Sen. Rand Paul Proposes Budget Tomorrow

It has been more than 1,000 days since the Democratic-controlled Senate has passed a budget.  That's longer than the Siege of Leningrad, and Sen. Rand Paul has had enough.

Tomorrow, Paul will propose: his FY2013 budget, "A Platform to Revitalize America."

Note the use of the word "Platform."  It evokes a presidential bid, perhaps deliberately so. 

Paul's platform will include a plan to balance the budget in 5 years.  He also calls for passage of the REINS Act, which would require that major executive branch regulations be subject to approval by Congress. That would certainly slow down the growth of the regulatory state and shake up lobbying and lawyering under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Paul's staff has been promoting this event for several days, and will include a blogger call as well as a press conference.  This is a well-orchestrated event.

Paul will be joined by by Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Mike Lee (R-UT) -- the Senate Tea Party Caucus.

In addition to the budget, Paul will discuss energy policy. Paul will call for more domestic exploration and drilling, in contrast to the Obama administration policies -- a contributing factor to the $6 a gallon gas now selling in California.

750 Days of No Budget

The Senate -- controlled by Democrats -- has not passed a budget for 750 days.  Are they trying to outlast the Siege of Leningrad?

The House has proposed a budget courtesy of Rep. Paul Ryan. Democrats don't like it, of course, and yet fail to offer a real alternative. All 47 Republican Senators wrote to Harry Reid to demand that he start the budget process. The Democrats' refusal to do their job shows that they fail to comprehend the message votes sent last November. It also raises the question of whether Democrats really want to do the hard work of governing.

Every day that the Senate fails to enact a budget is another day of profligate spending, and another day here the opportunity to address the debt is missed. We cannot afford this delay.

Editorial Reaction to Obama's Budget

Editorials across the country are ripping the Obama administration's proposed budget. (The Courier-Journal, in contrast, could not be bothered to write an editorial about the budget.)

Here are some excerpts from papers that usually line up behind The One:

Washington Post: "The president punted. Having been given the chance, the cover and the push by the fiscal commission he created to take bold steps to raise revenue and curb entitlement spending, President Obama, in his fiscal 2012 budget proposal, chose instead to duck. To duck, and to mask some of the ducking with the sort of budgetary gimmicks he once derided."

USA Today: "He whiffed." “President Obama likes to talk about those ‘Sputnik moments’ when the nation rises to difficult challenges like the one posed by the Soviet space program in the 1950s. On Monday, he had a chance to turn his federal budget proposal into his own such moment. He whiffed. …"

Los Angeles Times: "The proposal was a remarkably tame response to Washington's fiscal problems, not the bold statement about belt-tightening that the White House had suggested was coming. Yet the biggest shortcoming is that it all but ignored the most important long-term financial challenge, which is the growing cost of entitlements such as Medicare and Medicaid.”

The Detroit News channeled those whose New Year's willpower is fading: "What we're getting from the Obama Administration is one of those weight loss programs that pretend it can shrink your waistline while allowing you to eat whatever you like. In this case, the president assures us we can gorge on Keynesian treats and still someday get back into our Clinton-era jeans.”

And for a take from the Wall Street Journal -- admittedly no friend of Obama's -- but a great turn of phrase: "This was supposed to be the moment we were all waiting for. After three years of historic deficits that have added almost $4.5 trillion to the national debt, President Obama was finally going to get serious about fiscal discipline. Instead, what landed on Congress's doorstep on Monday was a White House budget that increases deficits above the spending baseline for the next two years. Hosni Mubarak was more in touch with reality last Thursday night.” (Emphasis added.) ("Hosni Mubarak"; that's gotta hurt.)

McConnell Calls Obama's Budget "Unserious" and "Irresponsible"

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell blasted the Obama administration's proposed budget as "unserious" about cutting spending and therefore "irresponsible" for adding to the nation's debt, according to ABC News.

McConnell said,

“The President's budget is the clearest sign yet he simply does not take our fiscal problems seriously,” McConnell said. “It is a patronizing plan that says to the American people that their concerns are not his concerns. It’s a plan that says fulfilling the President’s vision of a future of trains and windmills is more important than a balanced checkbook.”

“The President’s budget comes in at close to a thousand pages. The people who voted for a new direction in November have a five-word response: We don’t have the money. We don’t have the money.”

. . .

“The White House wants us to engage in a debate this week about percentage cuts at this or that agency, about multi-year projections and CBO scores. It all misses the point. The real point is this: We're broke. We don't have the money.”

“This budget was an opportunity for the President to lead. He punted,” McConnell said. “It only pretends to do the things people want. And the reaction we’ve seen from across the political spectrum so far today suggests that nobody’s buying it.”

“This is a status quo budget at a time when serious action is needed. This is business as usual at a time when bold, creative solutions are needed. This is not an I-got-the-message budget. It’s unserious, and it’s irresponsible. We need to look for ways to preserve what’s good that does not put us on path to bankruptcy. That was the challenge of this budget. The administration failed the test.”

Tea, Anyone?

"Tea parties" patterned after the Boston Tea Party are springing up across the nation as voters manifest their disgust with the Obama Administration's profligate spending of our tax dollars.

Last weekend, four thousand people protested federal spending at the Cincinatti tea party. (Check out the Instapundit's pictures.) This Saturday, Lexington gets its own tea party, hosted by WLAP, the Club For Growth and the Bluegrass Institute. The fun starts at noon at the Fayette County Courthouse.

It's a decentralized movement that has caught on by virtue of the power of its message rather than any organizational force, as David Vickers writes:

The American tea party movement bears more resemblance to a rolling block party than a unified organized movement or cause. And that’s precisely why I love it. These people are nice. They’re smart. They come from all walks of life. And they’re sincere. I’ve met hard-hat wearing construction managers, accountants, school teachers, the unemployed, retirees, even the nicest anarchist couple who are worried about their kids’ futures.

And the numbers of protests and protesters continue to stagger, from the consistent low hundreds to the thousands — in all types of political and meteorological climates.

This broad spread outrage with the Obama Administration's spending contrasts with the fake grassroots support that Team Obama is trying to impose from the top down by reactivating its campaign apparatus. So desperate is Obama to gin up support for his budget that he even has called upon Moveon.org to help.

Millions of campaign supporters are receiving e-mails urging them to call members of Congress. Groups allied with the White House are running ads scorning the president's foes. States that were closely contested in the 2008 election are again getting visits from Obama.

While he's in road-trip mode, Obama should take the time to visit one of the tea parties. He'd realize that Rush Limbaugh is not the leader of the Republican Party; John Galt is. And all those women swooning --it's not over Barry's abs, but rather the size of the deficit.

McConnell: Budget Spends Too Much, Taxes Too Much and Borrows Too Much

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has a piece on National Review Online:

“In the midst of an economic crisis, government has an obligation to show some restraint. But looking at the final omnibus bill, Americans are likely to conclude that congressional leaders think government operates in a different realm of reality than the rest of the country. It seems some still believe members of Congress aren’t obliged to make any of the tough decisions that most other people do.”

McConnell notes that Republican amendments to the budget could have saved taxpayers billions of dollars. Yet Democrats defeated every single Republican amendment, including:

• Sen. John McCain's amendment to freeze spending at last year's level;
• an amendment to cut the duplicate spending that allows programs to double-dip in in the stimulus package and budget;
• a proposal to cut money going to a lobbying firm under investigation.

In addition to the waste, the Democrats rejected a Republican amendment to prohibit bringing back the Fairness Doctrine.

Democrats rejected a Republican proposal to allow the D.C. school voucher program to continue, even though it is wildly successful and saves money; this will force some classmates at Sasha and Malia Obama's private school to drop out.

Democrats would not even agree to a requirement, proposed by Republicans, that the Secretary of State certify that any funds spent for reconstruction in Gaza would not go to Hamas.

These are common sense amendments that most Americans support. Democrats voted down each and every one.

So much for the Age of Obamian Post-Partisanship.

Spend, Baby, Spend!

The Obama administration is spending our money so fast that it cannot even keep track of it all. Consequently, 122 federal programs get to double dip by receiving money from both the Stimulus package and the Omnibus appropriation legislation.

This is exactly what Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell warned of at his press conference last month, when he said. “Back in January, I suggested to the Democratic leadership that we take up the omnibus appropriation bill first. And I did that because I wanted to make sure that we were not engaged in duplicate spending when we finally went to the stimulus.”

For example the National Endowment of the Arts received $50 million in the Stimulus bill and $155 million in the Omnibus. Now that Obama wants to kill charitable giving by taking the deduction away from the people who do all the giving, he will make the arts completely dependant on the government; these millions are the first (and second) installment.

There's also duplicate spending for grants for community organizations like ACORN -- $1 billion in the Stimulus and $3.9 billion in the Omnibus.

Likewise, the National Institute for Standards and Technology gets to double dip -- $220 million in Stimulus and $472 million in the Omnibus. Maybe they'll finally get us switched to the metric system.

Fish and Wildlife are suffering from the recession, as more Americans are forced to eat what they kill. So the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gets $165 million in Stimulus and $1.14 billion in the Omnibus.

Note the pattern. The Omnibus bill not only duplicates the Stimulus package, it magnifies it. The Omnibus appropriation bill is the Stimulus package on steroids.

Obama's List of Goodies Too Audacious for Senate

Senator Barack Obama has promised, if elected president, to give so many new government entitlements that his audiences literally swoon in anticipation. Tonight, however, senators from both parties gagged at the price tag -- $ 300 billion a year in new taxes.

Republican Senator Wayne Allard, who is retiring, called Obama's bluff by offering an amendment to raise enough taxes to pay for everything that Obama has promised. The Allard amendment, according to Politico,

includes $1.4 trillion in spending over five years by proposing Obama's universal health care program ($65 billion a year), expanding the Army ($6.6 billion a year) and eliminating income taxes on lower income seniors ($10 billion a year).

The Senate rejected the Allard amendment 97-0; even Obama voted against it.

The proposed amendment calculated that it would cost $ 300 billion a year to pay for just 111 of Obama's new proposals. But that just scratches the surface: While campaigning, Obama has offered 188 new spending proposals -- 77 of which can't yet be quantified, but will likely add billions to the $300 billion price tag.

The numbers become surreal. In comparison, Obama's $300 billion extra in annual spending would cost more than the combined budgets of 42 states.

And Obama certainly leaves the Clinton administration in the dust. President Clinton increased taxes in 1993 by $240.6 billion over five years. At the time, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- an old school liberal -- called it "the largest tax increase in the history of public finance in the United States or the world." Obama, however, would spend more in one year than Clinton did in five.

The real point of the Allard amendment was to show who would pay for Obama's proposals. The short answer: just about everyone. The notion that Obama could raise taxes just on the top one percent of Americans is, as Bill Clinton might put it, a "fairy tale."

The only way Obama could fund his proposals on the backs of the top one percent of taxpayers is to raise their taxes by 57 percent. That's a $40,300 increase for a taxpayer who makes $365,000. The effect on our economy would be devastating, particularly if the country is in the midst of a recession.

A 57 percent tax hike, on anyone, is not realistic. Consequently, Congress would have to spread the cost of Obama's largess over a broader pool of taxpayers.

For example, Congress could raise taxes on the top five percent of taxpayers by 38 percent. Or it could increase the tax load of the top 10 percent by 32 percent. Or those taxpayers in the top quartile could see their taxes increase by 26 percent. Alternatively, Congress could raise taxes on the top 50 percent of taxpayers by 23 percent. Note that a taxpayer only needs to make $31,000 a year in adjusted gross income to fall into the top 5o percent.

Absent enormous spending cuts (which Obama has not suggested), therefore, Congress would have to raise taxes on middle class families and small businesses -- or else run up the deficit even further.

Moreover, the taxes needed to support an Obama spending spree wouldn't be applied in a vacuum; the new taxes would be in addition to what taxpayers will pay if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire. (Democrats oppose extending the tax cuts, which amounts to a tax increase.)

All 97 senators who voted tonight understood that the Allard amendment was a rhetorical device. Yet it served a purpose that was long over due. Talk is cheap, and hope is free. But government handouts -- on the scale Obama promises -- will break us.