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Live hearing on Defense Budget

House Republicans, unveiling their first budget blueprint since the party took control of Congress, issued a sweeping spending plan Tuesday that calls for complete repeal of ObamaCare, major changes to Medicare and controversial moves to boost defense spending despite tight budget limits. GOP leaders say their budget would balance in less than 10 years, and in that time cut spending by $5.5 trillion compared with current projections. The spending plan stands little chance of ever being signed by President Obama, but makes clear that the party is not dialing back its ambitions despite a rocky start to the latest congressional...

"......."What I really hope for at the end of all this is that people understand that education is not an expense, it's an investment," MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver said in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C., Monday after she and other education leaders met with President Barack Obama to discuss urban education issues. [Governor Walker's] budget has a far-reaching impact on all school districts. Beyond urban and suburban areas, rural school leaders say the extra aid the governor proposed for their districts is trumped by the loss in per-pupil aid. In general, the governor's budget proposes keeping school revenue flat....

WASHINGTON — The congressional push this week to secure the first Republican budget plan in nearly a decade is revealing a chasm between fiscal hawks determined to maintain strict spending caps and defense hawks who are threatening to derail any budget that does not ensure an increase for the military. “This is a war within the Republican Party,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who has vowed to oppose a final budget that does not ensure more military spending. “You can shade it any way you want, but this is war.” The divisions will be laid bare Tuesday...

Five days after an open letter was posted online, the number of people at University of Wisconsin -- now including not only faculty, but staff, students and alumi -- demanding that UW System president Ray Cross oppose Gov. Scott Walker's plan to restructure UW in his budget rose to 484. Some 88 of them were at, or graduated from UW-Madison, where faculty were scheduled Monday to vote on a resolution asking Cross to delay restructuring. Seventy-four University of Wisconsin faculty members from campuses across the state signed an open letter to UW System president Ray Cross, “insisting in the strongest...

......UW officials say that Walker's proposal to end funding for the bioenergy program would cripple broader energy-development research that is receiving $25million annually from the federal Department of Energy."I can't honestly say how we would replace it at this point,"said Michael Corradini,director of the Wisconsin Energy Institute at UW-Madison,which derives 90% of its funding from the bioenergy program...In 2007,Wisconsin landed the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center—the first federal research center the state had attracted in decades. The center received an initial five-year,$125 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.It was part of a $375 million package by the administration...

It’s time to give current university system the Old Yeller treatment, except normal Americans will giggle when this rabid mongrel gets put down. Sure, the legions of administrative timeservers, otherwise unemployable tenure ticks, and loan-loaded future baristas who infest our colleges will be plenty sad. After all, their free ride will come to an end when we derail their gravy train. And it shall be glorious, for the tears they shed when forced into a world that demands achievement, effort and accountability, will be a powerful tonic for productive citizens like us who have carried these obnoxious parasites for the...

"You fight the good fight against Walker and he beats you," said Seth Markgraf, a 34-year-old construction worker from Arlington, Wisconsin. "They beat us in the recall and they beat us in another general election. It's just apathy. How do we beat Scott Walker?" TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey's Chris Christie and Wisconsin's Scott Walker are getting ready to run for president, but they've still got day jobs as governors — and face another round in the ring with organized labor. For Christie, that means trying to reach a deal to fix New Jersey's underfunded pension system by working with...

WASHINGTON — The Republican-led Congress returns to town Monday with no viable plan to avert a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security less than five days away on Friday. The GOP is caught between wanting to use DHS funding to block to President Barack Obama's executive actions to shield upwards of 4 million people from deportation and give them 3-year work permits, and not wanting to be held responsible for shutting down the department. In a testament to the party's struggles, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has teed up a procedural vote Monday afternoon on the same bill...

Republicans in Congress would shoulder the blame for a shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security if they are unable to enact a new spending bill to keep the agency running, according to a new CNN/ORC poll. The survey finds that 53% of Americans would blame the Republicans in Congress if the department must shut down, while 30% would blame President Barack Obama. Another 13% say both deserve the blame. If a spending bill is not passed by Feb. 28, the agency's funding will run out. ...

"The Constitution makes it pretty clear that the House has to do its work and the Senate has to do their's," Boehner said. "The House has acted to fund the department and to stop the president's overreach when it comes to immigration and his executive orders." Wallace pointed out that Republicans, however, don't have the 60 votes to pass the bill through the Senate. Boehner replied that Senate Democrats are blocking the ability to even debate the bill. "The House has acted. We’ve done our job. Senate Democrats are the ones putting us in this precarious position. And it’s up...

A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed does the dual service of outlining the history of the federal budget-making process over the last century, while showing, in its perilous and wrongheaded scheme for reform, just why this yawn-inducing topic is so important—and how the mess Washington has made of the enterprise subverts the key principle of our Constitution’s vision of democratic government.

Year after year, Louisiana didn't have enough money to cover its expenses, yet Gov. Bobby Jindal refused to roll back income tax cuts or ever-increasing corporate tax breaks. Instead, he raided reserve funds and sold off state property. ...The governor has successfully trimmed some spending by cutting more than 30,000 full-time state employees. He's reduced the state's vehicle fleet, privatized much of the Medicaid program, turned over the state's charity hospitals to outside managers and looked for ways to make state government more efficient. That hasn't closed all the gaps, however, and Jindal's short-term solutions leave a string of debts...

Spending Pentagon spent $504,816 on Viagra last year By Elizabeth Harrington Published February 09, 2015 Washington Free Beacon The Department of Defense (DoD) spent more than a half a million dollars on the male enhancement drug Viagra last year, according to government contracts. The Pentagon issued 60 contracts worth$504,816 for the drug in 2014. All 60 contracts were awarded to Cardinal Health Inc., a pharmaceutical distribution company based in Dublin, Ohio. Last year DoD also ordered $3,505 worth of Levitra, and $14,540 of Cialis, other popular erectile dysfunction drugs. The contracts were filed under "Troop Support."

WASHINGTON — Spending for the Department of Homeland Security hangs in the balance as Congress fights over immigration matters in the agency's annual funding bill. Without action by Feb. 27, the department's budget will shut off. To hear Democrats and many Republicans tell it, the result would be unacceptable risks to U.S. security at a time of grave threats worldwide. In reality, though, most people will see little change if the department's money flow is halted, and some of the warnings of doom are as exaggerated as they are striking. "There are ghoulish, grim predators out there who would love...

This week, President Obama released his budget for fiscal year 2016. It reflected much of what he had laid out in his State of the Union Speech, where he faced the recently elected members of the 114th Congress. Others might have paused first to consider the implications of the mid-term elections in which Republicans won big: They increased their control of the House and regained control of the Senate. But Obama, who had 90 fewer elected Democrats in his audience than has any other Democratic president in the past 90 years (246 of the 435 representatives and 54 of the...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama wants Americans to foot the bill for the first $4 trillion budget in U.S. history, which will drive our country ever more deeply into debt. This isn't all that's at stake in the fiscal 2016 budget he sent Congress on Monday. It calls for major new taxes on our fragile economy that will hurt America's businesses, stunt wage growth and further weaken job creation. Obama made it crystal clear in his first year in office that raising federal spending was at the core of his presidency. And he's kept that promise. In 2009, his first year...

In a speech at the Department of Homeland Security, Obama declared that he wants to “replace mindless austerity with smart investments that strengthen America”. Those “smart” investments scattered across a gargantuan $4 trillion budget include a $500 million Green Climate Fund for the Third World and $105 million to help the government build better websites. Obama is fond of putting the word “smart” in front of stupid ideas to make them seem less stupid. The $4 trillion budget is actually as stupid as the new left-wing Greek government elected on a platform of not paying its debts. This new government...

The press has barely noticed that President Obama has offered a new federal budget. Even in its paucity was a slant to be found. Like an obedient servant, NBC morning anchor Natalie Morales relayed: "President Obama, unveiling a record $4 trillion budget on Monday aimed at helping the poor and middle class. President Obama says the budget is practical, not partisan." David Nakamura of The Washington Post began a story on the Obama budget sounding slightly less servile. He described it as "a bet that the country has moved closer to his way of thinking just three months after an...

Politico has a list of the top 10 "biggest and boldest" tax proposals in President Obama's FY 2016 budget, which would raise $1.387 trillion over the next 10 years. Every single dime of that would go to fund new spending schemes by the president.  Zero would be applied to the deficit, which the CBO says will hit a trillion dollars by 2025. Here are a few of them (All amounts raised reflect the total over 10 years.): "BUFFETT TAX": The White House wants millionaires to pay a minimum tax rate of 30 percent. Raises $35 billion.. LIMITING ITEMIZED DEDUCTIONS...