Thank God we have at least one fiscally responsible party in America. Thank you, GOP!
WASHINGTON – Once again, a stubborn Senate Republican is blocking speedy passage of a stopgap bill to extend jobless benefits, saying its $9 billion cost should not be added to the national debt.
This time it's Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who's insisting that the measure be "paid for" so as not to add to the nation's $12.7 trillion debt.
"What we are doing is stealing future opportunity from our children," Coburn said Thursday.
Lord knows that all our fiscal problems are the result of working class people collecting unemployment benefits. Let's review the Republican record of fiscal responsibility.
Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001
Summary: $1.3 trillion in unfunded tax cuts.
"The sunset provision sidesteps the Byrd Rule, a Senate rule that amends the Congressional Budget Act to allow Senators to block a piece of legislation if it purports to significantly increase the federal deficit beyond a ten-year term. The sunset allowed the bill to stay within the letter of the PAYGO law while removing nearly $700 billion from amounts that would have triggered PAYGO sequestration"
Roll call: Bunning (R-KY), Yea
Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003
Summary: "The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the tax cuts would increase budget deficits by $60 billion in 2003 and by $340 billion by 2008."
Roll call: Bunning (R-KY), Yea
Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act
Summary: "Initially, the net cost of the program was projected at $400 billion for the ten-year period between 2004 and 2013. One month after passage, the administration estimated that the net cost of the program over the period between 2006 (the first year the program started paying benefits) and 2015 would be $534 billion"
...
"Bruce Bartlett, a Treasury Department economist during the Reagan administration, recalled in a recent Forbes magazine article that the Bush administration knew the figure was too low because Medicaid's actuary had concluded, long before the bill was passed, that the ten-year cost of the program would more likely be $534 billion. The actuary, Richard Foster, later revealed that Republican appointee Tom Scully, Foster's superior at the Department of Health and Human Services, warned him he would be fired if he disclosed the higher estimate. "
Roll call: Bunning (R-KY), Yea
Iraq War Resolution
Summary: The White House, which predicted in 2002 that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion. In 2006, the CBO estimated that it would cost $500 billion.
Roll call: Bunning (R-KY), Yea
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I would just once again like to thank Senator Bunning for these votes, Senator Coburn for voting to extend Bush's capital gains and dividend tax cuts for the wealthy, and most of all our former President George W. Bush for putting us in such a wonderful fiscal position, not only compared the horrid deficit he inherited in January 2001, but also recovery from the horrid, debt based economy he inherited into the zooming, savings-powered growth machine he bequeathed his successor 8 years later.
These intelligent decisions will ensure our nation is on sound fiscal grounding for a long, long time, and in fact they were so successful that I would like to propose that MAYBE, just MAYBE, perhaps these cuts to unemployment benefits aren't really necessary???