Part of our core mission? Exposing the Left's blatant hypocrisy. Help us continue the fight and support the 2024 Patriots' Day Campaign now.

October 29, 2015

This Is the Worst Budget Deal GOP Has Negotiated Since George H.W. Bush Violated No New Taxes Pledge

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.

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.

Here are some of the fiscal facts that make this such a betrayal. A Heritage Foundation analysis finds that federal spending in 2016 was already expected to climb by more than $200 billion. This was to be a 5 percent rise in outlays in a year when inflation is barely above zero.

Under this budget deal, the spending caps rise by an extra $80 billion over two years, the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) slush fund receives another $147 billion in “emergency spending,” and the debt limit is suspended through March 15, 2017.

So now we are going to see a $430 billion hike in spending in 2016. That’s close to a12 percent spending spree.

In addition to this, discretionary spending increases are evenly split between defense and nondefense programs. It raises the fiscal year 2016 defense cap to $548.1 billion from $523 billion, and it raises the fiscal year 2016 nondefense cap to $518.5 billion from $493.5 billion

If this goes through, the caps and sequester are dead. All fiscal discipline is tossed out the window. House Speaker John Boehner has negotiated away his greatest legacy: the 2011 Budget Control Act. He said he was going to “clean out the stables” but instead he left a giant mess for incoming speaker Paul Ryan.

Obama says this will mean entitlement reforms, but those are long term and minor.

These are certainly worth doing, but not in exchange for giving up fiscal discipline and $300 billion in additional spending. In return for this short-term spending blow out, the deal provides several obscure promises of future cuts in entitlements such as auctioning off portions of the federal broadcast spectrum, and extending the sequester on Medicare and certain other mandatory spending programs by one year. They’re also planning to sell crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the rate of 5 million barrels a year starting in fiscal year 2018, rising to 10 million barrels from 2023-2025, which makes no sense because the price of oil is so low. They are going to buy high and sell low.

Worst of all is the rise in the debt ceiling with no conditions attached. There are no spending reforms, no program eliminations, no new caps to stop the blizzard of borrowing that has lifted the debt ceiling into the near $20 trillion stratosphere.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew urged this outcome saying it is a way to “honor our financial obligations.” But he doesn’t get it: Washington incurs too many financial obligations which is how this crisis has led us to the edge of a fiscal abyss.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is a happy camper today and so are almost all of her supporters. They won a big victory and Republicans who back it are fiscal frauds. It should be killed and Paul Ryan should start over.


Republished from The Daily Signal.

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.