More Budget Follies

By Mimikatz

Late word is that the House GOP leadership has failed to reach agreement on a budget for the coming fiscal year.  No vote will be attempted until the end of April.  Remember, these are the "leaders" who could not pass a legal budget bill at the end of last year for fiscal 2006. 

The GOP is not proposing any serious reductions in spending this time around, nor is it willing to consider raising revenue to rein in our profligate spending. Instead, according to the Wall Street Journal, an extension of the dividend and capital gains tax cuts is in the offing.  Like Blanche Du Bois, we will continue depend on the kindness of strangers, the foreign lenders who have up to now been willing to underwrite our consumption.  (See more here from the Cunning Realist, including a long discussion about the intersection of fiscal insanity and Iran.  It's a long post, but very good.)

Nancy Pelosi has done a heroic job of keeping the Dems together on budget votes over the last few months.  Of the GOP proposed budget, the Stakeholder had this to say:

Five Years of Consecutive Deficits, Balanced Budget Not In Sight. The Republican budget makes the already record deficits worse. The budget proposal passed out of the House Budget Committee includes a projected deficit for 2006 of $372 billion, and a deficit for 2007 of $348 billion. With these current Republican budget priorities, we will see five consecutive years of budget deficits and by 2011, the deficit could total $1.1 trillion. The budget resolution contains no plans to balance the budget, and, in fact, the Republican policies make the deficit worse by $410 billion over five years relative to current budget policies

Make no mistake about it.  These folks are mortgaging your future.  One more reason to work for change in November.

Comments

[Mimikatz]

And for the correlation between Bush's approval ratings and gas prices, see here from Pollkatz.