A Senate Budget at Last
March 13 | Posted by mrossol | The Left=:) Nice to see the D* trying to ‘save face’…
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By STEPHEN MOORE
Forget all the bluster over the Paul Ryan House budget released Tuesday. The big budget play is in the Senate on Wednesday. Budget Committee chairman Patty Murray of Washington will present the details of the Senate Democrat budget blueprint. If she can pass it, this will be the first budget reported out of the Senate in four years. We hear Ms. Murray has the votes to sprint the document through the Budget Committee and then expect a brawl next week as it arrives on the Senate floor.
The Democratic budget is expected to call for $975 billion in higher taxes over the next decade, matched with an equal amount of spending cuts. Our Senate sources tell us Ms. Murray will pull a full court press to rally the bill to a narrow victory, though no Senate Republican is expected to vote “aye.” This means Ms. Murray—along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid—will have to cajole red state Democrats to jump off this giant tax increase ledge. Keep an eye on how Mark Begich of Alaska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mark Warner of Virginia and Mark Pryor of Arkansas vote. None of them are happy campers right now.
Democrats will try to pitch the tax hike as “a balanced approach,” with equal taxes and spending cuts. This could be a tough sell because the four big entitlements—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and ObamaCare—don’t get cut a dime, according to those who have seen the document. The plan also calls for another jobs “stimulus” spending plan with $100 billion for infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the spin about “balance” has so agitated Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, that he has issued a rebuttal report calling the Democratic budget “flawed and dangerous.” He complains that the Democrats don’t include “any of the ObamaCare spending increases or tax hikes or the spending blitz before 2010.” In other words, it ignores $890 billion of new ObamaCare spending, a half-trillion of stimulus spending and just over $1 trillion in tax hikes. Ms. Murray’s deficit reduction is half as large as Paul Ryan’s.
Mr. Reid is tired of Republicans skewering him for not passing a budget in more than 1,300 days. He’s gambling that the voters want higher taxes on oil and gas companies and corporate jets. Maybe he’s right, but if he isn’t, the vote for this liberal budget may cost Democrats the Senate in 2014.
Political Diary: A Senate Budget at Last.
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