Tag Archives: Congressional Budget Office

Sessions Comments On Majority Relenting, Promising Senate Budget Mark-Up And Regular Order

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January 23, 2013

For Immediate Release

Contact:  Stephen Miller,

Andrew Logan: 202.228.0575

 Sessions Comments On Majority Relenting, Promising Senate Budget Mark-Up And

Regular Order

 “I have repeatedly and emphatically called for an end to the Senate Democrats’ brazen legal defiance in this time of national fiscal emergency… To compel Senate action I have introduced legislation, blocked recess, and encouraged the use of the debt ceiling as leverage. Now, with their pay threatened, and long-simmering public anger growing, Senate Democrats have suddenly seen the light. Even just a few days ago, they were not willing to commit to doing a budget.”

 WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement today in response to the announcement that the Committee would begin work on what would be the Senate’s first budget resolution since 2009:

“I am gratified that Chairman Murray has announced that the Senate majority has relented and will offer its first budget in four years. Majority Leader Reid had previously said it would be ‘foolish’ to do a budget and his party cancelled the legally required Senate mark-up in 2011 and 2012—even after former Chairman Conrad had explicitly promised to bring up a budget in committee. I have repeatedly and emphatically called for an end to the Senate Democrats’ brazen legal defiance in this time of national fiscal emergency. I was frankly stunned that our new Chairman would say that Republicans ‘have time and again pulled budget negotiations out of the Budget Committees,’ when Senate Democrats alone control whether committee meetings occur. They alone decided to cancel them. The House, on the other hand, met its legal obligations.

To compel Senate action I have introduced legislation, blocked recess, and encouraged the use of the debt ceiling as leverage. Now, with their pay threatened, and long-simmering public anger growing, Senate Democrats have suddenly seen the light. Even just a few days ago, they were not willing to commit to doing a budget. The sooner the majority allows the budget process to move forward, the sooner meaningful debate can occur and the sooner the Senate can at last meet its legal and moral obligations. Secret meetings are an affront to popular democracy.

The way forward is for the House and the Senate to both lay out long-term financial plans and present them to the American people. In the past, Democrats refused to do so for political reasons, believing it better to attack the House while having no plan to present, explain, or defend.

Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office will present Congress with a new baseline on February 4, 2013. This baseline will reveal how much deficit reduction is needed to balance the budget in 10 years. I stand ready to immediately work with Chairman Murray on a budget in committee to meet this target by April 1st.

An honest evaluation of our debt course does not allow for gimmicks or other misleading maneuvers. For instance, when we talk about producing a balanced budget we mean exactly that: a budget that results in no deficit. We do not mean achieving ‘primary balance’ or a budget with a ‘balanced approach.’ Further, such gimmicks as counting phony reductions in war spending or double-counting Medicare revenues cannot be accepted as a part of any honest financial plan.

It certainly won’t be easy to put this nation on a sound financial course, but it is essential. Needed fiscal changes will not only prevent an economic nightmare but they will reduce growing poverty, dependency, and joblessness and help more Americans live free and prosperous lives. Republicans are eager to work on this important endeavor and look forward to the commencement of committee activity.”

[NOTE: Although no committee activity has yet been scheduled, the legal deadline for the Budget Committee to complete its work on a budget resolution is April 1.]

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“Cliff Notes” From Docs Opposed to ObaCare

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This came to us from Pastor Max Sanchez.

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Big Government Wants To Know: Do US Corporations Pay Their “Fair Share?”

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And we want to know who the profits belong to?  According to some who visit this blog, we are not wise enough to determine at this point, but we do believe the profits after fair taxes paid to the US Government, should accrue to the corporations.  Let us see what Big Government via Ben Shapiro has to say:

As usual, the left is wondering whether corporations pay their “fair share.”  This time, it seems they may have a point.  As Time magazine reported yesterday, a recent Wall Street Journal study of Congressional Budget Office statistics showed that American corporations paid an effective tax rate of 12.1% last year.  That’s the lowest number in four decades, despite a nominal tax rate that runs 35%, second only to Japan’s 39.5%; if you include state corporate taxes, America is now number one in the world.

Now, focus your eyes on the last link in the above quoted paragraph.  Click on the link, read the material and then come back.  Perhaps it was not what you expected; perhaps you were already well versed on the information found in the linked article.  How about this then from Shapiro’s article:

So why the low effective tax rate?  According to both the Journal and Time, it’s due to a corporate tax break set into the stimulus package, which allowed corporations to use an accounting trick: they could take write-offs on capital investments all at once rather than over time.  Typically, you take a tax write-off as the value of a good depreciates – if you buy a computer, it loses value over time, and you write that in your tax returns.  Under the stimulus package, you were allowed to basically write off the whole purchase.  The result was huge write-offs for corporations.

Now, normally, this wouldn’t be a bad thing.

We’d expect corporations to take that money and dump it back into the economy by hiring and producing new products.  But that hasn’t happened – largely because this is a tax break rather than a permanent tax situation.  In other words, at some point, we’re going to go back to the old system, taxes are going to hike, and the corporations are saving up for a rainy day.

Pay attention to a few key phrases or words in the two paragraphs above:

  1. stimulus write-offs
  2. all at once
  3. result was huge write-offs
  4. all at once
  5. normally not a bad thing
  6. we would expect corporations to dump the money back into economy by hiring and producing new products
  7. that hasn’t happened because this was a tax break
  8. at some point, we’re going back to the old system, taxes will hike, and the corporations are saving up for a rainy day

Got that?  Yes I know, the short clipped phrases sound or look like a bunch of Occupiers following their cheerleaders while making silly little hand-signals.  Nevertheless, you get the idea.  I could quote the rest of the article, but then you’d be depending on me to bring the gist of the article to you.  I’d much rather have you read it for yourself.  The link is just below … enjoy.

Whose Profits — Not Yours

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Is His Mind Eager Or Merely Meager

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By Chuck Ring (GadaboutBlogalot ©2009 -2011

Quote Freely From The Article – Leave The Pseudonym Alone

Obama would be well-served to think before he or his cabinet members make announcements  which result in major impact to the citizens of this nation.  In a normal administration, or one somewhat close to normal, thinking would be a given.  But we have come to expect government by mistake with this president.  It is no surprise then that he has just reversed course on his reverse course of last week (click to read.) Here’s what The Hill and their Healthwatch Blog report in an article by Julian Pacquet:

President Obama is against repealing the health law’s long-term-care CLASS Act and might veto Republican efforts to do so, an administration official tells The Hill, despite the government’s announcement Friday that the program was dead in the water.

“We do not support repeal,” the official said Monday. “Repealing the CLASS Act isn’t necessary or productive. What we should be doing is working together to address the long-term care challenges we face in this country.”

Over the weekend, The Hill has learned, an administration official called advocates of the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act to reassure them that Obama is still committed to making the program work. That official also told advocates that widespread media reports on the program’s demise were wrong, leaving advocates scratching their heads.

It could be fun trying to figure out why the quick turn-around.  I suppose we could say that the bus ride to South Carolina as part of a campaign swing (likely on our dime) could have had something to do with the change.  I’m thinking a rough ride over bumpy highways has addled or scattered Obama or his entire administration’s  gray matter.  Remember, we just reported Secretary Sibelius’ statement on the inability to make the long-term care program work. Let’s see more of the blog:

Later in a call with reporters on Friday, an HHS official said work on the program was being suspended.

“We won’t be working further to implement the CLASS Act. … We don’t see a path forward to be able to do that,” Assistant Secretary for Aging Kathy Greenlee told reporters on Friday.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, said Monday that repealing the program would not add to the deficit, making Republican repeal efforts that much easier.

Material in the rest of the blog article adds interesting aspects about how government interprets actions taken by our government … often their interpretation or take seems like a large vat of bull butter.  Read on by clicking here.

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We All Know What Government Does With the Money

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Experiences from bank runs during the Great De...

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By Chuck Ring (GadaboutBlogalot ©2009 – 2010)

Quote Freely From The Article – Leave The Pseudonym Alone

Give them some dough and they will go … to the closest government supermarket for spending it all … with or without benefit to citizens of this country.  The foregoing should be a “truth” known to all of us — given the experience of the distant past and the recent  past.  I don’t mean to bore you with facts, but I believe the argument over whether tax increases result in deficit reduction will continue to rage whichever supposition holds true in the constant.  The folks over at The Wall Street Journal/Opinion Journal seem to have it right, while the left certainly has it wrong (I believe.)  Let’s look at some of the reason according to Stephen Moore and Richard Vedder.  Those reasons beyond ordinary human nature to disregard caution and to throw dollars to the wind:

The draft recommendations of the president’s commission on deficit reduction call for closing popular tax deductions, higher gas taxes and other revenue raisers to drive tax collections up to 21% of GDP from the historical norm of about 18.5%. Another plan, proposed last week by commission member and former Congressional Budget Office director Alice Rivlin, would impose a 6.5% national sales tax on consumers.

The claim here, echoed by endless purveyors of conventional wisdom in Washington, is that these added revenues—potentially a half-trillion dollars a year—will be used to reduce the $8 trillion to $10 trillion deficits in the coming decade. If history is any guide, however, that won’t happen. Instead, Congress will simply spend the money.

Look, these fellows aren’t country-fried (not countrified, pun intended) uneducated yokels, and one of them, along with an associate, has been quite successful in proving what they say about raising taxes and a coinciding increase in spending to an amount over the raise in taxes.  And, they have consistently demonstrated the results over a period of years:

In the late 1980s, one of us, Richard Vedder, and Lowell Gallaway of Ohio University co-authored a often-cited research paper for the congressional Joint Economic Committee (known as the $1.58 study) that found that every new dollar of new taxes led to more than one dollar of new spending by Congress. Subsequent revisions of the study over the next decade found similar results.

We’ve updated the research. Using standard statistical analyses that introduce variables to control for business-cycle fluctuations, wars and inflation, we found that over the entire post World War II era through 2009 each dollar of new tax revenue was associated with $1.17 of new spending. Politicians spend the money as fast as it comes in—and a little bit more.

The rest of the story is more of the same and I believe you’ll get more out of it if you read the complete article for yourself.  Be sure to follow any links posted below and come back and post as you please.  Here is the link to the complete article  … CLICK

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