Mikulski addresses $4B budget gap with gimmicks

Associated Press ^ | May 22, 2014 12:34 PM EDT | Andrew Taylor

[Olog-hai]

The Democratic chairwoman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee moved aggressively Thursday to use gimmicks to fill in an unexpected $4 billion gap in the budget.

The move by Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., was met with opposition from panel Republicans who said it violated the spirit of last year’s hard-won budget deal. […]

The shortfall means that non-defense programs, on average, face an almost 1 percent cut from current levels. In response, Mikulski shifted about $2 million in foreign aid funding to war accounts exempt from budget “caps” and also made room for using $2 billion in relatively pain-free cuts to so-called mandatory programs to help finance the budget of the Department of Health and Human Services. She also suggested she may exempt another $1 billion to fight western wildfires from mandatory caps by declaring it off-budget.

Mikulski defended the moves, saying she was using “tools” employed by her predecessors. …

[Myrddin]

Mikulski is a "tool". I'll reiterate from Clif High's web bot analysis...90 days after the market returns to "bear" status, the interagency fighting for money will have a severe impact on the DoD. Troops will get their paychecks, but vendors will face default on payment from the government for services rendered.

I'm already hearing the "layoff" words bantered about. This comes in spite of recent proposal "wins". It's no "win" if the customer (government) won't pay you for services rendered. The only recourse is to stop rendering services and cut staff that can't produce revenue from a delinquent customer account.

I might add that I'm in the line of fire...again. No matter that we had nearly $100 million in proposal "wins". Non-payment is cause for stop work.

[PLMerite]

The Troll can use all the “tools” she wants, but in the end the numbers are going to have to balance out, and when (not if) they don’t, it’ll be bad.