GOP Budget Will Include Spending Boosts

[deadparrot]

WASHINGTON - Like fussy children, lawmakers on Capitol Hill sometimes need a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. This budget season, the medicine is a $39 billion-plus deficit-reduction bill. The sweetener? Lots of new spending to go along with the budget cuts.

Republicans will tout the upcoming budget bill as the first effort to cut federal benefit programs in eight years. But there's no shortage of grumbling from fiscal conservatives over the new spending padded into the Senate version of the budget heading to the Senate floor next week.

The nation's doctors would get an $11 billion reprieve next year from a scheduled cut in their Medicare payments. Dairy farmers won a $1 billion extension of milk income payments. College students would get more than $8 billion in new grants, and more disabled children would retain Medicaid health coverage.

Then there's $3 billion to help people watch TV. That money will subsidize television converter boxes for an upcoming changeover to digital broadcasts.

The flood of new spending programs is made possible by congressional budget rules that permit deficit-cutting legislation to carry new spending so long as it's paid for with new receipts or spending cuts elsewhere.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/congress_spending

[sinkingfeeling]

1. What 'deficit-cutting legislation' makes up for the $300 billion wasted,

ur, spent in Iraq?

[halsaxby]

2. Republicans Cut Several Programs in Budget

WASHINGTON - House Republicans voted to cut student loan subsidies, child support enforcement and aid to firms hurt by unfair trade practices as various committees scrambled to piece together $50 billion in budget cuts.

More politically difficult votes — to cut Medicaid, food stamps and farm subsidies — are on tap Thursday as more panels weigh in on the bill. It was originally intended to cut $35 billion in spending over five years, but after pressure from conservatives, GOP leaders directed committees to cut another $15 billion to help pay the cost of hurricane recovery.

President Bush met with House and Senate GOP leaders and said he was pleased with the progress. He also appeared to endorse a plan by House Speaker Dennis Hastert's plan for an across-the-board cut in agency budgets, perhaps including the Pentagon, by the end of the year.

"I encourage Congress to push the envelope when it comes to cutting spending," Bush said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051026/ap_on_go_co/congress_budget_cuts
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051026/ap_on_go_co/congress_budget_cuts">http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051026/ap_on_go_co/congress_budget_cuts
>

[rodeodance]

3. in the end the Repugs have shit on the poor!

.....It also imposes new fees on students who default on loans or consolidate them and higher fees on parents who borrow on behalf of their college-age children. California Rep. George Miller (news, bio, voting record), the senior Democrat on the panel, called the package a "raid on student aid."

The Ways and Means Committee approved on a party-line vote a plan by its chairman, Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., with so many difficult-to-swallow provisions that lawmakers and aides whispered about whether the intent was to make it hard for GOP leaders to win its passage in the full House.

It includes $3.8 billion in cuts to child support enforcement. Rep. Earl Pomeroy (news, bio, voting record), D-N.D., charged that Republicans were appealing to the "constituency of deadbeat dads."

The bill also would tighten eligibility standards for foster care assistance in nine states and delay some lump-sum payments to very poor and elderly beneficiaries of
Social Security's Supplemental Security Income program.

[Name removed]

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[thoughtanarchist]

8. They don't spend like Dems.

Typically, Dem spending benefits more than just corporate execs and moves to improve our standard of living.

Pug spending aims to make obscenely rich assholes richer at the expense of the cop, the cabbie, the clerk, the small business owner, and everyone else who pulls a paycheck to make a living.

[madmark]

5. 3 billion for television boxes; give me a f*cking break

[freethought]

6. Oh this is great!! Just f_____g great!!

This is the equivalent to taking away someones VISA card because they are spending like crazy but then hand them a Mastercard with slightly lower credit limit. After that you expect them to exercise some discipline.

Right!

Good luck with this Congress.
Someone give me some Kool-Aid I want to get off now.

:mad: :mad: :mad: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[anotherdrew]

7. boosts before or after the 'across the board' cuts?

hasn't bush boosted enough already?

[alcibiades_mystery]

9. $8 billion for college, $3 billion for digital television

And they were worried about starving folks stealing "plasma" TVs?

Who's the real thief here?