The White House has released President Obama's 2017 budget, a blueprint for continued economic progress that will land in Congress with a resounding thud. Despite the fact that Republicans rejected the budget before they even saw it, and even took the unprecedented (and obnoxious) step of refusing to allow the president’s budget director, Shaun Donovan, the opportunity to present the budget in hearings. Even Republicans are criticizing this dickishness.
G. William Hoagland, who was the Republican staff director at the Senate Budget Committee for much of the 1980s and 1990s, and is senior vice president of the Bipartisan Policy Center, said he could not recall a year since the modern budget process took effect in the 1970s when a president’s budget director was not invited to testify before the budget committees.
"While the last budget of an outgoing president is usually aspirational, and sets a theme for what he or she hopes will be followed up by his or her successor, it nonetheless should be reviewed by the Congress," Mr. Hoagland said. […]
"I believe that permitting the administration the courtesy of explaining its intent and what it thinks of the policy should have been maintained," said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and an economic adviser to Republicans. Besides, he added, "it gives you an opportunity to express why you disagree."
Nonetheless, President Obama used his statement to Congress accompanying the budget as an opportunity to rub Republicans' noses in his administration's economic successes. He points out that the nation's businesses "have created more than 14 million jobs over 70 months, the longest streak of job growth on record," that nearly "18 million people have gained health coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), cutting the uninsured rate to a record low," and that "we managed to accomplish all of this while dramatically cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters and setting our Nation on a more sustainable fiscal path."
The president's budget would top $4 trillion, with just about a quarter of it discretionary spending for domestic and military programs, and the remainder mandatory spending on interest on the federal debt and on social insurance programs. The most groundbreaking proposal in the budget is a $10/barrel tax on crude oil that could bring in as much as $32 billion in new revenue, annually. That would be spent on a variety of transportation and infrastructure projects, including bridges and highways, and on mass transit with an immediate effect of reducing emissions. The administration says its "21st Century Clean Transportation Plan will increase American investments in clean transportation infrastructure by roughly 50 percent above current levels while reforming the transportation investments already being made to move America to more sustainable, low-carbon investments."
All of which, of course, is completely unacceptable to congressional Republicans, along with a bunch of middle-class initiatives for a worker retirement savings options, as well as wage insurance, college assistance and early education. The budget offsets the costs for those programs by closing and limiting some tax breaks for the wealthy and for businesses. A few of his initiatives should be no brainers are in fact bipartisan priorities: health programs including increased spending for opioid and heroin addiction treatment and cancer research; education; criminal justice system reforms; and increased spending for the fight against the Islamic State. Another ridiculously necessary request is a $3.1 billion proposal to overhaul the federal government's aging computer systems, the necessity of which was proved by the Chinese hack into the Office of Personnel Management's system last year in which the security records of more than 20 million Americans were stolen.
All "dead before arrival" with congressional Republicans. Because they are assholes.