request to bolster national security. The Department of Homeland Security would see a 6 percent boost in the president’s first budget, which would also direct more money toward law enforcement and education programs promoting school choice.
  • Beyond the programs targeted for elimination, the Trump budget puts nearly every domestic Cabinet department on the chopping block. In the Department of Education, dozens of school and teacher grant programs would go, and the popular college work-study program would see significant cuts. In the Department of Commerce, NOAA gets slashed by billions, including the complete elimination of $250 million in grants for coastal and marine management. Funding for the National Institutes of Health—an agency with some of the most bipartisan support in Congress—would drop by nearly $6 billion, a cut 18 percent.
katherineharron

Senate passes budget resolution setting up Covid-relief bill consideration - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

covid

shared by katherineharron on 05 Feb 21 - No Cached
  • The Senate passed a budget resolution early Friday morning -- a key procedural step that sets up the ability for Democrats to pass President Joe Biden's sweeping Covid-19 relief package without the threat of a filibuster from Republicans who oppose it.
  • The measure passed 51-50 on a party line vote, but only after Vice President Kamala Harris showed up at the Capitol to break the tie.
  • One of the more significant amendments came from a bipartisan group of senators, led by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, that would prevent "upper income taxpayers" from being eligible to receive $1,400 Covid relief checks.
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  • On one closely watched issue, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa offered an amendment to prevent a hike in the minimum wage to $15 an hour during a pandemic
  • Democrats want to include a $15 minimum wage in the Covid relief bill, but her measure could have been complicated for centrist members
  • But before a roll call vote was called, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent who is the chair of the Budget Committee and a champion of the $15 minimum wage, intervened and said his proposal would actually make the jump to $15 over five years, not right away as Ernst had formulated in her amendment.
  • The budget resolution that passed is not the Covid relief bill. It simply sets the stage for Democrats to be able to use a process known as "budget reconciliation" to pass the relief bill on a party-line vote, possibly in late February or March, after the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump is complete in the Senate.
  • The House already passed the budget measure earlier in the week.
  • Biden has said he is willing to go forward without the support of Republicans, but he's also stressed that he's willing to make certain concessions if it will earn bipartisan support.
  • Congressional Democrats have also made clear that they think time is of the essence on the proposal, and a deep divergence remains between Biden's $1.9 trillion and the $618 billion GOP proposal.
  • The counterproposal still includes $160 billion to battle the pandemic, but Republican senators want to send smaller, more targeted relief checks and only extend unemployment benefits through June, not September.
  • White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated during a briefing this week there are certain "bottom lines" that Biden wants to be in the next round of Covid-19 relief
  • "His view is that at this point in our country, when 1-in-7 American families don't have enough food to eat, we need to make sure people get the relief they need and are not left behind,"
  • Republicans are unhappy Democrats are resorting to the aggressive tactic, though, arguing it will set a partisan tone for the rest of Biden's presidency and that he's not operating as the political unifier he pledged to be
  • The 10 Senate Republicans who met with the President to discuss his relief package are pushing for talks to continue
abbykleman

White House Proposes Cutting State Department Budget by One-Third - 0 views

www.wsj.com/...budget-by-one-third-1488306999

shared by abbykleman on 01 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 01 Mar 17
     
    WASHINGTON-The Trump administration is proposing to cut spending by 37% for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development budget, according to a person familiar with the budget deliberations. President Donald Trump is developing a federal budget that officials said would add more than $50 billion to the base defense budget....
Javier E

Climate crisis: today's children face lives with tiny carbon footprints | Environment |... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...es-with-tiny-carbon-footprints

climate change children environment carbon footprint decline

shared by Javier E on 10 Apr 19 - No Cached
  • Children born today will have to live their lives with drastically smaller carbon footprints than their grandparents if climate change is to be controlled.
  • Fast, deep cuts in global emissions from energy, transport and food are needed to keep temperature rises in check and an analysis has shown this means the new generation will have lifetime carbon budgets almost 90% lower than someone born in 1950.
  • “Those in positions of power – from politicians to business leaders – that have benefited from a much higher lifetime carbon budget have a duty to act to ensure a liveable planet for current and future generations,”
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  • t then calculates how much the average citizen on Earth can emit over their lifetime to keep temperature rises below 1.5C or 2C above pre-industrial levels, the goal of the world’s nations to avoid climate catastrophe.
  • The children and young people taking part in the youth strikes (born 1997-2012) will have carbon budgets just one sixth those of their baby boomer grandparents (1946-1964).
  • He said it is the first systematic use of emissions data to inform the debate about intergenerational responsibility for climate change and had produced some “uncomfortable numbers”.
  • There is a currently a wide gap between the average annual emissions of a US citizen (16.9 tonnes) and an Indian citizen (1.9 tonnes)
  • in a second analysis, Carbon Brief posited a future carbon budget that would be the same for every citizen on the planet. This would mean that the budget for a child born today in the US is even lower, 97% lower than that of that of their grandparents. For someone born today in Europe, their budget would be 94% lower
anniina03

Federal Budget Deficit Swelled to Nearly $1 Trillion in 2019 - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...us-federal-budget-deficit.html

us trump crisis economics politics

shared by anniina03 on 26 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • The United States federal budget deficit jumped 26 percent in the 2019 fiscal year to $984 billion, reaching its highest level in seven years as the government was forced to borrow more money to pay for President Trump’s tax and spending policies, official figures showed on Friday.
  • The deficit has now swelled nearly 50 percent since Mr. Trump took office and it is projected to top $1 trillion in 2020. It did not hit $1 trillion in fiscal 2019, which ended Sept. 30, but that was largely the result of Mr. Trump’s tariffs on trading partners like China, which brought in more than $70 billion in revenue.
  • The grim fiscal scorecard shows how far the Republican Party, under Mr. Trump, has strayed from conservative orthodoxy, which long prioritized less spending and lower deficits.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • The United States entered its longest expansion on record in July and the jobless rate is at a 50-year low, yet the deficit has continued to widen.
  • The deficit is growing in large part because tax receipts are falling, as Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts continue to siphon revenue from the Treasury. The numbers reflect the fact that Mr. Trump’s most significant legislative achievement is not paying for itself, as Republicans have said it would.
  • “The biggest factor was the tax cuts, which gave a short-term sugar high but now are just contributing to a larger deficit,”
  • Fears of trillion-dollar deficits could renew the desire of Republicans in Congress to propose cuts to social programs, like food stamps, Social Security and other safety net benefits. Republicans have long pointed to swelling deficits as a reason to pursue their long-held vision of smaller government, including undoing many of the programs ushered in during the New Deal and Great Society to help the most disadvantaged Americans.
  • Senator Mike Enzi, a retiring Republican from Wyoming who leads the budget committee, called the country’s fiscal path unsustainable and said spending must come down.
  • Republicans, who have shut down the government in their quest to cut spending, have enabled the increases that are exacerbating the deficit.
  • With the deficit growing, it remains unclear how Mr. Trump and the Democrats will address the issue during the election. Democratic candidates such as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have introduced broad expansions of social safety net programs and have proposed paying for them with big tax increases on the rich.
  • On Friday, before the deficit figures were released, Mr. Trump remained focused on recent increases in the stock market and the low jobless rate. “The economy is booming,” he said.
aleija

Opinion | No stimulus makes no sense - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...b-859b-f9c27abe638d_story.html

economics jobs recession opinion

shared by aleija on 08 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • Having gotten themselves into a precarious-but-fixable financial position, they just give up on fixing it, and instead figure they might as well enjoy some new clothes or nice dinners out before the inevitable denouement.
  • I worry that I myself might fall into this trap when I consider negotiations over the next covid-19 relief package — which President Trump announced he was walking away from Tuesday because the two sides were $800 billion apart.
  • It is roughly equal to the state budgets of California, New York, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania and Illinois combined.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • But Republicans should be focused on delivering substantial pandemic relief.
  • Economically, relief is needed because unemployment remains at nearly 8 percent, and earlier rounds of government emergency spending have run out. Temporary layoffs are becoming permanent as airplanes are mothballed, Disney announces massive layoffs and theater chain Regal closes its theaters for the duration. Permanent job losses have a much deeper impact on economic growth.
  • There’s less reason to worry that we’ll encourage more bad behavior if we bail out businesses, since they didn’t do anything wrong, other than happen to be selling a good or a service that isn’t much use while people are distancing.
  • . But America’s borrowing costs are low, and we have decades to pay back the cost of a once-in-a-century emergency.
  • So the economics argue in favor of more relief.
millerco

Senate Leaders Reach Budget Deal to Raise Spending Over Two Years - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...budget-deal-trump.html

US politics trump history senate deal policy

shared by millerco on 08 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • Senate leaders struck a far-reaching bipartisan agreement on Wednesday that would add hundreds of billions of dollars to military and domestic programs over the next two years while raising the federal debt limit, moving to end the cycle of fiscal showdowns that have roiled the Capitol.
  • The accord between Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and Chuck Schumer of New York, his Democratic counterpart, would raise strict caps on military and domestic spending that were imposed in 2011 as part of a deal with President Barack Obama that was once seen as a key triumph for Republicans in Congress.
  • The deal would raise the spending caps by about $300 billion over two years.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The limit on military spending would be increased by $80 billion in the current fiscal year and $85 billion in the next year, which begins Oct. 1.
  • The limit on nondefense spending would increase by $63 billion this year and $68 billion next year.
  • The budget agreement, coming a day after President Trump threatened to shut down the government, would effectively negate Mr. Trump’s demands to broadly reorder government with deep cuts to nondefense programs like environmental protection, foreign aid and health research that were to offset large increases in military spending.
  • Mr. Trump is to release his second budget request on Monday, but the deal — championed by the top congressional leaders from his own party — amounts to an unequivocal rebuke of many of the budgetary demands he has put forth.
  • The deal would give Mr. Trump military bragging rights. “The bottom line is that, thanks to President Trump, we can now have the strongest military we have ever had,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said on Wednesday.
  • At least for now, it could put an end to the fiscal crises that Mr. Trump has at times seemed to welcome.
malonema1

Education Budget Hearing Highlights Gulf Between GOP and Trump | Education News | US News - 0 views

www.usnews.com/...hts-gulf-between-gop-and-trump

US trump education

shared by malonema1 on 10 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Education Budget Hearing Exposes Chasm Between GOP and Trump
  • When Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos testified before a Senate appropriations subcommittee Tuesday regarding the president’s budget proposal, her remarks that private schools must follow federal law if they receive federal funding received the lion’s share of attention. But the hearing, during which nearly every GOP members criticized aspects of the spending plan, also exposed just how far apart the Trump administration’s education agenda is with that of Republicans in Congress, perhaps foreshadowing how likely – or not – the White House is to achieve any of its policy priorities.
malonema1

Bernie Sanders Questions Trump Budget Nominee Russell Vought on Christian Faith | Natio... - 0 views

www.usnews.com/...sell-vought-on-christian-faith

US trump politics religion

shared by malonema1 on 10 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Sanders Blasts Trump Nominee Over Religious Post
  • Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont this week lambasted one of President Donald Trump's budget nominees over a post he wrote last year that discussed Christianity and Islam. As Russell Vought, Trump's pick for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, appeared before the Senate Budget Committee for a confirmation hearing Wednesday, Sanders doggedly questioned him about a January 2016 post he had published by conservative outlet The Resurgent.
Javier E

Trump's administration doesn't understand the meaning of power - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...7-b503-9d616bd5a305_story.html

foreign policy trump threat soft power power hard power

shared by Javier E on 18 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • The problem with the Trump administration’s foreign policy — as represented in its proposed budget — is that it does not fully understand our threats or the meaning of power.
  • The existence of the Islamic State is, indeed, a threat. But terrorism is often parasitic, attaching its agenda to local grievances and attempting to ride its proxies to greater power.
  • This makes the fate of failed, fragile and lawless states directly and unavoidably relevant to the conduct of the war against terrorism and the defense against other threats.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • American interests must be defined broadly enough to include things such as the effective delivery of social services in Afghanistan, the surveillance for pandemic disease in rural Tanzania, the construction of classrooms in refugee-stressed Jordan, the settlement of conflict in Libya and the promotion of economic progress in northern Nigeria.
  • Encouraging these outcomes represents another, very real type of American power, exercised from afar (apart from the irenic army of health, development and diplomatic professionals).
  • It is an absurd misnomer to call the exercise of power in these areas “soft.” The matter is simple: Will the United States merely respond to security threats? Or will it also try to shape the security environments in which threats emerge?
  • This is the context in which the Trump administration is proposing a nearly 29 percent cut in State Department funding for development and diplomacy, for peace-building and conflict prevention. “It is not a soft-power budget,” explains budget director Mick Mulvaney. “This is a hard-power budget.”
  • It is really a softheaded, hardhearted budget. If it passed in anything close to current form, no amount of explosive power could undo the stupidity or remedy the harm.
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