Republicans and Democrats square off on spending, fascinating results courtesy of Heritage.
Do you want to know how the Rs and the Ds voted on the latest round of spending? Interested in seeing the amendments offered and how each representative scored? Now you can and the results are amusing to say the least.
The house passed HR1 (2011 funding) with over 60 Billion in spending cuts, but Heritage took a look at strictly the amendments that dealt with straight up discretionary spending cuts. Unfortunately this bill is dead on arrival in the Senate hence spawning renewed talks of a Government shutdown. Still, it is illuminating to investigate how the new fiscal conservative House has done so far.
You can find the convenient table on the Heritage post: After action Report. The report tracks every put spending cut amendment that was offered in the latest budget proposal and then produces a final tally based on these amendments. A score of 100% suggests that an individual supported every spending amendment, a score of 0% suggests the opposite. Before you proceed, keep in mind, in America right now the biggest issue is that of spending, deficits and debt. Polls suggest that most Americans are sickly worried over the mounting debts and the November elections of 2010 were supposed to have been a referendum on the profligacy of the past two years.
Curiously enough, House leader Eric Cantor and policy wonk Paul Ryan came in at 90% and 95% respectively.
That being said, only 19.5% of all Republicans were willing to cut discretionary spending. We are not even talking about the difficult cuts like defense and entitlement spending. We are talking about Amtrak, land acquisitions and the EPA! (full list below)
As for the Democrats, to have 95 members of Congress, that is almost half of the 112th Congressional Democrat body to oppose every spending cut in 2011 is simply insane. Then you add on 47 additional members who only vote for one cut and you have 142 Democrats who essentially opposed all amendment cuts! In other words 73% of all Democrats could not find a discretionary spending cut in the face of a 1.5 Trillion dollar deficit. Wow.
The list of amendments.
Keep in mind, this is the list that Heritage has used to determine pure spending cuts.
Additional Commentary
Nate Silver of NYT broke down some of the amendments offered and provided a very handy way to examine the voting breakdown. I have only focused on the larger amendments.
3) Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation, saving $324.4 million
LSC has a long history since it's inception during the Nixon administration and only Reagan came close to dismantling the entire operation, but was ultimately defeated. LSC has the classical problem associated most Government spending. It's aim is to provide legal services for lower income families something that makes it emotionally difficult to cut, but invariably two issues are raised. Why is the Federal Government involved and is there waste? According to CBS reporting the amount of waste is shocking, with money being used for special privileges, lavish gathering, over-billing, hotels, fancy construction, etc. The amendment failed with 68 Republicans voting against.
15) Eliminate $233.4 million in funding for the National Labor Relations Board
The NLRB was created during the New Deal as part of FDR's commitment to strengthening union power. The NLRB's sole purpose is to promote and defend union bargaining rights and opposes all attempts to implement right-to-work policies and competition against unions. Another Federal program that should not exist. The amendment failed with 60 Republicans voting against.
18) Cut $211.2 million in funding from multilateral assistance through international financial institutions (Heller);
This proposal by Dean Heller of Nevada should technically have been simple. A 14% reduction in funding for World Bank International Development Association, UNICEF, the African Development Fund, the Democracy Fund and the Strategic Climate Fund. A broke United States cannot be funding programs like these regardless of their noble intentions. Yet this amendment failed 190-241.
19) Cut $446.9 million in Amtrak funding (Sessions);
Amtrak has been a sore issue for years, this federally subsidized "train wreck" has been losing money every year without a hitch. Business Insider's report suggests that the taxpayer essentially forks over $32 for every single passenger. The follies of this enterprise have been known for a very long time and yet Amtrak continues to siphon money. Shockingly, or perhaps not shockingly, the amendment to de-fund this monstrosity has failed with 60 Republicans voting again.
20) Cut all funding by 5.5% and legislative branch spending by 11%, with certain exemptions, saving $22 billion
This was a big one, click on the link to get the details. Interestingly enough, Israel's funding was spared in this particular proposal. At the end of it all, an opportunity to save billions was defeated by 92 Republicans voting against.
21) Mulvaney amendment, number 163
Straight-forward text: "None of the funds made available by this [CR] for any account (other than an account of the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, or Veterans Affairs) may be used in excess of the amount available for such account during fiscal year 2006.” I do not believe this has been voted on yet.
The house passed HR1 (2011 funding) with over 60 Billion in spending cuts, but Heritage took a look at strictly the amendments that dealt with straight up discretionary spending cuts. Unfortunately this bill is dead on arrival in the Senate hence spawning renewed talks of a Government shutdown. Still, it is illuminating to investigate how the new fiscal conservative House has done so far.
You can find the convenient table on the Heritage post: After action Report. The report tracks every put spending cut amendment that was offered in the latest budget proposal and then produces a final tally based on these amendments. A score of 100% suggests that an individual supported every spending amendment, a score of 0% suggests the opposite. Before you proceed, keep in mind, in America right now the biggest issue is that of spending, deficits and debt. Polls suggest that most Americans are sickly worried over the mounting debts and the November elections of 2010 were supposed to have been a referendum on the profligacy of the past two years.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed a measure to fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year and cut $61 billion in the process. The bill was considered under an open amendment process, and there were hundreds of amendments offered and over a hundred votes cast over the span of a week. This after-action report will look solely at the Congressional appetite to cut spending.Let us for a moment absorb these numbers. Out of 242 Republicans, only 47 Republicans felt that our crisis was important enough to consistently vote on spending. Some of the names should not surprise you as these particular people have demonstrated a commitment to fiscal responsibility. Ron Paul, Jeff Flake, Jeb Hensarling, Michelle Bachmann, Mike Pence. Other like Justin Amash and Joe Walsh are examples of incoming freshmen who ran with promises to cut and are doing so.
Key takeaways:
47 Members (all Republicans) showed a rock-solid willingness to cut spending by voting for every spending cut:
Amash, Bachmann, Broun, Campbell, Chabot, Chaffetz, Coffman, Duncan (TN), Duncan (SC), Flake, Fleming, Franks, Garrett, Gowdy, Graves (GA), Heller, Hensarling, Herger, Huelskamp, Huizenga, Hurt, Jenkins, Jordan, Lamborn, Mack, McClintock, McHenry, Miller (FL), Mulvaney, Myrick, Neugebauer, Paul, Pence, Pompeo, Price (GA), Ribble, Rokita, Royce, Scalise, Schweikert, Scott (GA), Scott (SC), Sessions, Walsh, Wilson, Woodall, and Young (IN).
95 Members (all Democrats) showed no appetite to cut spending by voting against every single spending cut. Another 47 voted against all but one of the cuts.
Curiously enough, House leader Eric Cantor and policy wonk Paul Ryan came in at 90% and 95% respectively.
That being said, only 19.5% of all Republicans were willing to cut discretionary spending. We are not even talking about the difficult cuts like defense and entitlement spending. We are talking about Amtrak, land acquisitions and the EPA! (full list below)
As for the Democrats, to have 95 members of Congress, that is almost half of the 112th Congressional Democrat body to oppose every spending cut in 2011 is simply insane. Then you add on 47 additional members who only vote for one cut and you have 142 Democrats who essentially opposed all amendment cuts! In other words 73% of all Democrats could not find a discretionary spending cut in the face of a 1.5 Trillion dollar deficit. Wow.
The list of amendments.
Keep in mind, this is the list that Heritage has used to determine pure spending cuts.
The spending cuts include the following 21 amendments:
1) Eliminate $34 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center (Flake);If we were to exclude the last amendment by Mulvaney, the total spending cuts of the previous 19 amendments represents: 1.6 Billion. As a reminder, we are 14 Trillion in debt and a deficit that is over 1.5 Trillion. Even if we were to include the last amendment and pretend it was 57.6 billion, the idea that only 20% of all Republicans support this and 73% of Democrats oppose this suggest that we live in a very America. We live in country that is not only extremely divided along partisan lines, but the only conclusion is that most Republicans are crazy while a vast majority of Democrats are just certifiably insane. These numbers also stress the obvious, we are not going to fix our fiscal mess if we continue to avoid Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Defense.
2) Cut $10 million from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Latta);
3) Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation, saving $324.4 million (Duncan-SC);
4) Cut $50 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Biggert);
5) Cut $70 million in energy efficiency programs at the Energy Department (Latta);
6) Eliminate $35 million in funding for land acquisition at various agencies (Lummis);
7) Cut $64 million from EPA science and technology programs (Flake);
8) Cut $8 million from EPA environmental programs and management (Pompeo);
9) Cut $10 million from EPA state and tribal assistance grants (Reed);
10) Cut $7.4 million for forestry programs at the U.S. Forest Service (Pompeo);
11) Cut $20.6 million from the National Endowment for the Arts (Walberg);
12) Eliminate $4.5 million in funding for the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs Program (Canseco);
13) Eliminate $15 million in funding for the Presidio Trust Fund (Reed);
14) Cut $100 million from Community Development Block Grants (Flake);
15) Eliminate $233.4 million in funding for the National Labor Relations Board (Price-GA);
16) Eliminate $42.7 million in funding for the U.S. Institute of Peace (Weiner);
17) Eliminate $10.7 million in funding for the East-West Center (Canseco);
18) Cut $211.2 million in funding from multilateral assistance through international financial institutions (Heller);
19) Cut $446.9 million in Amtrak funding (Sessions);
20) Cut all funding by 5.5% and legislative branch spending by 11%, with certain exemptions, saving $22 billion (Blackburn);
21) Cut all funding down to fiscal year 2006 levels, with certain exemptions, saving $34 billion (Mulvaney).
Additional Commentary
Nate Silver of NYT broke down some of the amendments offered and provided a very handy way to examine the voting breakdown. I have only focused on the larger amendments.
3) Eliminate the Legal Services Corporation, saving $324.4 million
LSC has a long history since it's inception during the Nixon administration and only Reagan came close to dismantling the entire operation, but was ultimately defeated. LSC has the classical problem associated most Government spending. It's aim is to provide legal services for lower income families something that makes it emotionally difficult to cut, but invariably two issues are raised. Why is the Federal Government involved and is there waste? According to CBS reporting the amount of waste is shocking, with money being used for special privileges, lavish gathering, over-billing, hotels, fancy construction, etc. The amendment failed with 68 Republicans voting against.
15) Eliminate $233.4 million in funding for the National Labor Relations Board
The NLRB was created during the New Deal as part of FDR's commitment to strengthening union power. The NLRB's sole purpose is to promote and defend union bargaining rights and opposes all attempts to implement right-to-work policies and competition against unions. Another Federal program that should not exist. The amendment failed with 60 Republicans voting against.
18) Cut $211.2 million in funding from multilateral assistance through international financial institutions (Heller);
This proposal by Dean Heller of Nevada should technically have been simple. A 14% reduction in funding for World Bank International Development Association, UNICEF, the African Development Fund, the Democracy Fund and the Strategic Climate Fund. A broke United States cannot be funding programs like these regardless of their noble intentions. Yet this amendment failed 190-241.
19) Cut $446.9 million in Amtrak funding (Sessions);
Amtrak has been a sore issue for years, this federally subsidized "train wreck" has been losing money every year without a hitch. Business Insider's report suggests that the taxpayer essentially forks over $32 for every single passenger. The follies of this enterprise have been known for a very long time and yet Amtrak continues to siphon money. Shockingly, or perhaps not shockingly, the amendment to de-fund this monstrosity has failed with 60 Republicans voting again.
20) Cut all funding by 5.5% and legislative branch spending by 11%, with certain exemptions, saving $22 billion
This was a big one, click on the link to get the details. Interestingly enough, Israel's funding was spared in this particular proposal. At the end of it all, an opportunity to save billions was defeated by 92 Republicans voting against.
21) Mulvaney amendment, number 163
Straight-forward text: "None of the funds made available by this [CR] for any account (other than an account of the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, or Veterans Affairs) may be used in excess of the amount available for such account during fiscal year 2006.” I do not believe this has been voted on yet.
Comments
Post a Comment