Thursday, March 16, 2017

LITD does indeed like this first budget proposal from the new administration

This is surely one of those cases where principled conservatives crafted something that was sure to appeal to DJT's general aversion to bloat:

When you get inside the budget lines you find that the spending tracks pretty well with what the administration has said it wanted to do. For instance, you find Agriculture loses a $500 million water/waste water program and EPA receives a plus-up in its water safety programs. Climate change boondoggles in Commerce (which owns NOAA) and NASA are eliminated. Education funding aimed at turning schools into the focal institution of the nanny state are cut. School choice programs get a major infusion of money. HUD takes major hits in its various slush funds but gets more money to handle lead paint abatement in old housing stock. The immigration court system gets a large increase as does the program to expedite background checks for firearms purchases. State loses 29% and UN funding is slashed. Federal subsidies for long distance Amtrak service and for commercial airlines servicing rural airports goes away. EPA gets body slammed. Fifty programs and at least 3,200 positions are gone. EPA is basically out of the enforcement business. Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and a host of other sinecures for otherwise unemployable leftwing leeches are eliminated. (Light a cigarette and read the full breakdown.)
And, as strieff at RedState points out, the next interesting step is to see how it impacts the natural fault lines in Congress:

What will happen here? This document is obviously not going to survive contact with Congress. Sacred cattle aren’t merely killed, they are lined up, machinegunned, cooked well-done and processed into dog food. But it really isn’t expected to. Think of it as an initial negotiating position. But it is a budget where just about everything is on the table so a lot of natural alliances that form to protect spending will be divided. Now its fate rests in the hands of Paul Ryan and on the slender, weak, geriatric shoulders of Mitch McConnell.
Wouldn't it be cool if they just passed it as is?

2 comments:

  1. Sacred cattle aren’t merely killed, they are lined up, machinegunned, cooked well-done and processed into dog food. That reminds me of Churchill commenting on the death of Neveril Chamberlain, "embalm,bury,cremate,take no chances"

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  2. Hadn't heard that one before, but I like it!

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