The GOP's Budget Joke: Who's Laughing? | National Catholic Reporter

The GOP's Budget Joke: Who's Laughing? | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: The House GOP is perfect - perfect in its reflection of their priorities and expectations, including and especially about the poor - who they feel will be empowered to seek work and the benefits that go with it. Of course, to paraphrase Bruce Bartlett's earlier Rolling Stone quote - where are the feckin jobs?



Former CBO Director, Republic Douglass Holz-Eakin used to sound the alarm on the need to control medical entitlements in order to have any kind of decent discretionary spending program. Obamacare has realized these savings and will continue to - oddly using a framework developed by the conservative Heritage Institute. The only reason to gut Obamacare, aside from eventually repealing the VAT like unearned income taxes on the rich is to go forward with such cuts



Fortunately, if you can call it that - the repeal of Obamacare takes more than a budget resolution, especially one passed by a single House (the GOP members of each House so far do not agree), it takes a law and in the Senate, a law that cuts revenue requires sixy votes, which do not exist in the Senate Republican caucus. Further, the resolution need not pass at all. The Budget Control Act contains spending caps that serve the function of a Section 302 Budget Act allocation between the Appropriations Subcommittees. (That is correct, all that noise about Obama not passing a budget was a lie). Of course, we will now have a House Mark, the Senate Mark and the Law. The Law wins unless agreement can be reached - and even then Obama has a veto. I suspect some confrontation in the Fall of this year (but not the next and no entitlement cuts - which can safely be vetoed with current law remaining in place.

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