Fiscal Conservatives Buck Leadership, Send Tighter Budget to Floor

rollcall.com ^ | 3/19/15 | Emma Dumain

[cotton1706]

House fiscal conservatives took the upper hand — for the moment — Thursday in their struggle with Republican defense hawks for control of the GOP’s 2016 budget proposal.

After 24 hours of uncertainty and stops and starts, the House Budget Committee voted along party lines, 22-13, to send a leaner spending plan to the House floor for a vote.

GOP leadership had pressured Budget Chairman Tom Price, R-Ga., all week to find enough votes on his panel to boost the plan’s funding for the Overseas Contingency Operations account. Without that additional defense spending, many House Republicans said they wouldn’t support the budget on the chamber floor next week.

When Price said the panel’s fiscal conservatives wouldn’t budge, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise tried to go around the new chairman to whip Republican support on the panel for the OCO.

But by late Wednesday, after a marathon markup session, it was clear that Price was right: There wasn’t adequate support.

On Thursday morning, Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, insisted the amendment boosting the OCO would ultimately make it into the underlying resolution. The Rules Committee will meet next week to set the parameters for floor consideration, during which time it is expected to add the language.

“I think Chairman Price and the Budget Committee have done good work, but in consultation with Mr. Price and the Budget Committee we agreed this morning that the rule will reflect a higher overseas contingency account number to reflect the wishes of a large majority of our members,” Boehner said at his weekly news conference.

[cotton1706]

Bottom line, the Establishment wants to bust the sequester caps, so spending goes up and up and up. For if defense spending goes past the spending caps, domestic spending will too. So they want to use "national security" and "the troops" as a vehicle to go back to the old days of profligate spending.

[Up Yours Marxists]

Along with additional spending, they’ll receive the added benefit of perpetual war.

And as we all know, perpetual conflict means domestic war becomes extremely unlikely. People tire of war and will avoid it, even if warranted and necessary to overthrow the shackles of a tyrannical government.

[RitaOK]

I am very proud of our conservative minority standing motionless and stubborn in the face of the pressure and staring down leaderlessship.

[grania]

How much Defense Department money and equipment ended up with ISIS, with neo- Nazis in Kiev, in that Benghazi arms depot? To pay for friends (who turn on us) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Iraq (etc)? To oust firm but effective leaders in the name of regime change? Etc ad nauseum