Tag: budget showdowns
Boehner Pledges to Cut ‘Entitlement’ Spending
I wish I could tell you it was going to be pretty and polite, and it would all be finished a month before we’d ever get to the debt ceiling. Sorry, it just doesn’t work that way.
— Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), quoted by the Idaho Statesman, vowing to Republican supporters that he would cut entitlement spending as part of this fall’s budget fights.
Budget Showdown Looming in Mid-October
Protecting the full faith and credit of the United States is the responsibility of Congress, because only Congress can extend the nation’s borrowing authority. Failure to meet that responsibility would cause irreparable harm to the American economy.
— Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, explaining in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner sent Monday, Aug. 26, the consequences of not extending the debt ceiling.
Budget Showdowns Have Not Changed the Size of Government
$3.455 trillion
Amount the federal government will spend in 2013, following 2.5 years of budget battles. According to the Washington Post: “That figure is down from 2010 — the year that worries about government spending helped bring on a tea party uprising, a Republican takeover in the House and then a series of ulcer-causing showdowns in Congress. But it is not down by that much. Back then, the government spent a whopping $3.457 trillion.”
The Shutdown Lowdown
The budget negotiations have been waylaid.
Now representatives and senators are dismayed.
In the Senate and the House,
They’re starting to grouse:
“What you mean, WE won’t get paid!”
In negotiations that stay confidential
Over outcomes that aren’t inconsequential,
It’s slowly beginning dawn
On everyone, hither and yon,
That Congress really isn’t essential.
