Why Americans Hate Washington

Why Americans Hate Washington
Debra J. Saunders
Tuesday, March 02, 2010

In January, the Senate joined the House in passing "pay-as-you-go" rules to require Congress to pay for new discretionary spending. On Feb. 12, President Obama signed the bill. "Now Congress will have to pay for what it spends, just like everybody else," Obama crowed. Less than a month later, Obama and fellow Democrats are busily demonizing a lone senator for pushing Washington to spend responsibly. It seems this administration is all for fiscal restraint -- as long as you don't mean it.

The story began last week when Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., blocked Senate passage of a bill to extend one month unemployment and COBRA health insurance benefits, and other spending, because it did not comply with PAYGO. As the Baseball Hall-of-Famer explained, "When 100 senators are for a bill, and we can't find $10 billion to pay for it, there's something the matter, seriously the matter, with this body." For that, he is Satan.

On Sunday, The New York Times ran a story about the Bunning brouhaha without mentioning why Bunning was blocking the bill. A CNN television crawl warned: "Thousands hurt by one senator." Veep Joe Biden lamented the prospect of a single senator filibustering a measure, and wished, as Politico reported, only that the senator would have to explain to the families of the Americans who could lose their benefits "how they're going to get by."

It's a heartbreaking scenario -- but it can be avoided if Capitol Hill leaders either find the $10 billion in a government that spends $3.8 trillion annually or the 60 votes needed to bring the bill to the Senate floor.

A month ago, Democrats were suggesting the Repubs were phony tightwads for not joining them in support of PAYGO. It turns out, PAYGO is the phony. Two weeks after it became law, the Senate passed a $15 billion jobs bill exempt from PAYGO. Now Bunning is not budging. As spokesman Mike Reynard put it, "If everyone's serious about PAYGO, let's act like it."

I used to like the concept, and remember arguing with Brian Riedl of the libertarian- leaning Heritage Foundation. But he was right. As he said Monday, "PAYGO exists as a talking point in order to create the illusion of fiscal responsibility while they're ignoring it. It's designed for TV ads."

And: "The offsets are out there. Congress just has to make a difficult decision for once."

James Horney, director of federal fiscal policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, has a different take. The PAYGO rules, he noted, exempt emergency spending. "Right now, adding to the deficit in fact helps the economy, it doesn't hurt," Horney noted. The benefits extension "is temporary and deals with a short-term economic problem." To Horney, in exempting the bill to extend jobless benefits, PAYGO is working as it should.

Horney added, "I would have more sympathy for (Bunning) and others if they applied the same logic to new tax cuts or to extending expiring tax cuts like the estate tax."

Point taken, and it's a good one. But if supporting tax cuts years ago means a lawmaker cannot push for fiscal discipline today, then Washington will never grow up and, as Obama put it, "pay for what it spends."
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Senator Jim Bunning – “I Object”
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Posted by: Townhall.com Staff at 12:05 PM

Guest post from Brian Darling with the Heritage Foundation

Liberals are up in arms because Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) is blocking a bill that would extend unemployment benefits, extend health insurance subsidies (COBRA), extend highway funding, increase Medicare reimbursement rates for physicians (Doc Fix), extend a temporary “flood insurance” program and continue aid for small business programs. The bill, H.R. 4691, was introduced and passed the House on February 25th by a voice vote. When the bill came up in the Senate, Sen. Bunning objected and requested a vote to offset the estimated $10 billion cost of this bill over the next month. With the two words “I object” Sen. Bunning may save taxpayers $10 billion and Sen. Bunning has provided America a stark example of how Members of Congress refuse to pay for new spending initiatives.

Bunning said of the bill “if we can’t find $10 billion to pay for it, we’re not going to pay for anything.” A month ago, Congress passed something called pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budgeting when they increased the the statutory limit of allowable national debt to $14.29 trillion, a $1.9 trillion increase. The current PAYGO rules are loaded with exceptions and loopholes, yet many saw the new PAYGO rules as a step in the right direction to restrain some out of control spending. The problem is that Congress seems to waive the PAYGO rule rather than offset one cent of new spending.

Brian Riedl has written for The Heritage Foundation about the loopholes and problems with past versions of PAYGO:

When PAYGO was a law from 1991 through 2002, it was never enforced. Over those 12 years, Congress enacted $700 billion in non-offset entitlement expansions and tax cuts, and then cancelled every single required spending cut that would have enforced the law. As a result, entitlement spending actually grew faster after PAYGO’s implementation.

Evidently that trend continues today, because in H.R. 4691, Congress waives the new version of PAYGO. The bill explicitly declares the new spending an emergency and the relevant language is as follows:

(b) Emergency Designation for Congressional Enforcement- This Act, with the exception of section 5, is designated as an emergency for purposes of pay-as-you-go principles. In the Senate, this Act is designated as an emergency requirement pursuant to section 403(a) of S. Con. Res. 13 (111th Congress), the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2010.

(c) Emergency Designation for Statutory PAYGO- This Act, with the exception of section 5, is designated as an emergency requirement pursuant to section 4(g) of the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-139; 2 U.S.C. 933(g)).

Basically, liberals in Congress love the idea of PAYGO, yet they refuse to enforce the statutory requirements that all new spending be offset. They do this by designating all new spending as an “Emergency Designation.” This is feel good politics at its worst, because the left can claim they are for PAYGO, yet PAYGO has yet to restrain any spending. Furthermore, the vote on PAYGO in the House helped pave the way for a $1.9 trillion increase in the debt limit. Therefore one can argue that PAYGO actually increased spending in the Congress.

Senator Bunning has proposed an offset of spending to pay for the one month extension of benefits consisting of “the unobligated amounts appropriated or made available under divisions A of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5; 123 Stat. 115). $10,267,000,000 is rescinded on a pro rata basis.” Sen. Bunning is asking that the Obama Administration cut $10 billion of unspent Stimulus monies out of a $787 billion dollar proposal to continue to pay benefits to unemployed Americans.

Liberals would have you believe that Sen. Bunning is causing Americans to be furloughed from jobs and to have empty unemployment extension checks. Maybe they should look in the mirror and find ways to pay for this new spending. America is carrying over $12 trillion in debt and Americans should be thanking the one Senator who is educating this nation as to the out of control new spending coming from the federal government at a time when this same Congress refuses pay for it.
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Jim Bunning's Historic and Heroic Stand
Terry Jeffrey
Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Republican Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky, a 78-year-old grandfather of 40 who is not running for re-election, has single-handedly fought a battle on Capitol Hill over the past week that ought to inspire all taxpayers to rally around his banner of commonsense.

Bunning not only said "NO" to a Congress that week after week has been driving the nation deeper and deeper into debt, but decided to use what power he has under Senate rules to make sure his "NO" was heard.

Three weeks ago, President Obama signed a law allowing the federal government to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion. That law included a provision Washington insiders call "Pay-Go," which supposedly obligates Congress to offset any new spending it approves with new revenues or cuts in spending elsewhere in the budget. But this "Pay-Go" is a fraud.

A week after Congress enacted it, the House approved a bill that, among other things, "extended" for 30 days the current payment schedule for doctors treating Medicare patients, certain highway programs, the period of time that people can claim unemployment benefits and a provision included in last year's $787-billion stimulus law that temporarily provided federal subsidies to help cover COBRA health insurance payments for unemployed people. Each of these provisions was set to expire on the last day in February.

But the House bill to extend them did not abide by Pay-Go. It contemplated adding $10 billion to the national debt.

Last week, the Senate approved a new $15 billion "jobs" bill pushed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. It also did not abide by Pay-Go. It contemplated adding $12 billion to the national debt.

In the wake of this, Reid went to the Senate floor on Wednesday night to ask for the unanimous consent of his colleagues to bring up his version of the House "extension" bill. Like the House bill, it would add $10 billion to the national debt.

If Reid had his way, the Senate would add $22 billion in new debt in two bills passed two weeks after enacting Pay-Go.

Jim Bunning drew the line. He let Reid know he would withhold his consent from allowing the bill to come to the floor. He would instead ask that the Senate unanimously consent to consider a bill he would offer that would be exactly like Reid's -- except that it would abide by the Pay-Go principle. It would use unspent funds from the $787-billion stimulus, rather than new debt, to cover the $10 billion in new spending. Bunning was also ready to consider other sources of revenue to offset the new spending -- including an across-the-board rescission in current spending.

Reid could have accepted Bunning's proposal and agreed to pay for the new spending. Or he could have called for a cloture vote to see if he could get at least one Republican to join with Senate Democrats to secure the 60 votes needed to overrule Bunning's objection. Or he could have ended the session for the night determined to come back on Thursday to work something out with Bunning.

Instead, Senate Democrats resolved to teach the 78-year-old grandfather of 40 a lesson -- to make him an example for other congressional conservatives.

As long as the Senate remained in session for the night, the Democrats could ask for unanimous consent to move forward with Reid's bill. If Bunning was not physically present, he could not object and the bill would move forward. Most Republican senators, meanwhile, had gone home for the night.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D.-Ill., led a succession of Democratic senators who came to the floor and, one after another, attacked Bunning. They falsely accused him of wanting to take food off the table of unemployed workers and deny health care to the elderly -- just because he wanted to pay for the contemplated 30-day extensions, which he fully supported.

For three and a half hours, Bunning stood his ground. "I will be here as long as you are here and as long as all of those other senators are here," he told Durbin. "I am going to object every time because you will not pay for this and you propose never to pay for it."

During the course of the night, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., showed up to help Bunning. But he was otherwise on his own. Nonetheless, he persevered and Durbin finally gave up -- for the night.

"We are not conning the people in the United States about anything," Bunning said before he left the Senate floor that evening. "They know what is going on. That is why they are madder than heck. They are tired of senators who talk out of both sides of their mouths."

The next morning, Bunning renewed the fight. "If we can't find $10 billion to pay for something we all support, we will never pay for anything in the Senate," he said.

As of this writing, he has single-handedly fought the borrow-and-spend Senate to standstill.