World Affairs Brief, February 9, 2018 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World.
Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com).
REPUBLICANS CAVE ON BUDGET DEAL
The Republican leadership finally gave up any pretense of fiscal responsibility Thursday after RINO Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell forged a budget deal with Democrat Chuck Schumer that abandons all of the previous spending caps that have partially limited government spending for the past two years. President Trump thinks it is “wonderful” and House Speaker Paul Ryan pushed through this new spending bill in the House that will raise the deficit by almost a trillion dollars over the next two years. This follows in the footsteps of back-to-back Obama Administration trillion dollar deficits that Republicans loudly condemned. A fully predictable consequence of this unwise compromise is that it will help Democrats blame the growing deficit on the Trump tax cut rather than their own participation in this increased spending bill. In the House, among Republicans, only the Freedom Caucus block of 30 conservatives opposed the bill and pointed out the obvious—that this only accelerates the road to national insolvency, when in the future, all US revenues will be needed just to pay the interest on the national debt.
Here’s what’s in the Senate deal….
The Senate was expected to pass this vote on Thursday, but Sen. Rand Paul, who is vehemently opposed to this removal of the current spending caps refused to allow a vote. Under Senate rules, all 100 senators must agree to hold a vote, if it violates mandatory time limits for consideration of a bill. Without unanimous consent, the vote could only occur on Friday at 1 a.m. Senators excoriated Paul for standing on principle, saying he was just wasting their time in forcing them to wait until after the midnight deadline. Paul responded that he was elected to stop this kind of spending and that he wouldn’t add his name to the yes list under any circumstances. Bravo! …