With much fanfare in the midst of their campaign to take back control of the House of Representatives, House Republicans unveiled their Pledge to America. Many conservatives thought it was an enormous missed opportunity to lock a new Republican majority into a bold reform agenda. But House Republicans said that they wanted to under promise and over deliver. Who knew their conservative critics would end up being the keeper of their low expectations?
Unfortunately, Leadership’s commitment to their Pledge deteriorated quickly upon taking control. The Pledge called for a $100 billion cut in nondefense spending, but since this was going to be too hard in an abbreviated fiscal year, they decided to “prorate” that amount. Conservatives at the Republican Study Committee fought their Leadership and got them closer to $100 billion, but not all the way.
However, the Pledge also promised to transform the way the House of Representatives as an institution would be run. They promised to end the practice of packaging spending bills and other related legislation into so-called “omnibus” bills. Specifically, House Republicans pledged to “end the practice of packaging unpopular bills with ‘must pass’ legislation to circumvent the will of the American people. Instead, we will advance major legislation one issue at a time.”
Since it doesn’t actually say the word omnibus, did they mean something else? No, the passage was widely known to mean an end to omnibus bills. In fact, according to an October 2010 post on Speaker Boehner’s own blog, “House Republicans have also called for an end to the practice of passing massive ‘omnibus’ spending bills, arguing such bills make it too difficult to cut spending and too easy to shield spending projects from public scrutiny and debate.”
Now, House Republicans are about to violate this pledge too. They are packaging three spending bills together in a so-called “minibus,” combining the Agriculture, Transportation-HUD, and Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bills, but this simply amounts to playing games with names to save face. The bill would violate the House-passed, Ryan budget by at least $13 billion. Here is one example of why the bill costs so much that illustrates the logic of Congressional appropriators. According to CQ, “[the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program] would receive $6.6 billion. That is $570 million more than the House-passed Agriculture bill and $36 million more than Senate appropriators had recommended.” What sort of degenerate negotiating is this?
It would also include a very troubling provision to expand Federal Housing Administration (FHA) subsidies up to $729,750 mortgages. Never mind that FHA is going broke, and this provision could prove to be an accelerator on a future taxpayer bailout . According to a Reuters article this morning, an FHA audit recently revealed that its cash reserves are so low, “that there is close to a 50% chance it could run out of funds and may require a taxpayer bailout next year.” FHA is leveraged 300-to-1, with roughly only $3 billion in reserves to cover its $1 trillion portfolio. Given that the minimum downpayment for FHA loans is only 3.5%, most of these FHA borrowers have little equity in their homes. Did we not learn the colossal stupidity of this sort of economic policy as a nation during the financial crisis in 2008? For instance, the GOP Pledge itself says that Fannie and Freddie, “triggered the financial meltdown by giving too many high risk loans to people who couldn’t afford them.” Why does the same logic not apply to FHA loans?
Conservatives in the House would do well to vote no and force their Leadership to ”unpackage” these bills, at levels consistent with their own budget resolution and without provisions that will likely lead to future taxpayer bailouts. After all, they made a pledge to the American people to do just that.
Moe Lane
PG DeFreese
Victoria Coates
Daniel Horowitz
Dan Spencer
Of Course This Is NO Surprise
Ausonius (Diary) Tuesday, November 15th at 3:13PM EST (link)We expect to be stabbed in the back by D.C. RINO’s at every turn.
They are not Conservatives, they do not believe in the principles we believe in, because – when you get right down to it – they are just liberals who want bigger government.
They just are willing to grow the government more slowly.
A pox on them all!
Ausonius: 310-395 A.D. Teacher, Poet, Consul, General, Farmer.
Personal Tutor to the future St. Paulinus of Nola and to young Gratian, heir to the throne during the turbulent final years of the Western Roman Empire. When his former student Gratian was assassinated, Ausonius threw up his hands and retired to his farm in Gaul. Rome was captured by barbarians 14 years after his death.
Cato@rock.com
$729,750 homes, the poor have to live somewhere
johnt Tuesday, November 15th at 4:29PM EST (link)Perhaps next year we’ll hit the $1 million level, now that’s compassion.
But couldn’t they round it off to $730M? In any case the premise must be we don’t have enough collapse in America’s housing market. Thankfully our watchdog Republican spending hawks will be all over this, wink, nod.
“a man’s admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him”. Tocqueville
Will Heritage Action score this vote?
YnotNOW (Diary) Tuesday, November 15th at 7:22PM EST (link)As part of their next scoring of Representatives?
This breaking of their fiscal duties is outrageous, and needs to be highlighted early and often.
YnotNOW
If not me, who? If not now, when?
Yes
Russ Vought (Diary) Wednesday, November 16th at 6:38AM EST (link)Heritage Action is scoring against the minibus
Thank you for keeping tabs for us!
YnotNOW (Diary) Wednesday, November 16th at 6:49PM EST (link)to the entire Heritage Action team!
YnotNOW
If not me, who? If not now, when?
It's so important, so simple and it has to happen
kowalski (Diary) Tuesday, November 15th at 8:34PM EST (link)The unpackaging of omnibus bills will be the first, lurching step America takes toward regaining control of itself fiscally.
When I look at budgets today and see how the are passed I know everyone else agrees with me – they’re a *fraud* on the American people. They’re an intentional manipulation of the public trust.
If we achieve nothing else, we have to unbundle the budget. It’s something I want to fight for.
Please listen up again, Redstaters: I might not agree with your Presidential candidate on an individual by individual basis. But I am here 200% behind you on the concept of breaking the federal budget apart into chunks that people are forced to understand.
Every business that survives in America does this. All of our talk about how we’re going to stanch the flow of uncontrollable spending is meaningless unless we make this the New Reality of budgeting in Washington.
Defend Liberty — Join the NRA | Live in Massachusetts? Join GOAL.
It's a DISEASE
kowalski (Diary) Tuesday, November 15th at 8:40PM EST (link)The way we do appropriations and pass the federal budget is really best thought of as a disease of some kind…an internal parasitic disease.
The thing is – everyone is going to have to suck it up and take it if we decide to cure it. Lots of people are going to lose their subsidies if what we do is successful. Lots of people are going to lose their access to the pork barrel.
Actually, I think the “pork barrel” is an obsolete term at this point. Really what the federal budget process amounts to is handing out arterial shunts to our legislators. They jab them into arteries full of rich, oxygenated Federal Blood Money and divert the life-giving largesse to their pet projects. Except they’re not doctors – they’re lawyers – and they’re *killing* the “patient”.
Defend Liberty — Join the NRA | Live in Massachusetts? Join GOAL.
Then there are the parasites
kowalski (Diary) Tuesday, November 15th at 8:43PM EST (link)Who sit at the other end of the tube and suck up the blood money. It’s all very neat and clean now.
I’d like someone to produce a graph of the U.S. Budget as a blood supply and show where all the tubes drain. So many tubes…they’re everywhere! It’s tubes and shunts and committees and parasites. Those are the four pillars our country is now based upon. No wonder we spend so much on healthcare and can never get enough education.
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Quadruple Kowalski
kowalski (Diary) Tuesday, November 15th at 8:55PM EST (link)People need to listen up about this:
We’ve got 4 candidates who are in basically a dead heat in Iowa right now. And guess what? The issues are not primarily So-Con, they’re FI-Con. More people in Iowa by about 2/3 are concerned with economic issues than they are social issues.
The Federal Budget and all its emanating penumbras is the single all-encompassing, totally enormous, most importantly jihugic concern to anyone who wants to keep America strong and be a Fiscal Conservative in the next 30 years. Apart from Tax Policy, there isn’t anything more important. In fact I view the Budget as more important than Tax Policy:
The BUDGET is what legislators promise their constitutents in one form or another. It drives tax policy because of the promises they make, on all our backs, that they can’t keep, and shouldn’t keep.
We need to reduce spending on the part of all branches of our government and hold the line. We can come at it from the revenue side or the budgetary side – my preference is to do both – but it has to be done if we’re going to be a competitive country and a wealthy country and a vibrant country instead of the Country of Michigan in the 21st Century.
Here it is, AGAIN:
World’s lowest percentage of GDP (among developed nations) spent on government; only with a low spend will investors have faith that taxes will stay low.
Take the Government Shackles Off! That is what we have to aim for. It’s what we have to DO, and we need passionate people who can get out there in public and convince their fellow voters (even though most of them don’t need convincing) that’s what we have to do.
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This would be an awesome graphic...
Hammer2008 (Diary) Tuesday, November 15th at 8:59PM EST (link)n/t!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Too much noise! “Noise! You’ll have noise enough before long. The Regulars are coming out.” ~ Paul Revere (April 18th, 1775′s eve…)
Horrible, horrible graphic
kowalski (Diary) Tuesday, November 15th at 9:09PM EST (link)If it was really shown in its tangled and truly disgusting realistic detail it would be the most horrible thing Americans have ever seen.
It’s not Leviathan, it’s something like a horrible medical experiment being conducted every day on the American people, a combination of open-heart surgery and limbs peeled open so legislators can shove more shunts in there, in almost every artery, and without any kind of large view of just how huge and grotesque the experiment is. I have a hard time thinking of how grotesque it really is.
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Democrats look at America
kowalski (Diary) Tuesday, November 15th at 9:29PM EST (link)Democrats look at America revoltingly peeled apart on the table before them, with pools of blood all over the floor and everyone sliding around trying to keep their footing in it, and they think: “We need more shunts! and more blood!”
The rest of the world says:
“You’re out of your MINDS. You’re killing your own country, you morons.”
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Why?
annas Tuesday, November 15th at 10:09PM EST (link)…..do we work our hearts out to send candidates we think will espouse our standards only to have them become someone else in D.C.? We have to start throwing out the bad eggs! You might say that Scott Brown, for example, is better than the Democrat, but is he? He promised to be a Republican at least and is just another liberal Democrat! He also is counting on Republican’s support next time as they will say oh better than the Dem. We must, in some way, send these folks the message!
The Coming GOP Crack-Up Over the Toomey-Hensarling Tax Hikes
wbf (Diary) Tuesday, November 15th at 10:24PM EST (link)http://www.hughhewitt.com/blog/g/a825e11e-a890-4a74-b088-e7c91073b14c
Why did we elect a Republican majority in the House?
Thank you wbf
Scope (Diary) Tuesday, November 15th at 10:55PM EST (link)And today we have the news of Marco Rubio working with the bearded Marxist Chris Coons. We are so screwed it’s unbelievable. They say when you get to DC you change drastically,, Ain’t that a fact. The DC kool aide is a strong drink, and it seems that anyone going there is not immune. Go Gov. Perry with pushing for Washington to be cut down to size.
cut all subsidies and loop holes. Give the Republicans the Senate and then what we want will get done. You
sowa1 Wednesday, November 16th at 6:09AM EST (link)don’t vote the new Republicans out of the House and put Pelosi back in if you ever want to stop spending etc. Just like you don’t put Obama back in office if you want to save this Country.
Marco Rubio would not do anything to hurt the American people and
sowa1 Wednesday, November 16th at 6:16AM EST (link)if you believe that you are crazy. The new Republicans in the House can not do much at this time because of the Democrats in the Senate. They did stop the rediculous spending. Put more like .them in the Senate. Anyone that has been there for more than two terms should be voted OUT, whether Dem or Rep.
Tea party, we hardly knew ya..
celador2 Wednesday, November 16th at 6:25AM EST (link)All the fanfare from tea party candidates 2010 how they would hold the line on one issue, spending. Not so.
I sense the issue of the year 2010 debt reduction may have faded or at least dimmed its glow a bit, and that troubles me much for 2011 and 2012.
If "BS" was money
redpenny Wednesday, November 16th at 7:02AM EST (link)the Repub leadershipship in the house would be billionaires.Attended a townhall(of sorts) last week with my Rep.he talked about minibus & possible tax increase deals.Group as a whole told him if he voted for either he would be a one term rep.He vowed to fight against both.Repubs must honor their Pledge To America;even if it means shutting the whole circus down for a bit!!I’ m reminded of what we use to say in the military—–no balls no air medals!!!!
Don’t bother: the moderators tossed me out on my racist posterior already.
Everyone wants to blame the Tea party for the Republican failings.
ihateliberals Wednesday, November 16th at 8:29AM EST (link)It isn’t the Tea Party tht is at fault here.Just look at the competition the Tea Party has. First there are the Liberal Democrats teamed up with the Liberal Republicans (RINO’s), a gullible public and then the “coup de grace” the media. With this much going on against the Tea Party I’m amazed anytime they can get a word in edge wise. The Problem here is the people in states like Ohio tha continue to send RINO’s back to congress ever two years. People like John Boehner. As long as we continue to allow this to happen nothing is going to change in DC. In the beginning of 2011 Boehner was very cautious until he found that he could quash the Tea party or just go against their will. He now knows that with the media on his side against the Tea party he doesn’t have to listen to them at all. If the Tea Party is failing it is our fault. we the public have abandoned them and we are not being loud enough to make the RINO’s quake in their boots again.
Where is our outrage at the liberal Republicans like Boehner? He is the one that is caving to the Liberals or maybe he isn’t. Maybe he is doing just what he wanted to happen because he is a liberal. Granted he isn’t the Democratic version but he is one of the Tax and Spend variety. If we want the Tea Party to be successful then we have to stay behind them and we didn’t. We abandoned them in droves as soon as the going got tough. By the 2010 standards Michele Bachman should be the front runner not the RINO Mitt Romney. We let the media defeat us. Don’t get me wrong I am a Newt Gingrich supporter but then maybe I too am part of the Tea Party failings.