tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7895164153505105997.post4489826590271418050..comments2024-01-17T00:45:37.075-08:00Comments on Bud Meyers: Hillary Clinton just Reneged on Promise not to Raise TaxesBud Meyershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02065020063363023395noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7895164153505105997.post-30128340143509415702016-02-08T07:28:53.137-08:002016-02-08T07:28:53.137-08:00UPDATE from the L.A. Times 2 hours ago (regarding ...UPDATE from the L.A. Times 2 hours ago (regarding Obama's new budget proposal):<br /><br />In case it wasn't clear enough, here's what House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) said about the decision not to hold a hearing:<br /><br />"Nothing in the president's prior budgets — none of which have ever balanced — has shown that the Obama Administration has any real interest in actually solving our fiscal challenges or saving critical programs like Medicare and Social Security from insolvency. Rather than spend time on a proposal that, if anything like this Administration's previous budgets, will double down on the same failed policies that have led to the worst economic recovery in modern times, Congress should continue our work on building a budget that balances and that will foster a healthy economy."<br /><br />...If you exclude the Social Security Trust Fund, Congress has been running deficits since the Eisenhower administration. While Price proposed a budget last year that laid out a path to balance, he didn't take the steps he could have taken to push Congress down that road — for example, by calling for a budget "reconciliation" bill that would have limited spending on such popular but costly programs as Medicare.<br /><br />... The only reconciliation bill the latest Congress has considered was a purely political gesture that would have repealed major tenets of Obamacare and blocked federal funding for Planned Parenthood. That required no display of political courage on the GOP's part, unlike a bill to turn Medicare into a voucher program — an idea that's integral to the House GOP's previous multiyear plans to balance the budget. Oh, and by the way, Price's budget last year would have made it harder to save the Social Security Disability Income trust fund from insolvency. That's not to say Obama's budget proposals have been more fiscally responsible. The president has failed year after year to lay out a path to budgetary sustainability or a solution to the long-term problems posed by Medicare and other federal health programs. <br /><br />... A deal struck last year between congressional leaders and the White House sets the spending levels for fiscal 2017, as well as deciding how the pot will be divided between defense and non-defense programs.<br /><br />http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-obama-budget-no-hearing-congress-20160205-story.html<br />Bud Meyershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02065020063363023395noreply@blogger.com