Tag Archive for: federal budget

Econ Expert on the GOP’s Debt Ceiling Hand: ‘We’re Holding Four Aces’

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When members of Congress started boarding their flights home Thursday, not one of them knew how long they’d be gone. The possibility of a shorter-than-usual Memorial Day recess looms large as negotiators desperately try to hammer out a deal on the debt ceiling before June 1. “Every hour matters,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told ABC. “That’s why the White House has to become very serious about this.” To the average observer, it sounds ominous. But as Americans prep for the long weekend, plenty are wondering, how does any of this affect me?

Former congressman Dave Brat, who has a Ph.D. in economics, gets that question a lot. But first, he told “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice, it’s important to understand one thing: “It’s impossible to default.” You’ll never hear that in the mainstream media, he explained, but “we have way more money [available]. A default means you default on the U.S. Treasury Bond. If we ever defaulted on the U.S. Treasury, we’d all be fishing under a bridge with Frodo,” the dean of Liberty University’s School of Business joked. “It would be the end of Western civilization. So that’s not even in play.”

All of this hysteria, Brat says, stems from the “word games” the Left and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are playing. “What she’s talking about is paying all the bills for all Democratic spending. That may not happen, and that’s not a big deal. You just prioritize your spending in order. But we have plenty of money to pay off any interest on the debt in treasuries. And so, the American treasury holder doesn’t need to be worried about that.”

That doesn’t mean this isn’t a critical moment for our country, Brat explained. Right now, the Democratic-run Senate doesn’t have a budget plan. House Republicans do. “So all the leverage is on the Republican side right now.” And what does the GOP want? To cut spending. President Joe Biden and his party have, so far, flatly refused. But we’re on the verge of having $50 trillion dollars in debt to “hand off to the kids in 10 years,” Brat warns. With an interest rate of 5%, taxpayers are looking at $2.5 trillion a year just in interest payments. “That’s three times the U.S. military budget right now,” he emphasized, and none of it pays down the actual debt.

In other words, “there are $2 trillion deficits for the next 10 years around the necks of the kids. Everybody knows this, but the mainstream press will not cover any of [it],” Brat shook his head. To deal with that, “our friends [in the House] Freedom Caucus, who are being called every nasty word there is — ‘MAGA Republicans,’ ‘Republican extremists’ — they want to trim $4 trillion off of the $50 trillion in debt.” We’re not talking about a radical amount, he insisted. America would still be $46 trillion in debt in a decade. So it should be “an easy case to make to the American people” that we need to start trimming back.

As Hice pointed out, “We’re talking numbers that are astronomical that no one can even imagine [them].” And that’s part of the problem, Brat agreed. Another problem is that most people are too comfortable borrowing themselves. “The American consumer right now is $17 trillion in debt. Consumers have $1 trillion in credit card debt, $1.5 trillion in college loan debt. We’re in debt up to our eyeballs. And we’ve got a recession coming up, another financial crisis caused by the Federal Reserve for their mismanagement.”

By keeping the interest rate at 0% for a decade, the Fed has done the country a major disservice. [They’re] in a tough bind,” he explained, “[because] they basically want inflation, so they can pay the debt back with cheaper dollars. And so that’s where we stand.”

But this idea that we’re going to default on the total spending package, on $50 trillion, is baloney. “There’s no way,” Brat insisted. Even so, both sides need to come together on the debt ceiling, and Republicans “have the moral high ground for a change.” All they have to do is “tell the American people the basic facts, and you win.”

Changing America’s spending habits is “a hard, hard fight,” Brat agreed. “So you better fight now while we’ve got the leverage.” Remember, he went on, “Our team passed a bill. The Senate has not. Everything is on our side. Biden said. ‘I’m not going to negotiate. I don’t care’ and thumbed his nose at the whole thing. … But we need to hold strong. It’s time to take care of the American people and the kids. The liberals say they care about the kids. Fifty trillion dollars in debt means otherwise. They do not care about the kids.”

At least GOP leaders seem to understand the stakes, Hice said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a time where the Republicans [have appeared so] unified. … Literally in the hands of Republicans right now is the tool to roll back out-of-control spending.” But will Republicans hold together?

“Yeah,” Brat replied. “If they do not, they will cease to be a party,” he warned. “We’re holding four aces.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

McCarthy Proves What He’s Made Of with Gritty Budget Win

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) hasn’t had an easy path. After painstakingly working through conservatives’ gripes with House leadership this January, he finally squeaked out the votes he needed to assume the third most powerful job in Washington. But even after that chaos died down, questions loomed. Was he cut out to be speaker? Would he bring the fractious, competing corners of the GOP together? In a staring contest with Democrats, could he win? The answer, Americans learned from a hard-won victory on the budget bill, is a resounding yes.

With just two votes to spare, McCarthy accomplished something that seemed improbable even 48 hours ago: he held his fragile coalition together and passed a bill that all but forces Democrats to the negotiating table. Under the House proposal, America would not default on its loans. But there were strings attached. In exchange for raising the debt ceiling and protecting the country’s credit line, conservatives are demanding a massive overhaul of spending and deep cuts to bloated programs.

For starters, Republicans would set a $1.47 trillion limit on discretionary spending — with a 1% increase built in for each year. In a blow to the Democratic messaging machine, even the AP admits that the legislation poses no threat to Social Security and Medicare, which has been Joe Biden’s favorite scare tactic about the bill. To the cheers of most conservatives, the proposal also scoops up all of the unused COVID relief money from the series of bills passed between 2020-2022. Another way the GOP carved out savings was to roll back the $71 billion boost in IRS funding.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), all of this would make a huge difference in the country’s bleak financial picture, slashing the deficit by a whopping $4.8 trillion in a 10-year span.

Fueled by coffee and power naps, Republicans worked past 4 a.m. Wednesday to hammer out the deal. That all-nighter paid off. The bill eked through by a 217-215 margin that afternoon, putting Republicans in an unusual place — the driver’s seat.

In a triumphant press conference after the vote, McCarthy threw down the gauntlet. “We have lifted the debt ceiling, so nobody could worry about whether the debt ceiling is going to get lifted. We did it. The Democrats have not. [If] the president wants to make sure the debt ceiling is going to be lifted, sign this bill.”

Although Rules Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) made it clear that it’s “not the end of the road,” he insisted that “it’s a great personal and political victory for the speaker who got it done. He got a lot of people to vote for a debt ceiling increase who’ve never done that before.”

House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.) was equally complimentary, telling Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” that the vote was “quite honestly, another historic moment in modern times here in Congress.” “For most people, this is just another day in the saga of Washington. But … as far as I know in modern times, this has never happened before.” And one of the reasons it was possible, he said, is because conservatives put specific conditions on the speaker in January — things like single-subject bills. More debate. Free-flowing amendments. In other words, Congress is back to operating how the Founders intended, not as a graveyard of ideas where decisions were predetermined by a powerful few.

Even if you go back to the 2011 days of Cut, Cap, and Balance, Republicans never insisted on “real cuts in that first year.” But this isn’t your 2011 GOP. And while the prevailing wisdom in Washington may be that the House has to cave to Joe Biden and Senate Democrats without demanding concessions like meaningful spending reform, Perry insists, “We’re not going to cave.”

“We have a narrow majority,” he conceded, but “we have worked for months — right up until about 4:00 in the morning last night to get this to where we can pass it. And, it is the beginning of the conversation, but what it does is … it shows [Biden] that we can pass something and he has no choice except to negotiate.”

For Republicans, who only control one part of the legislature, this is a “landmark occasion,” Perry says. “We’re supposed to be in a completely defensive posture. [But] we are on offense. And I will also take some pride in this: 90% of this bill has been written by the House Freedom Caucus — and we are driving and pulling our entire conferences … to the Right, to the side of principles that [say] we cannot keep spending and bankrupting our country.”

In a movement that’s watched Republicans snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, Wednesday’s developments were groundbreaking. “I’ve watched this process for 20 years,” Perkins said. “I’ve even watched the Republicans when they were in the majority and they had the numbers. … But the reality is, even when Republicans had a large margin to work with, they never ever drove a stake in the ground and stood on principle. That is a sea change here in Washington, D.C.”

And McCarthy’s week-long speaker drama is a big reason why. Even then, FRC believed Republicans — and the speaker in particular — would emerge stronger from that emotional debate. It was there that the California leader proved he was willing to listen, to compromise, and to pursue the tough changes voters demanded. Now, Perkins insisted, we’ve had time to see that McCarthy was sincere. “We’ve seen a succession of decisions that the speaker has made. He’s stuck to his word. … And Republicans have [also] kept their word and done exactly what they said they were going to do when they elected this speaker.” So Democrats need to realize, he warned, “you guys aren’t going to cave.”

Already, that message seems to be sinking in. Far-left senators like Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) are calling on Biden to negotiate — and negotiate now. Moderate Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) agreed, pointing out, McCarthy’s bill is the “only bill actually moving through Congress that would prevent default.”

As NRO’s Noah Rothman explains, “The White House and Senate Democrats have so far operated on the assumption that Republicans were too disunited to be worth negotiating with.” Now, the script has flipped. “And with the Republican position strengthening and Democrats’ eroding, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before the White House consents to good-faith negotiations with their Republican counterparts. The sooner, the better.”

In the meantime, Perry has a message for those “weak-kneed senators over there that always work with the Democrats: … You need to stick with your Republican colleagues [and] do the work of the American people. … There’s a fighting spirit in this House of Representatives,” he insisted, “but … we do expect our senators to stand up and stand for us.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden Proposes Federally Regulated ‘Universal Pre-K’ for Children as Young as 3

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President Joe Biden’s $6.9 trillion proposed budget would have the hand of the government rock the cradle by creating a federally regulated, universal pre-K program for children as young as three.

Altogether, President Biden would spend more than half-a-trillion dollars over the next 10 years to allow all American preschoolers to spend their formative years in a taxpayer-funded day care program. The president’s proposed 2024 budget includes billions of dollars to create “high-quality, universal, free preschool” for “all of the approximately four million four-year-old children in” the United States. Each of the 50 states may then “expand preschool to three-year-olds after preschool is available to all four-year-olds.”

The eventual program, which would see children raised anywhere “from public schools to child care providers to Head Start,” would be administered by the Department of Education in conjunction with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“The estimated cost of these child care and preschool investments is $600 billion over 10 years,” the budget proposal states.

Parents have already expressed concerns about the curriculum that might be taught in government-administered preschool programs.

“While the creation of universal pre-K may seem benevolent, the fact that so many schools now teach age-inappropriate lessons on race and sex raises red flags that such a program would simply allow administrators access to children at even younger and more vulnerable ages,” said Nicki Neily, the president of the education watchdog group Parents Defending Education. “It’s time to stop obsessing over ‘equity’ and ‘diversity’ in education and instead return to teaching students a solid core curriculum that will give them the skills they need to thrive later in life.”

These worries are amplified by the tender age of the children targeted by the Biden administration, which threatened to withhold federal funding from schools that do not allow males who identify as transgender to have access to female restrooms, bathrooms, and intimate areas.

“Between 15 to 18 months of age is when most children start forming their worldview,” explained George Barna, describing his research at Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center, on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” in 2022. “By the age of 13, it’s almost completely in place.”

“A child needs a worldview, so if we don’t help them develop it,” said Barna, “somebody else will.”

Government agencies have quietly begun normalizing the notion of federal bureaucracies overseeing the childrearing of infants by changing the educational nomenclature from “k-12” (kindergarten through high school) to “p-12.”

The administration says it funds government-run childrearing programs so parents can “go to work or pursue training with the peace of mind that their children are being set up for a lifetime of success.” Yet decades of social science conclusively shows children raised by their own parents have the best life outcomes, while children raised in preschools suffer a variety of physical and emotional harms.

“In August 2013, Vanderbilt University released an evaluation demonstrating that children who went through Tennessee’s Voluntary Pre-K (TN-VPK) Program actually performed worse on cognitive tasks at the end of first grade than did the control group,” noted Lindsay Burke, an expert on the topic at the Heritage Foundation. Children who attended Quebec’s government-funded universal pre-K program were 4.6% more likely to be convicted of a crime, and 17% more likely to be convicted of a drug crime. Overall, these Canadian children experienced “worse health, lower life satisfaction and higher crime rates later in life.”

Nearly two-thirds of children who attended day care had higher cortisol levels than children at home. “For girls, the cortisol rise was associated with anxious, vigilant behavior, while for boys the rise was associated with angry, aggressive behavior,” researchers noted.

Biden’s proposed budget offers universal pre-K with the hope that children who take them will “enter kindergarten ready to succeed.” But a 2003 study found, “The more time children spent in any of a variety of nonmaternal care arrangements across the first 4.5 years of life, the more externalizing problems and conflict with adults they manifested at 54 months of age and in kindergarten, as reported by mothers, caregivers, and teachers.”

It is unclear there is burning desire for such programs. Over decades of conducing public polls, Gallup reports that it has “consistently found that the majority of working mothers would prefer to stay at home and take care of their house and family.” They work out of financial considerations, pollsters say.

Women are far more likely than men to say they want to work remotely from a home office. Women consistently say they place their highest value on flexible working conditions, which allow them to be home when their children are toddlers, or when they arrive home from school.

Nonetheless, Biden’s budget would boost Head Start funding by $1.1 billion to $13.1 billion. It also includes $500 million for the Education Department “to create or expand free, high-quality preschool in school or community-based settings” for children eligible to attend low-income schools.

Universal pre-K has remained a goal of the Democratic Party for at least a decade. President Barack Obama in his 2013 State of the Union address demanded Congress “do what works” by “working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America.” Obama referred to universal pre-K in the nation’s first-ever report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2010, noting that he used stimulus funds to “promote high-quality early childhood education.” His Department of Education would “provide low-income students and students of color with increased access to early learning and education,” the report added.

However, a previous federal program known as Head Start, which was designed to improve the readiness of low-income children for kindergarten, was found to be a failure. A report from Obama’s own HHS noted that the program “had little to no positive effects for children who were granted access.”

More than a decade into the new millennium, Democratic bureaucrats still see value in having the government oversee the raising of young children. Universal pre-K will “pay dividends for generations to come,” said Cecilia Rouse, chair of the Biden’s White House Council of Economic Advisers this week.

The budget proposal stands little chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where all spending bills must originate under the Constitution.

“President Biden’s newly unveiled budget would waste hard-earned taxpayer dollars on a radical leftist agenda, drive us deeper into debt, and raise taxes on a fragile economy,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.). “Right now, when Americans desperately need a return to economic stability, Biden’s budget proposal fails to recognize the nation’s fiscal crisis.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL) Votes for the Boehner-Obama Budget Busting Deal

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Florida District 16 U.S. Representative Vern Buchanan was one of 79 Republicans to vote for the Boehner-Obama budget busting deal. It is now the Buchanan-Boehner-Obama budget.

When Vern Buchanan first ran for Congress he vowed to reduce the federal budget deficits and called for a Constitutional balanced budget amendment. In a June 2015 press release Rep. Buchanan called balancing the budget “an urgent priority”. Buchanan stated:

“[T]he United States can no longer afford to ignore its out-of-control spending problem…We’re going broke, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, unless we change what we’re doing. We need a standard and I think that standard is a Constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment– Florida balances the budget every year, we make the tough choices…

It’s immoral what we’re passing on to our kids and grandkids. I have a granddaughter and a grandson on the way and I feel horrible about what’s taking place up here. “

[Emphasis added]

Given all of his rhetoric he still voted, in his own words “immorally” and against the best interests of his children grandchildren and ours, for Obama’s budget.

Melissa Quinn from the Daily Signal reports:

Despite overwhelming opposition from the majority of Republicans, the House of Representatives voted to pass a two-year budget deal today that raises spending caps by $80 billion and suspends the debt limit through March 2017.

The deal passed, 266-167, with support from moderate Republicans and all but one of the Democrats. Just 79 Republicans supported it, and all of those opposing the fiscal agreement were Republicans.

[Emphasis added]

To find out how your Congressman voted on this budget deal click here.

Stephen Moore, in his op-ed column titled “This Is the Worst Budget Deal GOP Has Negotiated Since George H.W. Bush Violated No New Taxes Pledge”
writes:

Halloween is looking especially scary this year. On Monday, Republican leaders in Congress declared an unconditional fiscal surrender to President Barack Obama and the  left, negotiating a dangerous budget deal that eliminates all of the checks on Washington’s spend-and-borrow binge by breaking the budget caps, ending the sequester and raising the debt ceiling by over $1 trillion.

It’s the worst budget deal to be negotiated by the GOP since George H.W. Bush violated his no new taxes pledge in 1990 at Andrews Air Force Base.

The result of that capitulation was to make Bush a one-term president and to split the Republican party right down the middle. This deal has the same catastrophic potential.

Read more.

Citizens Against Government Waste reports:

Forty-six cents!  That’s how much of your individual income tax dollar the government squanders on wasteful spending programs.

donate

Another 31 cents goes to pay the $433 billion in annual interest on the national debt!

That leaves just 23 cents – or not quite one quarter of your tax dollar – to pay for the services that you expect from government!

 

RELATED VIDEO: Rep. Vern Buchanan on balancing the federal budget:

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Lame Ducks, Lame Deal: The Boehner-Obama Budget Plan

Boehner-Obama Budget Deal Uses Same Accounting Gimmick as Obamacare

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image of John Boehner and President Obama is by Kevin Dietsch/UPI/Newscom.