Some Notes On The Budget

Obama's budget will now move to the conference committee.  The House and Senate will sort out the differences and end up with a single bill that both houses will have to approve again before Obama signs it into law.  Here are some notes on things that were -- or were not -- in the budget (and some of these are really disturbing):

The Senate rejected a large number of amendments. To give a few examples:

— Drug testing for welfare recipients.

— Protection for doctors with conscientious objections to abortion.

— A "mini-bail-out" fund for small toy manufacturers who are about to go out of business because of a new consumer safety law Congress recently passed at the behest of their large competitors.

— An amendment that would have made it harder to pass any budget that doesn't contain full funding for a border fence in the southwest.

— An amendment, by Sen. Jim DeMint (R, S.C.), to implement president Obama's modest earmark reforms.

— An amendment to end all automotive bailouts.

— A national usury law.

— A long-term fix of the Alternative Minimum Tax. Really, this amendment simply called for an honest accounting on the AMT, which is rarely or never practiced by congressional majorities of either party.

—  Drilling on the outer-continental shelf.

— A cut-off of any further TARP funds.

The most important GOP amendments that the Senate did pass were the handful related to President Obama's plan to raise and redistribute $300 billion annually by requiring energy producers and other carbon emitters to purchase carbon credits from the federal government. The plan envisions using most of the money collected to subsidize consumers, to whom the increased costs will be passed.

One carbon-related amendment, proposed by Sen. Kit Bond (R, Mo.), erects an extra 60-vote hurdle against such a plan "to such an extent that it causes significant job loss in manufacturing- or coal-dependent U.S. regions such as the Midwest, Great Plains or South." Another, proposed by Sen. Mike Johanns (R, Neb.), prevents Congress from implementing such a plan on a temporary basis using the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process. It passed by a very wide margin, 67-31. Yet another amendment, making an energy tax more difficult to pass this year, was sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R, S.C.).

The Senate panned President Obama's controversial plan to reduce tax deductions for charitable giving. Senators also rejected a Republican attempt to include in the budget Obama's plan to means-test the Medicare prescription drug benefit under Medicare, making the wealthy pay higher premiums.

Republicans also succeeding in erecting a parliamentary hurdle against tax increases for small businesses.

The biggest problem, though, as GOP aides describe it, is that most of the Republicans' successes will be short-lived. Democrats will completely control the joint budget that comes out of conference committee after recess, and they have the numbers in both the House and Senate to pass any budget they like. "Point of order" amendments, which erect parliamentary hurdles to certain kinds of legislation, seldom survive this process when they are proposed and supported by the minority. And Republicans did not succeed in preventing the use of the reconciliation process to pass sweeping, transformational health-care reforms.

At least, for each amendment, senators are on the record. Given their numbers, that may be the most that this Congress's Republicans can hope for.

*sigh*

Here are some other thoughts about the 'tough choices' that the Democrats are slapping themselves on the back for making:

The House and Senate budget resolutions virtually rubber-stamp the president's budget. By enacting the largest peacetime debt buildup in history, the Democrats have surrendered whatever moral authority they could have claimed on deficit opposition. The same party that condemned President Bush for running temporary $300-$400 billion deficits (partially resulting from the war) has now approved budget deficits averaging $1 trillion annually over the next decade. That is a staggering $68,000 per household of new debt, to be repaid by our children and grandchildren. And after quadrupling the budget deficit in one year, fulfilling their pledge to "cut the deficit in half" from that level by 2013 shouldn't impress anyone.

Moving forward to the conference, Congress may still attempt to add in full Senate reconciliation (requiring only 50 votes for passage) for cap-and-trade and health care reform. If that occurs, they may try to use cap-and-trade revenues to fund their expensive health reform plans (thus rejecting the president's Make Work Pay credit and his call to limit tax deductions for upper income taxpayers). Democrats could tell Republicans that if they don't provide bipartisan cover to their health and energy reforms in regular order, they would invoke reconciliation and pass an even more liberal bill by themselves.

Credit must be given Rep. Paul Ryan (R, Wis.) for offering a responsible alternative blueprint. It is telling that a proposal with average spending at 20.7% of GDP — a level even higher than under Bush or Clinton — was derided by Democrats as a savage attack on government. This budget simplified the tax code, provided tax relief, reformed Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and still ran deficits $3.2 trillion less than President Obama would. Alas, Democrats who campaigned on "making tough choices" refused to vote for a budget that actually did.

All I can say is that elections have consequences.

There's my two cents.