Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Spend Spend Spend

 
AFFORDABLE CARE ACT:
The law is still funded, but there's no new money for it. There's also no new ACA-related funding for the Internal Revenue Service and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the two agencies most responsible for implementing the law.

IMMIGRATION:
The bill only funds the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees most immigration policy, until February. But negotiators gave new money for immigration programs at other federal agencies. There's $948 million for the Department of Health and Human Service's unaccompanied children program -- an $80 million increase.

LIGHT BULBS:
The bill once again prohibits new standards that would ban the use of cheaper, less energy efficient incandescent bulbs. The proposal was first introduced and set in motion by the Bush administration, but the Obama White House allowed the change to continue, despite sustained consumer demand for older bulbs.

POTATOES:
White potatoes, to be exact. The Women, Infants and Children program that provides food aid to low-income families would receive $6.6 billion, a $93 million cut from the last fiscal year. But the program will be required to ensure that "all varieties of fresh vegetables, including white potatoes, are eligible for purchase" through the program, said Republicans. The change is a big victory for the potato lobby, which has long fought to be part of the food assistance program.

SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THE MILITARY:
There's $257 million for the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response programs, including $25 million more to expand the Sexual Assault Victims’ Counsel program.

WOLVES:
Well, only if you're attacked. There's $1 million in the bill "to compensate ranchers for livestock killed by wolves."

18 comments:

ricpic said...

Dear Base,

Tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll fight amnesty. Today? Today we'll fund it. Sorry suckers, that's how we roll.

Love ya,
The Elephant Establishment

P.S. Keep those contributions coming in because in 2016 when we take the White House THEN we'll keep our promises. All of them. Really. Wink Wink.

AllenS said...

I so hoped that we'd be able to get rid of the RINOs, but it's not looking too good.

Republicans are just as guilty about this massive debt we've run up as the Democrats.

Rabel said...

Well, they got the potato thing right.

Aridog said...

The got the wolf thing right as well. In most states ranchers and farmers have the right to kill livestock predators themselves. It is a boundary zone issue, frequently on federal grazing lands...e.g., both sides have "rights' to be there.

The likely hood of being attacked by a wolf in the wild is so minimal as to be non-existent. The only cases (1 or 2 in our entire history) have been in boundary areas where garbage dumps became a food source...just like bears. The one where a body was dragged down to a lakeside was typical brown bear behavior, but it was more fun to blame wolves, who may have visited the carcass after the attack. In boundary areas it is just plain good sense to not create attractions for predators, no more than a horseman, which I have been, leaves to top off his grain bin because he's ignorant of rats.

Aridog said...

One possible positive of this big lump CR is that now there is no excuse to not receive the executive budget, prepared in February, received by Congress in April for mark up, and final vote and closure by 01 Oct 2015...the beginning of fiscal year 2016. All they need to do is: Just. Do. It.

If the conglomeration of RINOs, conservatives, moderates, et al in power after 01 January can manage this I will think better of all of them...it will be the first legitimate annual budget in over 6 years.

Continuing to operate on CR's permits further fraud, waste, and abuse due to the rules governing CR's. A budget taken and evaluated as a whole, then passed, is far preferable. CR's allow piecemeal tinkering...and it always happens under CR's.

bagoh20 said...

I think it's at least a small improvement so far, and you have to let the new Repubs get in before we will know how much of a RHINO herd it is.

You can't roller skate in rhino herd.
You can't roller skate in rhino herd.
You can't roller skate in rhino herd,
but if have a Tea Party I'll be there too.

Methadras said...

Well, I can't really say I didn't tell you so, but I did. So there.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

So are there any criticisms as specific as the listed items? I mean, I assume if you're going to note the monies going to fight sexual assault, you might have something to say about why it's good or bad. But other than that, yeah, I get it. The government both receives revenue and spends it. What a shock, right? Something the much-greater-than-these-numbers DOD's budget never does.

Rabel said...

Hey Ritmo,

Speaking of sexual assault, the Washington Post put out another story today about the UVA gang rape which pretty much tied Rolling Stone and "Jackie" down to a table and raped them both with a broomstick. Sideways.

How sad.

bagoh20 said...

To provide some kind of answer to your question, Ritmo, you have to understand what the conservative or libertarian sees in these expenditures. We have seen over and over how these huge sums of tax money aimed at noble causes never really get there or are so foolishly used that they do no good or often more harm. Then that failure is a call and justification to spend even more on the same cause, which then just repeats and expands the waste.

The leftist mind and that of many many centrists is naive or in denial about this, and the politicians, left and right, feed on that and exploit it for power and wealth, with some even fooling themselves into buying their own bullshit. It is intoxicating to believe you are saving mankind with your vote in between golf outings .

We have a hard time trusting that the money will do any good, and we know we could spend it ourselves better, if we just got to keep it. We are optimistic about free people using their hard earned resources and not so about politicians using someone elses. They just aren't smart enough, honest enough, noble enough, nor invested enough. It's just human nature.

Rabel said...

Back to Ritmo's challenge, one thing is a change they made in the Dodd-Frank banking regulations.

It took me a good hour hour just to figure out what it was. It's complicated but will result in a tiny financial benefit to manufacturers of food and other commodities and the banks which provide them with financial services while adding a tiny increase in the risk of a major banking failure and it has, in another form, already been put into place by recent administrative rulings by U.S. banking regulators.

It's a big bowl of nothing but because it can be presented as favorable to Wall Street, Lizzie Warren is once again on the warpath as she sees it as an issue which will aid her Presidential campaign.

The reporting, considering the complexity, should be interesting to follow

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

I see the connies are getting angry and rattled again:

1. UVA has nothing to do with the scourge of military rape and how it has been appallingly treated/mistreated.

2. It's much easier to bitch about piddly sums in the millions than to do something about those hundreds of billions wasted in entitlement and Mid-East imperial welfare outreach, or as X-Ray calls it, "defense". I guess those "results-oriented" conservative impulses don't extend to the results achieved from looking at where you can find the greater savings.

3. Far be it from me to know the value of my own ass. I guess I'm less into male posteriors than X-Ray is, let alone knowing how much money to make selling them.

Aridog said...

Bagoh20 said ...

We have seen over and over how these huge sums of tax money aimed at noble causes never really get there or are so foolishly used that they do no good or often more harm.

Good one & on the money, pun intended. You sound like me vis a vis federal spending foibles...almost sounds like you've been a military "Fed" at some point in time.

Aridog said...

My thinking is still for the Repubs of all stripes to give the administration and opposition the omnibus CR that the President will sign. It takes away one bone of contention and opens the door for a real annual budget out of Congress.

Further, if she is brought up for nomination in the lame duck term, confirm Loretta Lynch as Attorney General with a bipartisan vote of something like 80-20...she will be in office, potentially, for less than 2 years. Mainly anyone at all is better than Eric Holder. Anyone...and it again takes away another whizzing contest target...and Obama can't claim the Repubs are doping nothing.

When January arrives, be strategically smart...create bills that Obama may not want to sign, but has to do so. In short, after 01 Jan take the initiative and and let Obama make a fool of himself....and further hurt Democratic chances in 2016.

Titus said...

No legal pot in DC!

Aridog said...

For the record, for those who've not read much of my past comments...I despise RINOs, mainly because in Michigan, until very recently, the only difference between Repubs and Dems was their lapel pins.

The worst tax mad governor ever here who implemented an income tax double the rate of a temporary one we had, AND worse yet, a VAT tax that was *closeted* and had no pass through credits (in effect a tax on labor) nor any annotation on any receipt you got of how much VAT was applied (why bother, no pass through mechanism?) ... very unlike Canada. The governor was Republican Bill Milliken, our longest serving governor...who in 2004 endorsed John Kerry for President.

Aridog said...

Titus...technically there is no "legal pot" anywhere in the US under federal law. Eventually it will make for a very humorous and amusing federal case.

Titus said...

Are any of you awhere of the contract the "academic" torture psycholigists received from the federal government? And one of them is from UPenn-somewhat elite. No they didn't get 400k that the Gruber elitist received. They actually received over hundreds of millions of dollars-from the federal government. I am sorry but both parties are gross.

The federal government is nasty-look to the states for leadership and creativity. See Mass-we started gay marriage and look how that worked out! And yes, Wiscosin, for limiting bargaining rights-which I am all for! Government employees are gross too!

See, I am what you would call bi. Lower taxes, less spending, and limited government-in all facets!

I am also "upper class"-my hubby and my total income, with stock and bonus is over 700k. But we work hard for that income-we are available 24 hours a day for international calls.

BUT, we also interact daily with those in the 60k-70k range...but they are usually MFA and Creative Studies degrees, who are Trust Fund Babies.

Although, the favorite person in my company is a "Revere Header" Receptionist, who has big hair, and actually writes her checks out in the cafeteria during the breaks. She recently purchased and iPhone 6 recently and I was so excited for her!

That's the Wisconsin Blue Collar in me, who actually went to Ivy, but never felt accepted, because everyone else looked down upon me as a piece of shit. I was like 1% of the campus-the rest were rich-republican or demoract. But, I won them over with Wit, Humor, Style and Fun