Post by Jaga on Jul 9, 2017 1:41:34 GMT -7
since he wants more money for defence from sicretiionary spending and does not touch any mandatory budget costs (SS, medicare and medicaid).
Discretionary budget goes mainly for defence anyways, if you want to improve a budget by slasking spending for envornment, energy laboratories and education, nothing would be left....
by the way, any lowering of the budget is not predicted. From Fox NEws
www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/07/08/house-republicans-stymied-in-their-efforts-to-adopt-budget.html
et’s go subterranean for a moment.
Congress doesn’t approve money annually for costly federal entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Those dollars just fly out the door automatically. It’s known as “mandatory spending.”
Now, Congress doesn’t have to spend it. Lawmakers voted decades ago against deciding each year how much money to allocate to those programs. The federal Treasury directs about 70 percent of all federal spending to that trio of entitlements. An increasingly large chunk of “mandatory” spending is interest on the debt.
The rest of the money -- about 30 percent -- constitutes “discretionary” spending.
Congress wields “discretion” over spending everything else. How much goes to the National Park Service. How much to run the Federal Reserve. How much to operate the State Department. How much it allocates to itself.
By the way, the chunk of change devoted to the legislative branch is on the rise after the shooting at the Republican congressional baseball practice. A few million more dollars are in the pipeline for security improvements and to hire additional U.S. Capitol Police officers.
So, if you truly wanted to harness federal spending and the nation’s $21 trillion debt, from which side of the ledger would you cut? From mandatory spending or discretionary spending?
“You cannot address long-term debt without looking at the mandatory side of the budget,” said White House budget Director Mick Mulvaney. “You would be hard pressed to be able to balance the budget without looking at mandatory spending.”
But that’s where the problem lies for House Budget Committee Chairwoman Diane Black, R-Tenn.
......
True budget savings would come from slashing entitlement spending.
Black and other GOPers would like to reduce $200 billion in entitlement (mandatory) spending. But a coalition of 20 moderate Republicans pushed back. They argue that Black’s plan isn’t “practical” and that they are “reticent” to vote for such a deep cut. Losing those 20 Republicans doesn’t quite kill the vote count for the budget. But it’s close.
President Trump wants to spend more on defense in this budget. Defense hawks demanded somewhere north of $640 billion for the Pentagon. Of late, the defense target has fallen between $617 and $623 billion.
____________________
he House Appropriations Committee wrote a defense spending bill totaling $658.1 billion. That’s $68.1 billion more than last year and $18.4 billion more than Trump requested. When the House Armed Services Committee wrote this year’s defense authorization bill -- which is different from the appropriations legislation -- Republican lawmakers found themselves all over the map.
Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the Armed Services panel, took note.
“We do not have $600, $700, $800, $900 billion to spend on defense unless we pretty much completely eliminate all non-defense discretionary spending, which there isn’t support for doing,” he said. “Twenty trillion dollars in debt, a $706 billion deficit, trying to find $50 billion in mandatory savings, and the majority can’t even do that, all right?”
Smith’s remark crystalizes the entire debate about the GOP attempting to complete a budget.
Discretionary budget goes mainly for defence anyways, if you want to improve a budget by slasking spending for envornment, energy laboratories and education, nothing would be left....
by the way, any lowering of the budget is not predicted. From Fox NEws
www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/07/08/house-republicans-stymied-in-their-efforts-to-adopt-budget.html
et’s go subterranean for a moment.
Congress doesn’t approve money annually for costly federal entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Those dollars just fly out the door automatically. It’s known as “mandatory spending.”
Now, Congress doesn’t have to spend it. Lawmakers voted decades ago against deciding each year how much money to allocate to those programs. The federal Treasury directs about 70 percent of all federal spending to that trio of entitlements. An increasingly large chunk of “mandatory” spending is interest on the debt.
The rest of the money -- about 30 percent -- constitutes “discretionary” spending.
Congress wields “discretion” over spending everything else. How much goes to the National Park Service. How much to run the Federal Reserve. How much to operate the State Department. How much it allocates to itself.
By the way, the chunk of change devoted to the legislative branch is on the rise after the shooting at the Republican congressional baseball practice. A few million more dollars are in the pipeline for security improvements and to hire additional U.S. Capitol Police officers.
So, if you truly wanted to harness federal spending and the nation’s $21 trillion debt, from which side of the ledger would you cut? From mandatory spending or discretionary spending?
“You cannot address long-term debt without looking at the mandatory side of the budget,” said White House budget Director Mick Mulvaney. “You would be hard pressed to be able to balance the budget without looking at mandatory spending.”
But that’s where the problem lies for House Budget Committee Chairwoman Diane Black, R-Tenn.
......
True budget savings would come from slashing entitlement spending.
Black and other GOPers would like to reduce $200 billion in entitlement (mandatory) spending. But a coalition of 20 moderate Republicans pushed back. They argue that Black’s plan isn’t “practical” and that they are “reticent” to vote for such a deep cut. Losing those 20 Republicans doesn’t quite kill the vote count for the budget. But it’s close.
President Trump wants to spend more on defense in this budget. Defense hawks demanded somewhere north of $640 billion for the Pentagon. Of late, the defense target has fallen between $617 and $623 billion.
____________________
he House Appropriations Committee wrote a defense spending bill totaling $658.1 billion. That’s $68.1 billion more than last year and $18.4 billion more than Trump requested. When the House Armed Services Committee wrote this year’s defense authorization bill -- which is different from the appropriations legislation -- Republican lawmakers found themselves all over the map.
Washington Rep. Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the Armed Services panel, took note.
“We do not have $600, $700, $800, $900 billion to spend on defense unless we pretty much completely eliminate all non-defense discretionary spending, which there isn’t support for doing,” he said. “Twenty trillion dollars in debt, a $706 billion deficit, trying to find $50 billion in mandatory savings, and the majority can’t even do that, all right?”
Smith’s remark crystalizes the entire debate about the GOP attempting to complete a budget.