Each bit of legislation would have to be accompanied by a financing plan, whatever it might be. In some cases the legislation suggested might be funded by new taxes, in some cases by cuts to existing programs, in some cases a combination and so on.
****ing idiots.
When the debt ceiling debate was going on Reid's plan was to count money not spent on the wars as budget savings to offset the ceiling increase.
Except the withdrawals were already on the books so the money never would have been spent anyway.
They also waive spending caps by declaring mundane shit to be an emergency.
They use gimmicks like that all the time to skate their own laws, what makes you think they won't do the same thing for the next Solyndra?
But just so you know, there's new legislation some are hoping to get to the floor for a vote:
the Honest Budget Act does the following:
•Requires both houses of Congress to adopt a binding budget resolution or face a 60-vote threshold to move any spending bills through Congress (in other words, under the HBA, no budget — in all probability — equals no appropriations);
•Makes it more difficult to label routine expenditures “emergency spendingâ€;
•Eliminates phony rescissions (Congress can no longer use savings from falsely projected spending to justify actual increases in spending);
•Makes real the fake federal pay freeze; and
•Disallows timing shifts, which bill drafters use to make a bill appear deficit-neutral within a certain time frame.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/10/05/senate-republicans-introduce-bill-to-eliminate-budget-gimmicks/Feel free to lend your support to Senators Sessions and Snowe.
