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A new analysis from the Conservative Review finds that the omnibus spending bill backed by Speaker John Boehner and House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) would bust through the spending caps set by a budget deal from House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Budget Committee chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA).
“Like most budget bills, far from cutting spending, this bill actually adds to the deficit,” Conservative Review senior editor Daniel Horowitz writes. He adds:
While the bill is being advertised as adhering to the budget cap of $1.013.6 trillion, it actually authorizes billions more in spending. Managers of the bill employed a special budget gimmick, which allows Congress to shift around payments on programs outside of the annual budget bill and gives them cover to increase spending in this budget bill by $19 billion.
Horowitz walks readers through the budgeting gimmicks to find that the bill spends at least more than $85 billion more than previously congressionally-agreed upon spending caps.
Additionally, war spending, known as “Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO),” are exempt from the budget caps. Last year, Congress authorized $85 billion in OCO spending, and due to the drawdown of forces in the Middle East, Obama initially requested only $59 billion. This bill authorizes $74 billion in war spending. There is also another $6 billion in disaster relief and the $5 billion in Ebola funding, which is designated as emergency spending and exempt from the caps. None of the extra spending is offset with spending cuts. Taken as a whole, this bill will total $1.119 trillion, over $85 billion more than the agreed-upon discretionary budget caps.
This–along with how the bill funds Obama’s executive amnesty through at least the end of February, has lots of wasteful spending contained throughout, and has other major issues–could prove detrimental to the bill’s previously-assumed success. The Ryan-Murray budget deal, which passed Congress despite efforts from conservatives to stop it, raised spending caps contained in the previous Budget Control Act (BCA)—commonly known as sequestration—designed to rein in Washington spending.
Read more from this story HERE.
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Top 10 Problems with the Omnibus Spending Bill
by Daniel Horowitz
1. Rubber Stamping Amnesty
As Obama unabatedly moves to enact amnesty – already beginning by hiring 1,000 new government employees to quickly process applications for illegal immigrants in a facility the administration has secured by the Pentagon, this bill fails to defund one penny of the process. Amidst the $1.1 trillion 1,603-page bill that contains roughly hundreds of policy riders, there is absolutely nothing prohibiting any of Obama’s illegal amnesty. GOP apologists for the bill point out that funding for the Department of Homeland Security is only funded until March, but that is irrelevant. There is no defund policy rider to prevent or restrict a single action at a time when we need it most, which is now. Moreover, Obama is using many other agencies to help aid and abet illegal immigration, such as the Justice Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Each of those other agencies will be funded for the entire remainder of the fiscal year – without any restrictions.
2. Accelerates Obama’s Amnesty
Not only does this budget fail to defund amnesty, it actually helps accelerate Obama’s unconstitutional executive order. The bill contains almost $1 billion in additional funding for Health & Human Services (HHS) so that the recent illegal immigrants from Central America (who are not even officially eligible for Obama’s amnesty) can establish themselves in the country. The bill also contains $260 million in additional funding to aid poverty in Central America at a time when we should be withholding existing aid until they respect our sovereignty.
3. Long-Term Funding for Everything Else
At this point, no aspect of government, other than Defense, should be funded for the remainder of the fiscal year, especially by a lame duck Congress. Obama’s lawlessness will not end with immigration. He will remake American through the HHS, Labor Department, EPA, and IRS. All of those departments are now fully funded and Republicans will not have any leverage against more executive action until next October.
4. 72-hour Transparency Rule
Once again, House leadership is breaking their 72-hour posting pledge and plans to vote on a bill less than 48 hours after posting the text online. But this is not just any bill. It’s a 1,603-page, 289,861-word budget bill that funds every aspect of government during a time of grave constitutional crisis. Even Politico noted the Appropriations Committee desire to obscure and suppress as much information as possible about the massive bill for as along as possible.
“The leadership would argue that the secrecy is justified given the political tensions in Congress. But the picture is of a committee so scared of outside disruptions that it’s forgotten the pride it once took as a public panel making public decisions about public money.”
5. Disenfranchising Voters
Voters sent a resounding message in November: they want Obama’s agenda stopped. Not only does this bill consummate Obama’s agenda for another year, it was crafted, in part, by the same Senate Democrats who were voted out of office in November. The notion that they would override the will of the people and deny the new Congress from making these decisions is unconscionable.
Read more from this story HERE.
Senate Republicans, who condemned a Democratic decision last year to require only 51 votes to confirm judicial and executive branch nominees, are struggling to decide whether to reverse the so-called “nuclear option” or leave it in place when they take the majority in January.
by Mike Hixenbaugh
