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Budget Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on June 01, 2017 11 Comments
What a shock. The Illinois legislature has once again missed its spring deadline to pass a budget even though the state owes $14 billion to unpaid bills. From ABC 7:
Knowing the Governor Rauner would veto a budget that included tax increases, House Democrats left town without voting on a Senate-passed budget. The governor said all along he would only sign a budget with tax increases if it included reforms like workman's comp or a property tax freeze, two things Democrats have passed but the governor said the bills don't go far enough. "The majority of the House has shown no interest in any real changes to the system but I hope we can work something out with senators and then all of us together, Democrats and Republicans, put pressure on the House majority so they aren't just loyal to their political positions, they actually want to do things that are good for the people of Illinois," Governor Rauner said. "I believe we can get there, we just got to stay persistent."

Posted by Taryn O'Neill on June 02, 2016 46 Comments
Last week, Louisiana passed a resolution calling for a Convention of States as described in Article V of the U.S. Constitution. The resolution passed on May 25 with a vote of 62-36, making Louisiana the eighth state to call for a meeting of the states for the purpose of proposing constitutional amendments addressing abuses by the U.S. Federal Government. Other states that have called a Convention of States for the same purposes are Florida, Georgia, Alaska, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, and Oklahoma. Increased national interest in a Convention of States (COS) is due largely to the government's failure to operate as the Framers envisioned. Having accrued a national debt of over $19 trillion and a debt-to-GDP ratio of 105%, the government's size and scope has grown far beyond anything the Founders could have imagined. Meanwhile, the states, having created the Federal Government, find themselves acting at the mercy of Washington's limitless regulations and outstretched tentacles, lest they lose federal sacred funding.

Posted by Jake Goldberg on April 06, 2016 4 Comments
Our generation is enduring a crisis, yet very few of us are actually aware of its existence. On April 4, 2011, the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) released what has come to be known as the “Dear Colleague” letter (DCL). As a preface, Title IX is a federal statute that forbids discrimination on the basis of sex, and OCR is an office within the Department of Education that is tasked with enforcing Title IX on federally funded colleges and universities. Therefore, this bureaucratic office holds authority over the vast majority of college student’s schools. A violation of OCR policy could result in the loss of federal funds that are vital for any school’s operations, so OCR often issues guidance to colleges and universities on how to maintain compliance. DCL is one such issuance of guidance. So where is the crisis?

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 08, 2016 13 Comments
Monday, Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin had a camera follow him to the State House to check on the progress of the state budget. At 11:00 on a Monday, the chamber was completely empty. Governor Bevin implored state legislators to "get to work," citing a mere nineteen days left in the legislative session. Posted to Bevin's official Facebook page, the video went viral.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 19, 2015 19 Comments
Marco Rubio missed Friday's vote on the Omnibus bill. It was a bill he stated he opposed and might even try to delay. But he didn't show up for the vote. 98 other Senators did. Including Ted Cruz, who returned from the campaign trail to be able to just say No. Omnibus Bill 12-18-2015 Senate vote In the run up to the vote, Rubio excoriated the process used to draft the bill as well as provisions funding Syrian refugees. He suggested an effort to slow things down:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 17, 2015 43 Comments
The trillion dollar plus Omnibus bill being eased through Congress is stuffed with all sorts of provisions which, if debated individually, would cause an uproar. Senator Jeff Sessions focused in on immigration provisions and funding for the Obama agenda: Power Line has analysis:
With Republicans in control of both House and Senate, the backroom omnibus spending bill that was unveiled yesterday should have been an opportunity to advance the conservative agenda across a very broad front. No doubt there are a few good aspects to the bill. But, as Paul noted earlier, it strikes a blow against education and against the Constitution by expanding funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on November 02, 2015 13 Comments
Monday afternoon, President Obama signed a two-year budget deal saying it was, "a signal of how Washington should work." Avoiding an election-year budget showdown, the bill suspends the debt limit until March of 2017 and brings the national debt total to a staggering $20 trillion. According to USA Today:
Some House Republicans had proposed the former debt limit — which was set to expire Tuesday — to leverage more spending cuts from the administration. Outgoing House speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, put together a plan to avoid breaching the debt limit, saying that doing so would threaten the nation's credit rating. The bill sets the federal budget for fiscal years 2016 and 2017, with an end to spending caps that had affected both national defense and domestic programs. "By locking in two years of funding," Obama said, "it should finally free us from the cycle of shutdown threats and last-minute fixes. It allows us to, therefore, plan for the future."
The two-year budget deal was passed by the Senate Friday with a vote of 64-35. All 35 dissenting votes were Republican. Several Senate Republicans vocally opposed the budget deal which essentially robs the Social Security Trust Fund of about $150 billion. Senator Lee referred to the bill as, "the last gasping breath of a disgraced bipartisan Beltway establishment on the verge of collapse."

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on October 27, 2015 49 Comments
The air is crisp, the leaves are donning their autumnal dress, and the Hill is bracing for it's annual budget fight. According to Speaker Boehner, "there's no reason to vote against it."

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 13, 2014 8 Comments
The Senate passed the CRomnibus bill 56-40, and also defeated a Ted Cruz constitutional point of order based on Obama's amnesty executive action, with significant numbers of Republican Senators sided with Obama. Here's how it went down:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on December 13, 2014 14 Comments
The differing treatment of Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren pretty much sums up the state of implicit media bias. Compare these two headlines from The Hill regarding Warren's attempt to cajole the House into defeating the CRomnibus, with Ted Cruz's similar effort in the Senate. Warren made "her mark" and raised her presidential prospects: The Hill Elizabeth Warren Makes Her Mark
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s crusade against the $1.1 trillion spending bill backed by the White House firmly establishes the Massachusetts populist as a powerful player in Washington. The freshman Democrat took on President Obama and her party’s leadership, and appeared to inspire an uprising in the House.... Peter Ubertaccio, a political science professor at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, who follows Warren’s career, said that this week, Warren demonstrated a better feel for the sentiments of her party than her leadership. “If she’s able to succeed in the Senate at the expense of her own leadership team — the team that she’s on — it will have the practical impact of moving the center of power away from folks like Schumer and toward her,” he said. “That’s pretty significant for a freshman senator that’s been brought into the leadership. It could also reverberate in the 2016 presidential race, which liberal Democrats are dying for Warren to enter as a rival to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
As for Cruz, according to the same author of the Warren post he's just the same old obstructionist firebrand he's always been:
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