Today in Washington D. C. - March 13, 2009

The Senate joins the House is in recess and will reconvene Monday. Following an hour of morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 146, a vehicle for a public lands bill (S.22) that passed the Senate in January. At 5:30, the Senate will vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to the bill. Previously reported in an update: yesterday the Senate confirmed David Ogden as Deputy Attorney General and Thomas Perrelli as Associate Attorney General. Ony addition: God help us!

There is more reported unease from Democrats about President Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget proposal today, much of it coming from the Democrat chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Kent Conrad.

The AP reports today: “Sen. Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee called the track of future deficits ‘unsustainable’ and singled out Obama’s proposal for adding $634 billion in health care spending over the next 10 years. ‘Some of us have a real pause about the notion of putting substantially more money into the health care system when we’ve already got a bloated system,’ said Conrad (D-ND).” Conrad’s concerns about the proposal for hundreds of billions in health care spending are echoed by Blue Dog Democrats in the House, according to The Hill: “Obama’s budget called for carving out a $634 billion fund to be put toward a universal healthcare plan, a number that Blue Dogs believe is far too high given the current level of deficit spending.”

Ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee Sen. Judd Gregg drove the point home: “You’re exploding the size of health-care spending, on top of the health-care spending which already exceeds any other industrialized country in the world by about 5%. There’s no discipline there.”

Meanwhile, more Democrats expressed their concerns about the increases in borrowing and taxation in the budget. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) in The Grand Island [Nebraska] Independent said, “In particular, I’m concerned about the prospect of raising taxes during an economic downturn. On the one hand you’re trying to stimulate the economy. On the other hand, you’re trying to keep money from going into taxpayer’s pockets. The logic puzzles me.” Appearing on Fox News earlier this week, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) said, “We can’t run deficits like this forever. . . . It’s now at an unprecedented level -- well, except during the Second World War, perhaps, or the Civil War -- of 12 percent of GDP, and this is just not sustainable.” And at a Budget Committee hearing yesterday Conrad added, “[W]hen I look at this budget, I see the debt doubling again. And that gives me great concern.”

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