The US House just finished it’s work on HR1, cleaning up after democrats who in 2010 abrogated yet another obligation when they found themselves incapable of writing the budget they really wanted right before an election.
The liberal-progressives wanted more spending but that was not politically advantageous. And since the single driving-force behind all Democrat decisions is politics the budget got relegated to the back of the bus, where the electorate’s short attention spans were meant to forget that democrats were never fiscally conscious representatives–they just tried to play them on the campaign trail.
But avoiding the high profile budget battle was more evidence that they had something to hide. The Democrat House majority was appropriately sedated and placed under observation, while the Senate saw minor adjustments but no change in leadership. So the process of changing our spending ways would still have to go through a Democrat controlled Senate and across the desk of a President who thinks the words "spending cuts" are just a rhetorical flourish used to provide cover for more spending.
Obama’s budget is proof enough of that.
But Obama only proposes a budget. The House is in charge of spending. So the new Republican congress went to the back seat of the Hopey-changey bus and picked up the budget obligations abandoned by the 111th congress. This wwas a free shot at changing the fiscal direction of the country before writing their own first official budget, which was not due until later in 2011. It was a gimme, a free throw, but one that had to survive the democrat Senate and the Spender in Chief.
So how did it turn out?
The House Republicans took their free throw and settled on $61,000,000,000.00 (billion) dollars in cuts which included votes on 21 amendments to reduce or eliminate some non-security spending. Not bad for a budget that should have been written by a democrat majority House, and a respectable down-payment on the 100 billion promised for their first official budget–though plenty of folks will still be unhappy about it.
To add to that unhappiness,(or not) we have the results of the 21 proposed amendments to cut non-security funding. Heritage.org (thank you very much) filtered those votes and created both a table you can filter and a pdf. The table show us how each member voted on the 21 cuts as a percentage of the total number of votes and the pdf lists how they voted on each of the individual amendments.
Looking at New Hampshire we can see that congressman Charlie Bass supported 33% of the proposed budget cutting amendments while congressman Guinta supported 76% of them. That’s a rather wide margin, a tale of two congressman perhaps, worthy of your individual attention should it interest you.
Also worth noting; according to Heritage 95 House Democrats voted against ever single non-security cut, while another 45 opposed all of the cuts but one. That certainly puts a fresh coat of "something" on the face of the Democrat party when it comes to their "belt tightening rhetoric." (That something is brown, by the way, and it smells "offal.")
So feel free to follow the links, print the report and sift the data at your leisure. I have provided below the list of 21 amendments referenced courtesy of Heritage.
The spending cuts include the following 21 amendments:
1) Eliminate $34 million for the National Drug Intelligence Center (Flake);
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).
H/T Heritage.org, Hot Air
