Someone Please Tell Christiane Amanpour That Senate Republicans Don't Have To Propose Specific Spending Cuts
This story by Amanda Terkel in the Huff Post from yesterday talks about how, on ABC's "This Week," Christiane Amanpour was frustrated that, even after the election, neither Senator-elect Rand Paul (R-KY) nor Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) were able or willing to state one specific spending cut they would propose to reduce the deficit they said they were so hell-bent on eliminating.
Amanpour and everyone else had better get used to this. Because they won't have a majority next year, Senate Republicans won't have to propose a budget resolution that includes a specific deficit reduction plan; that will be the Democrats' responsibility. That means that Paul, DeMint, and all of their Senate GOP colleagues will be able to continue to insist that the deficit needs to be reduced and criticize Democrats for not doing more, but won't have to do anything other than vote against whatever Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) proposes.
Here's the video from "This Week" included in Terkel's story.
True that Senate Republicans
True that Senate Republicans don't need to propose anything. The House, though, is a different story. A budget and all appropriations will have to pass through the House. These folks made some big promises during the campaign in regard to the budget deficit. It will be interesting to see what they deliver.
My guess is Obama will compromise on extending the tax cuts, which Republicans will get credit for, and the President and the Democrats will get all the credit for continuing huge budget deficits.
That's seems to be how Democrats play the game.
Why is the minority party not
Why is the minority party not morally obligated to come up with some specific proposals? Particularly in the Senate where the minority can (and has) blocked darned near everything possible?
Yuri, Senate Republicans are
Yuri,
Senate Republicans are not FORMALLY obliged to make spending cut proposals. Nobody said "morally" till you did. This is politics we're discussing, so I'm not sure where actual morality comes into it. Fake morality is all we are likely to see in politics.
Equally Frustrating
Actually, Paul did propose some specific spending cuts. He said he would fire 10% of the Federal workforce, and cut wages. What was equally frustrating about the Amanpour interview was she did not press him on this. Why didn't she ask 'how is adding to the unemployment rolls going to do anything for growth and debt?'.
Also, any politician that says they support a balanced budgement should be immediatly questioned by press with 'then how do you think the economy will look when you take over $1T of income out of the private sector?' Because that's the reality - anyone for a balanced budget amendment, is for removing over $1T from the private sector. And the last time we balanced the budget, a massive credit bubble was created to offset those income losses
Important Point from an Odd Angle
If you follow your line of thinking all the way back to the original document, of course, you find that all appropriations bills are supposed to originate in the House, so by yourreasoning the Senate Dems are off the hook, too. Now, the requirement that appropriations bills originate in the House is one of those Constitutional technicalities that in terms of how the government actually works ranks in practical importance right up there with the prohibition against bivouacking troops on unwilling householders. Still, it makes for pleasant irony that the one branch of the legislature that thanks to the Tea Party actually changed hands spectacularly is the one originally contemplated a couple of hundred years ago as having lead responsibility for expenditures (particular since the Senate remains with the Dems thanks mostly to those self-same Tea Party candidates in Delaware and Nevada).
More seriously, the problem with your observation is that if the likes of Demint and Paul don't give the likes of Amanpour grist for her mill, she'll tell her scheduler to drop them and double up on Eric Cantor and his cohort. And that would suck the oxygen right out of the upper chamber. So I buy your observation on the power play, but don't think the optics will work.
Revenue Bills, Not Appropriations
Sorry, but the U.S. Constitution only requires that revenue bills originate in the House. Appropriations have originated in the House by tradition only.
It's Article I, Section 7: "All bills for raising revenues shall originate in the House of Representatives..."
By law, the Senate is required to produce a congressional budget resolution each year so Senate Democrats are not "off the hook." They will either produce a budget resolution or be criticized for not doing so.
LMFAO @ Rand Paul claiming
LMFAO @ Rand Paul claiming that govt has doubled in size in the past 10 years. We've had a rise in transfer payments due to the recession but otherwise spending hasn't grown relative to the size of the economy.
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2010/10/the_everexpandi_1.html
"(1) normalized Federal outlays are not much higher than in 1986; (2) government consumption to GDP is back up to 1991 levels; (3) the cyclically adjusted budget deficit is only 2 ppts larger than that recorded in 1987; and (4) Federal consumption remains far below the previous peak in 2007."
You'll be crying in 2012
LMFAO @ Rand Paul claiming that govt has doubled in size in the past 10 years. We've had a rise in transfer payments due to the recession but otherwise spending hasn't grown relative to the size of the economy.
Unfortunately, those facts you cited will be used not to refute Rand Paul in 2011, but instead will be used by Rand Paul and the like in 2012 to claim success in their efforts to reverse the "growth" in the size of the Federal government.
Echos of 95-96
Here is a good archive of articles about the shutdowns in the mid-90's.
http://www.cnn.com/US/9512/budget/budget_battle/index.html
If you're wondering whether members of Congress get paid during federal gov't shutdowns, don't worry, they do.
"He said he would fire 10% of the Federal workforce, and cut wages."
I wouldn't even call this a specific spending cut since he failed to say where these supposedly useless workers would be fired from. It sounds like a nice, round number he pulled out of nowhere. Columnists on this blog have repeatedly warned against ranking gov't programs by importance, because it doesn't work.
The GOP is making the same promises it has been for the last 30 years, using the same tired ideology and talking points. They will drag their feet on fully funding programs that help those who are hurting the most and happily shift the tax burden away from the wealthiest 1% to everybody else.
Rand Paul and other extremists (by extremist, I mean they actually say what the establishment GOP thinks) have essentially said a 3% rise in the marginal rate is out of the question, it will ruin us. $2,000 deductibles for Medicare? No problem...
To Big To Fail Game
The liberal left did a lot of complaining about W. Then they made the situation 10 times worse. In the business world they would have been fired a long time ago. Did someone ever create a board game about W? Well they have about Obama… How bad do things have to get that someone creates a entire board game making fun of your policies.
So sorry my friends on the liberal left. W drove our economic car to the edge of the cliff. Obama lit a cigarette, grabbed the wheel and floored it!!