Obama Budget Outline Approved by Congress

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

The Republican talking heads on radio and cable "news" outlets like Faux News like to point to the House Democrats "Blue Dog Coalition" as evidence of "bipartisan" opposition to President Obama's agenda, while ignoring the plank in their own eye. (I will explain in a later post why this is mostly nonsense for the uninitiated.) In fact, the Obama budget received more support than any previous budget in the past twelve years.

Once again, not a single member of the Grand Obstructionist Party voted for the budget resolution in the House or Senate. From the New York Times Budgets Approved, With No G.O.P. Votes:

House Democrats easily defeated Republican alternatives and won backing for their budget from all segments of their party, from conservative Blue Dogs to urban liberals. The 233-to-196 vote, though hardly overwhelming, actually reflected a strong show of Democratic support for the budget, since it often barely passes. It was the first time in a dozen years that a budget had received more than 230 votes. Twenty House Democrats opposed the budget; two Senate Democrats did [Sen. Evan Bayh and Sen. Ben Nelson].

OK, so much for that bullshit GOP talking point. So how did the GOP alternative Budget Plan that received so much hype from cable "news" over the past week or so fair?

The chief Republican alternative, officially supported by the party leadership, was defeated 293 to 137, with 38 Republicans opposing it.

More than 20 percent of House Republicans opposed their own party leadership's insane clown posse sham budget plan. And why, you ask, did Republicans oppose their own party's sham budget plan?

[The] Republican alternative fared poorly in the House, where 38 GOP lawmakers voted against a plan supported by their own leadership. Officials ascribed much of the opposition to a provision that called for eliminating traditional fee-for-service Medicare for individuals who reach age 65 in 2020 or later and replacing it with coverage from private insurance companies.

Congress OKs Obama's budget plans. Seems we have us some GOPers who are not enamored with the idea of privatizing Medicare. This may portend a postitive outlook for passage of Obama's health care reforms later this year.

Our own "Senator Sore Loser," John McCain, offered his own alternative budget in the Senate that largely mirrored his proposals from the 2008 presidential campaign. Once again, McCain's economic plan was resoundingly rejected, this time by his Senate colleagues. And why wouldn't they? Why would anyone listen to a guy who admitted that he knows little about economics and pronounced the economy "fundamentally sound" back in September at the time of a financial meltdown, and who wanted to appoint his BFF Phil Gramm – the man largely responsible for our current economic catastrophe (the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, hello!) as Secretary of the Treasury? Thank God this fool was not elected.

Arizona's GOP delegation voted against the Obama budget, joined by "Blue Dog" Rep. Harry Mitchell (AZ-5).

After all of the hoopla over the GOP alternative budget, their fiasco press conference, their budget with no numbers, their "actual" budget with no new ideas, and a crushing defeat for their sham budget, including the defection of more than 20 percent of House Republicans, one has to question "who is in charge?" of this increasingly irrelevant political party headed for the elephant graveyard.