So No Government shutdown Until April 8th

The senate has now passed the continuing resolution which keeps the federal government in funds until April 8th. The bill cuts 6 billion more in spending for fiscal year 2011, a move that brings the total cuts achieved so far by the GOP to 10 billion dollars. Here's the amazing part: even a cursory review of the cuts shows how incredibly wasteful the federal government truly is. $2.1 billion dollars out of the $6 billion total came from rescission of funds that have not been used. In other words, Congress approved the expenditure, but then the feds did not spend it. Absent congressional action, however, those funds were just sitting around waiting to be spent. Even a bigger amount, $2.5 billion of the cuts comes from ending certain earmarks. The House Republicans have already made it clear that no earmarks would be funded this year. Earmarks are the pet projects of individual congressmen that get stuck into bills after the fact; often these expenditures are political payoffs to supporters. Although Obama campaigned against these items, he never did anything to stop them. Once the GOP took over the House, however, even Obama came out against further earmarks. So, of the total of six billion dollars of cuts, only 1.4 billion dollars were actual cuts. My favorite of the cuts is to end $225 million of funding for community service employment for the elderly. While I think that it is great for senior citizens to stay employed if they want to, it makes no sense for the federal government to be their employer. These folks already have social security. If there are jobs being created, they should go to the unemployed who have no other means of support.

So we have now had two extensions with cuts that got rid of some of the most ridiculous expenditures in the budget. Congress now has until April 8th to come to an overall agreement for the rest of the year. As a result, Congress has done exactly what any reasonable observer would expect; Congress has gone into recess for ten days. After all, if you have 23 days to reach a compromise through negotiation, what better way is there to proceed than to leave town for ten days.

The time has come to end the games. My suggestion is that the House pass another CR that cuts another 50 billion bucks from this year's expenditures. Some of the more controversial from the earlier version which passed the House should be removed. Instead, the House should stick to items that are less incendiary and add to them a postponement of funding to implement Obamacare. We now know that there is about $23 billion already appropriated in the Obamacare bill itself for implementation costs to be incurred this year. The House should clearly state that since the law has been declared unconstitutional, it makes no sense to spend billions to implement it. All of that money could be wasted if the Supreme court agrees that the law is unconstitutional. Let's have the argument proceed on whether or not it makes sense to fund implementation of an unconstitutional law or to delay that funding until after the determination by the court.