Free Republic

The House Republican Study Committee (RSC) on Thursday released an alternative to the 2012 budget resolution from Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) that would cut $9.1 trillion in spending over the next decade. The RSC, a 176-member caucus, will offer its “Honest Solutions” plan as a floor amendment to the budget resolution next week. The House Budget Committee passed the GOP budget plan late Wednesday. Like a failed RSC effort in February to cut $40 billion more from 2011 spending, the amendment is expected to fail, but it sends a strong signal to GOP leadership and to Democrats that...

During this year's legislative session, Texas had an "oh, wait, hold on, don't do that" moment on privately funded tollways. Fair enough, but now it's time to figure out what the state should do, including how to pay for what the state's highway czar calls a $100 billion shortfall in money needed for essential highway projects. Ric Williamson, the Weatherford businessman who is chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, says "the entire future of the state transportation system" depends on potential revenue from private toll road investors. Without it, staffers with the Texas Department of Transportation told commission members at...

WASHINGTON, March 6 — With Congress heading into a politically perilous budget season, influential House conservatives plan this week to propose an austere alternative spending plan that would pare more than $650 billion over five years, balance the budget and drastically shrink three cabinet agencies. The legislation, part of a push by some Republicans to re-establish themselves as champions of fiscal restraint, was taking shape as President Bush struck a similar theme on Monday by asking Congress to grant him line-item veto power to eliminate federal spending that he might judge wasteful. "We can't be all things to all people...