MARCH 13, 2015

BILL SCHER

Winning the Congress has mainly given Republican a bushelful of problems, and a big one is right around the corner: How are they ever going to pass a budget?

For years, the Republican House mocked the Senate Democrats for failing to pass a budget. It was an overblown charge: the budget is merely a nonbinding resolution for guidance purposes, not the actual “appropriations” laws that disperse taxpayer funds to government agencies. But Republicans made passing a budget a benchmark of governance; now they will have to oblige.

That means getting the House and Senate to agree, and House Republicans have been obsessed with balancing the budget in 10 years. Which is insane.

Even one of Washington’s biggest deficit hawks, Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, tried to get Republicans to back from any 10-year commitment, as it would require $5.5 trillion in deficit reduction by people who don’t believe in tax increases or military spending cuts. “Just to put that in perspective, that’s eight times the size of the fiscal cliff deal and it’s 65 times the size of the Ryan-Murray deal which you recall we didn’t stick to for very long,” she told the Senate Budget Committee this week.

That’s the politics. In terms of pain to people, consider that by the final year of any such plan, with no tax increases or military cuts, social spending would have to be slashed in half.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) knew that was truly insane, or at least, he once did. His initial proposals as House Budget Committee chair zeroed out deficits after 30 years. But tea-party pressure got to him and he later shifted to the 10-year standard.


http://ourfuture.org/20150313/are-republicans-insane-enough-to-propose-a-balanced-budget