The federal budget has become such a farce that some lawmakers are considering changing the process of writing it so that Republicans, Democrats and the president will have to work together to produce a real plan before a single cent is spent.
“The budget itself is a total hoax, a total hoax,” said Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, a budget expert and a key figure in the annual debate over the budget resolution that sets spending limits.
“It really challenges your integrity to even go through the process, to be honest,” he added.
The nonbinding spending resolution, once the guiding document for appropriators, has become pointless in recent years as lawmakers and the administration ignore it during the appropriation process.
Corker offered up a glaring example: how Congress dealt with Obamacare last year in the budget resolution that also predicted a balanced budget in 10 years.
“Anybody who thinks this last budget balanced over 10 years, really should turn in their credentials,” he said. “Look at what happened: The money for Obamacare was left in the budget, but Obamacare was done away with.”
Telling it like it is, Corker said that to get a deal, both sides simply pay each other off with more spending promises.
“It actually exacerbates spending. On one side you have Republicans pressing for more defense spending, and so you have sort of a group of people there saying, ‘I’m not voting for a budget, period, unless.’ But in order to get that side passed, then you have an increase in domestic spending [pushed by Democrats] and you have no addressing of entitlements or the real drivers of our budget deficit,” he said.
The reason the budget resolution has become a political document instead of an iron-clad spending blueprint, he added, is because it only requires 50 votes in the Senate to pass, an easy split to get.
He and others want that changed so that the budget resolution becomes a model that can’t be ignored.
“I wish the budget vote was a 60-vote document that forced Republicans and Democrats to come to terms on the tough issues,” said the senator, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “And I wish it was a document that the president had to sign or no money could be spent. That would make it real. But as a budget resolution, it’s totally a political document.”
White House wants increase of Syrian refugees
The White House is quietly pushing for an increase in refugees from Syria, despite new concerns raised by state and county officials that federal help is often missing when they arrive.
President Obama’s assistant for immigration policy told a task force set up by the National Association of Counties that the U.S. is eyeing a bigger role to help alleviate the growing crisis.
“We want to make sure that we can increase our numbers of refugees that are able to settle here,” Felicia Escobar said. “The need globally is so, so, so massive right now, given all the displacement and conflict around the world, but we also know that we have to do it in a way that’s smart.”
The issue has become a flashpoint in the presidential race and among governors who are concerned that Washington won’t properly vet the refugees to weed out terrorists.
But locally, it’s an issue of money and support. Sean Conway, a county commissioner from Weld County in Greeley, Colo., said he has had to “fight” with the State Department to get promised services such as healthcare and interpreters. Worse, he added, “Many times we don’t even know that relocation is taking place until it’s going on.”
George W. a big fan of Rumsfeld’s game app
Just because former President George W. Bush dumped former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2006 doesn’t mean that he isn’t keeping up with the old Washington warrior.
Case in point: At an event earlier this month in Miami, a former top administration official ran into the last Republican president. The official took note of Bush’s interest in painting, book writing and focus on his presidential center and library in Dallas.
He then told the former president what Rumsfeld was up to, including development of a new card game app called Churchill Solitaire, designed after a “diabolical version” of the game played by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill during the London bombings of World War II.
Bush smiled, reached into his pocket and pulled out his iPhone. “I’ve got it right here,” he said of the game. “I’ve been playing it.”
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
