Tag Archives: Federal Budget

News

Is Obama correct to think that Republicans don’t know what to cut?

1 Comment

From David Freddoso, in the Washington Examiner.(H/T Nice Deb)

Excerpt:

He finished speaking in Cleveland by urging his audience to “choose the future over the past.” A good thing — we should move on to 2011 instead of repeating the year 2009. Anyway, here were his “they-have-no-ideas” remarks, in part:

Just this year, these same Republicans voted against a bipartisan fiscal commission that they themselves proposed.  And when you ask them what programs they’d actually cut, they usually don’t have an answer.

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., replies:

“President Obama must have misspoken today, because I have personally sat across the table from him and suggested specific ways to cut spending. Furthermore, House Republican Leader John Boehner and I urged President Obama to work with Republicans to cut spending by using his authority to send Congress a “rescissions” package.  In fact, we sent President Obama a letter twice pledging to work together with him on that effort. We still have not heard back – seven months later. It doesn’t end there, through the YouCut program House Republicans have offered over $120 billion in spending cuts, only to be voted down by Democrats in the House. Finally, House Republicans Jeb Hensarling and Paul Ryan have introduced a “Cut Spending Now” package of specific cuts that would save taxpayers $1.3 trillion.

“President Obama is entitled to his opinion, but he’s not entitled to his own facts, and with that in mind I am asking him to either clarify or withdraw the accusation that he made earlier today.”

If you want to cut spending, you vote for Republicans. If you want 3 trillion in deficits over two years, vote Democrat.

News

Democrats propose 23 billion bailout for teacher unions

3 Comments

Story here from the leftist Washington Post. (H/T Ace of Spades via ECM)

Excerpt:

As public schools nationwide face larger class sizes and cuts in programs, the Senate’s leading Democrat on education issues proposed a $23 billion bailout Wednesday to help avert layoffs of tens of thousands of teachers and other school personnel in the coming academic year.

[…]Education Secretary Arne Duncan estimated that school layoffs could total from 100,000 to 300,000 unless Congress acts.

“It is brutal out there, really scary,” Duncan told reporters on Capitol Hill. “This is a real emergency. What we’re trying to avert is an education catastrophe.”

Duncan stopped just short of endorsing Harkin’s bill. But he said efforts to improve schools will suffer if class sizes rise, summer school is cut and other programs are jettisoned.

Harkin, chairman of the Appropriations Committee’s panel on education and of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said time is running out because states are starting to issue layoff notices. “We must act soon,” he said. “This is not something we can fix in August. We have to fix it now.”

[…]Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said he worried about where the government would find $23 billion for a bailout in a time of growing federal budget deficits. “I wonder from whose schoolchildren we are going to borrow this money, because we have a looming debt crisis in this country and we’ll need to debate this,” he said. “We all want to help our children and our schools, but that is a deep concern.”

A fitting follow-up to today’s earlier education policy post. This is why you don’t put silver spoon liberals in charge of the country – they just keep spending and spending to bail out their greedy special interest groups.

Commentary

Walter Williams advocates a return to federalism

Leave a comment
Walter Williams

A popular editorial from Investors Business Daily.

Here is the question he wants to answer:

If one group of people prefers government control and management of people’s lives and another prefers liberty and a desire to be left alone, should they be required to fight, antagonize one another, risk bloodshed and loss of life in order to impose their preferences or should they be able to peaceably part company and go their separate ways?

The problem is that the federal government is not supposed to tell the states what to do. Every state is supposed to decide how much to tax and what government programs to spend on for themselves.

He continues:

Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution lists the activities for which Congress is authorized to tax and spend. Nowhere on that list is authority for Congress to tax and spend for: prescription drugs, Social Security, public education, farm subsidies, bank and business bailouts, food stamps and other activities that represent roughly two-thirds of the federal budget.

[…]James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, explained in Federalist Paper No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.

Williams ends by hoping for a restoration of respect for the Constitution. That would mean that the Democrats, (the party that advocates top-down control of other people’s lives), would have to be voted out of power.

Walter Williams is my second favorite living economist. Thomas Sowell is still number one, and he has the most popular post on National Review right now.