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| Balanced Budget Amendment |
After a series of pro forma sessions preventing recess appointments by President Obama, the Senate reconvenes at 2 PM today. At 4:30 PM, the Senate will take up the nomination of Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. to be solicitor general. Following around an hour of debate, the Senate will vote on cloture on the nomination.
Last week the US House passed (231-188) an appropriations bill, HR 2017, for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in fiscal 2012 that cuts about $1 billion from the department's budget in 2011, largely by cutting grants for first and local first responders administered by FEMA. Democrats largely opposed the bill because of cuts n grant programs which the House Republicans noted as being inefficient and expensive in a time when the federal government needs to cut spending. Democrats like using grants to shore up their votes. The appropriations bill (note moneys still must be authorized) provides DHS in fiscal 2012 with $40.6 billion. This is 2.6% less than their funding in inf fiscal 2011 and 7 percent less that the big spenders at the White House requested. The Senate has to pass their version of an
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) is chair of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. She expressed her concerns over the House cuts but she has yet to bring forth an appropriation bill from her subcommittee. The House Republicans are following the Constitution while the Senate Democrats ignore the Constitution and opt to operate by continuing resolutions without subcommittee hearings.
Today, the House Republican Study Committee shared that 103 House Republicans sent a letter [pdf copy of letter with signatures identified] to Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor calling for a "Cut, Cap, and Balance” response to the debt limit and the bigger debt crisis that’s just over the horizon. It’s a simple, three-part plan:
- Cut spending to slash the deficit in half next year (requiring about $380 billion in spending cuts according to CBO)
- Cap spending so it aligns with average revenues (ratcheting quickly down to 18% of GDP from current 24%).
- Send a strong Balanced Budget Amendment to the states for ratification (with high hurdle for tax hikes and 18% of GDP spending cap).
ABC News reported on Friday, “Unemployment ticked up in May to 9.1 percent as private employers added 54,000 jobs, far fewer than economists were expecting, capping a week of gloomy economic news. The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the May unemployment figures [Friday] morning, and few were pleased given the string of negative economic reports. . . . More people entered the work force in May. But most of the new entrants couldn’t find work. That pushed the unemployment rate up from 9.0 percent in April. The number of unemployed rose to 13.9 million. And the government revised the previous months’ job totals to show 39,000 fewer jobs were created in March and April than first thought.”
Despite the disappointing numbers on the economy, Obama administration economic advisor Austan Goolsbee tried to minimize the bad jobs report, as the AP put it. But The Wall Street Journal editors remained unimpressed, writing today, “As chief White House economist Austan Goolsbee put it, ‘there are always bumps on the road to recovery, but the overall trajectory of the economy has improved dramatically over the past two years.’ Nice try, but there’s no way to spin news that the economy in May created only 54,000 new jobs, which is about one-third the number necessary to keep up with the growth in the labor force. The jobless rate rose for the second straight month to 9.1%, which is especially depressing nearly two years after the end of a very deep recession.”
Indeed, and it’s also worth noting that over two years after Democrats in Congress, at the insistence of the Obama administration, passed a nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill, today’s unemployment rate, 9.1%, is still higher than it was in February 2009, 8.2%, when the stimulus was passed. Millions of jobs have been lost since then despite promises from President Obama that “It's a plan that will save or create up to 4 million jobs over the next two years” and from Vice President Biden that in “18 months” the stimulus would “create 3.5 million jobs” and “literally drop-kicks us out of this recession.”
And it’s not just the failed stimulus; many other policies of the Obama administration are making it difficult to create American jobs as Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander pointed out in the Weekly Republican Address. “Last month the National Labor Relations Board moved to stop America’s largest exporter, the Boeing Company, from building airplanes at a non-union plant in South Carolina, suggesting that a unionized American company can’t expand its operations into one of the 22 states with right-to-work laws, which protect a worker’s right to join or not to join a union. . . . According to the chief of the Boeing company: ‘An unintended consequence of the Boeing complaint is that forward thinking CEOs also would be reluctant to place new plants in unionized states -- lest they be forever restricted from placing future plants across the country.’ Boeing is America’s largest exporter, but we want them to export airplanes, not jobs.”
As the WSJ editors put it, “The real ‘bumps on the road’ to recovery are these policies and the larger climate of hostility toward job creators that still prevails in Washington. A National Labor Relations Board that wants to stop businesses from moving plants; . . . hundreds of major new regulations from ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank and the EPA’s war on carbon energy; federal deficits that Mr. Obama says require higher taxes; . . . and so much more. The economy doesn’t need more of this.”
Tags: Washington, DC, US Senate, US House, jobs, debt, spending, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
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