House Passes $3.8 Trillion Budget, Senate Up Next

Breitbart ^ | 03/25/2015 | Rich Tucker

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Step one in the budget process is complete.

The House of Representatives passed a $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal year 2016 on Wednesday. The final vote was 228-199, after lawmakers voted down a similar spending package that included less for defense spending. The measure calls for $96 billion in Pentagon spending, much more than the $58 billion President Obama’s budget calls for.

Next, the Senate plans to vote on a similar, but not identical, measure. That vote is expected on Friday. Assuming it passes, the real work would begin.

Lawmakers from both houses would form a reconciliation committee and work out the differences between the bills.

[willywill]

96 billion in pentagon spending? what are they talking about?

[Fungi]

Where are the cuts? Are the standard “base line budgeting” increases included? Why not freeze federal spending? If not now, when? When will the congress abolish the EPA, Ag. Dept., Ed. Dept, Energy dept.? If not now, when?

[A message]

3.8 TRILLION - .96 Billion on defense spending only leaves a paltry 2.84 TRILLION dollars to be frivolously spent.

Oh my, oh my what is a government to do.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Meanwhile America now has 18.1 trillion dollars of debt.

And that is rapidly growing, as China makes ever more of what we buy.

[ClearCase_guy]

I think they must mean $96B over the previous year’s budget for the pentagon. Overall defense spending is north of $400B, so the $96B is not a full figure — it has to be the amount of the increase.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Here's my simple $2 trillion-dollar budget:

- $500 billion for military spending, including money for veterans on disability, families of deceased combat veterans, more pay for active-duty veterans, funding for border security and fence

- $500 billion block grant to the states for Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, education, transportation, housing, and all other welfare programs, and abolish all of this crap at the federal level.

- $1 trillion to dissolve Social Security and let people roll over what they put into SS into a private IRA or 401(k).

[FreedomNotSafety]

I will bite on that non-sequitur. How is buying stuff from China related to the federal deficit and debt?

[Cringing Negativism Network]

America is racking up national debt (rapidly).

We must pay that, increasingly, and the amount we owe is generating ever-more debt.

We need to make stuff right here in America.

[Seruzawa]

Good to see all that fiscal responsibility stuff being taken so seriously by the Republicans. /sarc

(I shouldn’t have to use the /sarc tag, but this is the FR.)

[mac_truck]

96 billion in pentagon spending? what are they talking about?

Its a slush fund for overseas 'contingencies'.

[mrsmith]

The worst part is that the budget balances IF OBAMACARE IS REPEALED AND CUTS ARE MADE IN THE GROWTH OF ENTITLEMENTS...

Which ain’t going to happen.
So the RINOs are passing a budget that will bust all budgets.

Conservatives went along so they can pass a repeal of Obamacare (through reconciliation- without Dem votes). But that will be vetoed so I don’t see where that was worth the huge cost of this budget.

[familyop]

"When will the congress abolish the EPA, Ag. Dept., Ed. Dept, Energy dept.?"

Republican politicians try to appeal more to state and local government interests that depend on heaps of federal pork, along with government-linked business. They try to snag swing voters from Democrat constituencies. That's where the money and influence are.

Heavy Hitters: Top All-Time Donors, 1989-2014
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees $60,949,129 [Democrat] 81% [Republican] 1%”

Leviathan [Mostly through federal funding to state and local governments.]
National Review ^ | 02/03/2011 | Iain Murray
"...nearly 40 million Americans employed in some way by government."

Add the millions of government pensioners.

[napscoordinator]

China owns very little in the overall debt. Basically the American People own the debt. I don’t know when the China debt thing came from. I know that we owe them some but it is not as much as people think. Heck Japan is up there. But the number one debt holder is the American people by a ton.