There are a few headlines trying desperately to portray some sense of major conflict between House Democrats and the Obama administration on the budget. The attempted narrative is to portray Democrats as conservatives reacting against excess spending from the Obama administration. For example, here is how the Washington Post describes it in their headline:
House Democrats Slash More Than $100B From Obama's Plan
However, this is a really flimsy, concern troll narrative. Once you read further, all indications are that the House blueprint has actually increased non-bailout public spending, yet still reduced deficit projections and the possibility for conflict over, President Obama's budget. In the extended entry, I explain how
Three notable aspects of the House budget blueprint:
New bailouts really dead: First, the entire spending difference between the House and Obama budget blueprints is the final removal of new bailout funds:
It [the House budget blueprint] did not include any placeholder for further money for the financial bailout, whereas Obama requested $125 billion for 2010.
The Obama administration had originally included $125 billion for new bailout money in 2010 (actually, the first $125 billion of what would eventually be $250 billion to cover projected losses on toxic asset investments of $750 billion). If that $125 billion has been removed, but the House plan is still only $100 billion smaller than the Obama blueprint, that makes the non-bailout portions of the House blueprint about $25 billion larger than the Obama blueprint. No more bailouts, and slightly more public spending, sounds great to me.
It [the House budget blueprint] also reduces tax cut proposals from Obama's budget to $613 billion from almost $804 billion from 2009 to 2014.
Now, I am not categorically opposed to tax cuts. Income tax reduction for the bottom 95% of earners is a great idea that I have supported for a decade. Tax incentives for new energy production are also often necessary to help with our shift to a new energy economy. However, if we are looking to cut deficit projections, and if we aren't going to cut military spending just yet, reducing tax cuts seems like a pretty darn good idea right now.
Health care and education will require only 50 Senate votes: The best part of the House budget blueprint is that it will force the Senate to give an "up or down vote" on the big health care investments in the budget:
Unlike the Senate, the House is proposing to use a procedural shortcut to push Obama's health-care and education proposals through the Senate without Republican votes.
Since they control the start of the budget process, I'm pretty sure the House can get away with this, too. So, it looks like it will be easier to pass the major parts of the budget through Congress.
Slightly more public spending, no more bailouts, lower deficits and easier to pass. Unless I am missing something, it sounds to me like House Democrats made a good budget proposal from President Obama great.
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