Posted on 02/19/2011 2:44:40 AM PST by sunmars
In a rare early morning weekend vote, the House approved an aggressive plan Saturday to eliminate dozens of federal programs and offices while slashing agency budgets by as much as 40 percent, drawing out more than $60 billion in deficit savings.
Setting up a showdown early next month with President Obama and Senate Democrats, House Republicans pushed the legislation through after a marathon debate capped off by an all-night session Friday that spilled into Saturday morning. During the bleary-eyed final roll call at 4:35 a.m., 235 Republicans were joined by no Democrats in support of dramatic spending reductions that they said were needed to address a soaring annual deficit of $1.6 trillion; 189 Democrats -- as well as three Republicans -- opposed it, accusing Republicans of writing the bill with a "double meat ax."
For Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), it marked an early political victory as his newly empowered GOP troops lived up to a 2010 campaign pledge to trim spending levels to those before the 2008 financial crisis caused an unprecedented level of government spending and intervention into the private economy.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
This was a House vote.
Voinovich is gone now anyway, isn’t he? I thought he retired.
LOL good night! :)
Those are Senators.
No Democrats-so much for the ‘blue dogs’!
Cantor is saying its $100 billion.
$60 billion/$100 billion?!?! Not even close...Obama just proposed $53 billion in new spending for “high speed” rail!
Cuts need to be 10x that much just to get to started!
We have 15 departments with Secretaries. I would merge or return 10 of those and create 1 new one, giving us a total of 6. As follows:
4 created at the start:
Dept. of State
Dept. of the Treasury
Dept. of Defense (previously War & Navy)
Dept. of Justice/Attorney-General
The 5th:
Dept. of Commerce
And the “new” and last one (6th):
Department of Domestic Affairs
The remaining 10 to be folded:
Interior (to Domestic Affairs)
Agriculture (to Commerce)
Labor (to Commerce)
Health and Human Services (to D.A.)
Housing & Urban Development (to Commerce)
Transportation (to Commerce)
Energy (to Commerce)
Education (to D.A.)
Veterans Affairs (to Defense)
Homeland Security (to Defense)
Of course, then Domestic Affairs could be merged into Commerce. So many of the 20th century-onwards departments really ought to figure no higher than being sub-cabinet positions, with most under Commerce. After that, perhaps Commerce itself could be folded into Treasury, and then we’d be back to essentially what the Founding Fathers wanted us to have.
$500 billion at minimum.
The headline is a lie. 60 billion out of 3.6 trillion is pocket change.
Nothing “dramatic” about pocket change.
That’s just Mean
TT
Dramatic cuts?
Crappola,
Cut about 40 percent of worthless gub mint and then you’ll get my approval.
Collins and Snow apparently have had an epiphany regarding the seriousness of the tea party.
The whining coming from DC from democrats, is sounding a lot like WI. How is it that a moron in the white house can dig up 800 billion dollars on a boondoggle, but the ones responsible for coughing up the dollars in congress, can’t cut less than ten percent from the next years budget, without having to listen to screams of agony, not to mention what the folks who actually provide the money to congress think about both situations.
I think that may be a rhetorical question.
If all we see are their narrow base of unions, enviro nazis, and assorted lunatics protesting in the streets, it will not sit well with normal Americans. Just as a majority do not sympathize with the NEA and assorted union goons in WI, most will not shed a tear for these cuts.
This is a start. The Leviathan state cannot be turned around on a dime. Thank your nearest pubbie Congressman for voting to stop the insanity.
Collins and Snow apparently have had an epiphany regarding the seriousness of the tea party, and we may find out when the vote hits the Senate.
And Jeff Flake (AZ) has announced he’s running for the retiring Kyl’s seat in the Senate. Just what we need in the Senate...another RINO.
The single cut that would do the most good for the most people world-wide would be to defund the UN, and evict them from U.S. soil. It is a criminal cabal that does it’s best to use our $$ to destroy our way of life. And, possibly, even more corrupt than our government.
Don't miss the salient points: It's an actual cut for the first time that I can remember. There has been no budget for this fiscal year - it has been a "do as you have been doing and the money will be there" situation; this set of cuts is between now and the end of September. They have defunded the spending on ObamaCare.
In short, some good things and the first time in my memory when a cut meant a cut vs. a lower rate of increase.
Long road to a reality which even begins to act like they work for us..
Flake probably voted “no” because he thought they weren’t big enough. The other two, I don’t know about.
}:-)4
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