House GOP says Trump wants spending bill through March

Associated Press ^ | Nov 17, 2016 10:33 AM EST

[Olog-hai]

House Republicans leaders say President-elect Donald Trump wants a short-term spending bill to keep the government running through March of next year. […]

Such a move would let the Republican-controlled government boost military spending while making deep cuts in domestic programs next year. …

[mewzilla]

Baseline budgeting gets axed first.

[sphinx]

In the last year of GWB's administration, the budget process was again at a complete stalemate. There was a short term CR to get past the election. When Obama won, a Democratic Congress then passed another short term CR to allow Obama and the Democrats to work their will on the remainder of FY 1999.

Bush left office with a clean CR pegged at a carryover of last-year numbers, with no earmarks. In the second-half CR, the Democrats added several hundred billion in new spending, and thousands of earmarks that had been blocked by the Bush people. They then passed separately several "emergency supplemental appropriations" plus the Obama stimulus bill. All told, they added over a trillion dollars to baseline funding.

Turnabout is fair play. More importantly, given the Democratic record, it is important that they get a big helping of what they themselves dish out. Right now, the Democrats clearly believe in double standards, and if they don't feel the pain when Republicans take control, they will never revert to a fair play orientation.

The approach suggested in this story is precisely correct. For purposes of public messaging, Republicans must insist that we are merely doing exactly what was done at the end of 2008.