The speaker is a Republican, and he is talking correctly about the first four years of the Bush Jr. presidency.
The discrepancy refers to a claim made by the Obama administration about one benefit of Obamacare, compared to the reality of what has actually happened.
It is time to repeal this disaster of a law. We should also fire the politicians who foisted it on us.
Our federal government at work: The federal judges in the Ninth Circuit plan to hold a conference in Hawaii this August that could cost $1 million or more, and will include a golf tournament, a tennis tournament, an ice cream social, a garden tour, sport fishing, yoga, surfing lessons, and Zumba dancing lessons.
Though many of these recreational events are supposingly not being paid for by government funds, there is something rotten here, without doubt. I’ve been to too many of these kinds of conferences as a journalist, and saw millions wasted for the entertainment of government employees. And in this case, the government is getting them to Hawaii.
Pitiful: Only 65% of the political class and only 61% of Democrats are aware that federal spending has gone up in the past ten years.
Interestingly, 85% of the general public knows this basic fact, which might explain why the intellectual elites of our country — from both parties — are continually being blindsided by the rise of the tea party movement and its continued success in elections.
Fiddling away: The Senate today rejected President Obama’s proposed budget 99-0.
Too bad Harry Reid won’t offer up a budget of his own. The only reason this got voted on at all was that the Republicans forced a vote.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government fell another several billion dollars into debt even as the vote was being taken.
Our government in action: An NIH nationwide study to track hundreds of thousands of children from birth to age 21 is wracked with budget and management problems.
All told, this study has already cost the taxpayers almost a billion dollars for the enrollment of only 4,000 children, not the 100,000 envisioned. That’s about $250,000 per child, an amount that seems incredibly high.
In addition to the above problems, it appears there are scientific ones as well:
» Read more
Our government at work: The GAO has done a study of a study about studies.
The day of reckoning looms: The federal government is liable for approximately $850 billion in student loans, and the number of borrowers defaulting on these loans is on the rise.
Republican space socialism update.
Simberg summarizes well the foolishness coming from Congress when it comes to budgeting NASA and commercial space.
A trend, not a fluke: Indiana Republicans have dumped incumbent Senator Richard Lugar for a tea party favorite.
In related news, a prison inmate has gotten the highest percentage of votes, 40 percent, of any candidate in any previous state primary against Barack Obama.
Washington politicians had better stop ignoring the fiscal concerns of the tea party. The federal budget has got to be brought under control.
Theater: The White House today threatened to veto the House budget because of NOAA and NASA trims.
The financial foolishness in Congress, by Republicans this time, continues. In making its budget recommendations for NASA, the report [pdf] of the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee also demands that NASA immediately choose one commercial company for its commercial space program. (Hat tip to Clark Lindsey for spotting this.)
The number of ways this action is counter-productive almost can’t be counted.
» Read more
The day of reckoning looms: A new official report released yesterday predicts that Social Security will run out of money three years earlier than previously predicted.
Senate Democrats don’t even bother to show up for a budget meeting called by their own leader.
Since the year 2009, not one single Democrat or Democrat-aligned member of the United States Senate has voted “yes” on any budget. They’ve refused to present their own ideas, of course, but they’ve also unanimously voted down every last alternative, from both Republicans and their own party’s president. Think about that.
More news from commercial space: Assuming it gets the necessary funds, Boeing anticipates flight tests of its CST-100 reusable manned capsule by 2016.
This story is part of the on-going lobbying effort to convince the Luddites in Congress to subsidize the new commercial space companies. To get some context, even if Congress gives NASA all of the money it has requested for this program, the annual cost will still be less than a third of the NASA-built Space Launch System, and will get us four different ways to get humans and cargo into orbit, and do it in far less time.
The day of reckoning looms: The credit rating of the United States government has been downgraded again.
Modern doublethink: The Obama administration’s treasury secretary admitted Wednesday that the federal government’s debt is “unsustainable,” but then added that solving the problem shouldn’t be a top priority, because the government still needs to “do things.”
Geithner’s refusal to confront what he admits is a looming disaster illustrates for all to see the normal operating policies of this administration.
Our government at work: The chief of the General Services Administration has resigned and two of her top deputies have been fired for organizing an excessively expensive training conference at a luxury hotel.
Organizers spent $835,000 on the event, which was attended by 300 employees. The expenses included $147,000 in airfare and lodging at the hotel for six planning trips by a team of organizers. Among the other expenses were $3,200 for a mind reader; $6,300 on commemorative coin set displayed in velvet boxes and $75,000 on a training exercise to build a bicycle. [emphasis mine]
They made six separate trips to this Las Vegas hotel in order to plan a four-day conference?
The sad part is that this kind of spending abuse is actually quite normal in the federal government. I’ve seen it at multiple science conferences and press conferences. Lots of free food, fancy digs at cool locations. And all paid for by the taxpayer.
The House today passed the Republican 2013 budget, 228-191.
Ten Republicans voted no. All Democrats voted no.
Though this budget might not be perfect, at least it makes an effort to face the budget situation. Note also that the Democrats have now rejected their own President’s budget as well as the Republican budget. In addition, the Democratic leadership in the Democratically-controlled Senate has already said they won’t pass a budget this year, the fourth year in a row.
The country is sinking in debt caused by the federal government. It behooves these elected officials to deal with it. That the Democrats won’t tells us much about their lack of qualifications for office.
The House today rejected Obama’s proposed budget for 2013 by a vote of 414 to 0.
We must all remember this vote when the Democrats demonize any future budget proposals by the Republicans. The above vote was very bipartisan. Even the Democrats rejected Obama’s proposal.
A sign of the budgetary times: The Department of Energy has scrapped plans to build a neutrino experiment, costing $1.5 billion, in the now-closed Homestake gold mine in South Dakota.
Breaking news! The federal debt has increased more during Obama’s three years in office than it did during Bush’s eight year presidency.
Both Presidents spent uncontrollably. Obama has just been the most uncontrollable of all, at least up to now.
New budget estimates by the Congressional Budget Office say that the proposed 2013 Obama budget will increase the federal debt by $3.5 trillion.
Finding out what’s in it: New numbers released today from the Congressional Budget Office estimate that the cost of Obamacare over the next decade will be $1.76 trillion, not $940 billion as predicted by the Democrats who passed it.
The only word I can think of that aptly describes the people who pushed this law on us is incompetence. That any rational person would consider voting for these people again boggles the mind.
The Senate’s tea party caucus yesterday proposed a budget plan aimed at balancing the federal budget by 2017.
The news article gives a broad outline of the plan, including some basic changes to several entitlement programs, a freezing of government spending at 2008 levels, and the elimination of four government agencies and the privatization of the TSA. A detailed look will probably find that some of these proposals are poorly thought out or impractical. However, at least these senators are proposing something, unlike the Democrats, who in the Senate have not even introduced a budget for more than three years.
People could live with big. It’s too big that’s getting to them. Under the Obama presidency, something outside the norm happened. Amid ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, the $800 billion stimulus injection and a federal spending boom, something snapped in the steady-state relationship between many citizens and Washington. A lot of people feel the government, finally, is really starting to crowd them. It has made them uneasy. For the Santorum audience, the call-and-response word to push back against the unease is “freedom.”
