This would just be the ‘shut down the government’ strategy again.
I believe almost all department funding is written into law for multiple years. House can’t repeal existing funding by itself; the Senate would have to go along.
RE: I believe almost all department funding is written into law for multiple years.
But what if Obama runs out of money for this or that program and asks for more Billions?
And oh BTW, if Obamacare is written into law for multiple years, how long will the money last since it was passed in 2010?
They just did it to the IRS.
—yep—many posters seem to have forgotten what they should have learned in high school “Civics”—that Congress consists of two houses and there is a president with a veto power-—
>>I believe almost all department funding is written into law for multiple years. <<
No, Each year budgets are supposed to be presented and voted upon by both the Senate and the House. Some funding might be built in via directed taxes like the highway fund, for instance, but even that is usually spent as directed by annual budgets.
The problem is political. The reason we keep having Continuing Resolutions (CR) is that the Senate won’t take up individual spending bills. Unless they see a CR they like, i.e., one that continues current spending levels which were dramatically raised to get through the 2009 recession, they just shut down the government, knowing that the MSM and Obama will succeed in blaming the GOP for the shutdown.
Boehner does understand this, which is why he went for the sequester deal. Obama didn’t believe the GOP would stomach the military cuts included in the sequester, but he was outfoxed by the GOP and as a result he’s now taking credit for an improving budget, due to the sequester actually being implemented (against his wishes.) Such is politics.
But, if the Senate goes GOP the game changes dramatically. Then, individual departmental budgets can be passed, and within those departmental budgets, individual line items can be budgeted. Furthermore, the GOP can determine the order the departmental budgets are taken up and can even leave some line items for later.
For example, the budget for the Treasury Department could be taken up, but the IRS line items within Treasury could be left for later, except for essential tax collection efforts. The enforcement budget, which has been severely abused, could be left for later, and possibly severely curtailed, i.e., no more bonuses, and a lot of jobs curtailed. In other words, the GOP could use the budget to punish misbehavior, and encourage good behavior.
One obvious benefit of going line by line is that a lot of programs would be trashed since a GOP-led Congress wouldn’t fund them at all. Hopefully the federal Department of Education would be one of them. The power of the purse will only really come into play if the GOP takes the Senate, but then it could prove extremely useful, and powerful.
Of course, the wrinkle here is that Obama could just veto everything. But if he did the MSM would have a harder time painting the GOP as the reason the government is shut down, especially if they send him budgets for uncontroversial, and/or essential departments, and line items within those departments, first.
As an example of this, fund the forest service fire prevention services at normal levels. Let Obama take the heat for vetoing it as the west burns. The only reason there’d be no funding is because of his veto. Furthermore, Congress would almost certainly override such a veto, especially if fires were burning.
Incidentally, way, way, way, down the list would be funding for Valerie Jarrett’s secret service detail, or any other perks of her office.
Adding to what I said earlier, Harry Reid has not allowed the Senate to vote on hardly anything, to avoid letting the GOP bring up amendments that would pin down how individual Dem Senators voted.
That would end. As individual spending bills went through both the House and the Senate, Democrats would be forced to vote on many issues that they currently don’t want to vote on, putting them on the record as opposing issues that their constituents favor, or forcing them to align with their constituents.
This, alone, would illustrate the tremendous shift to the far left that the Democrat leadership, including most of its Senators, has undergone over the past decade or so. It’s my belief that the Democratic leadership is so far to the left of the average American that the party won’t survive such exposure unless it modifies many of its current stances.