Free Republic

Congressional leaders are preparing to unveil a last-minute budget deal that could be quickly jammed through the House. It looks like a deal could be unveiled as late as Wednesday, just two days before the House is scheduled to recess for the rest of the year. Wednesday is the last day a bill can be filed in the House to allow a Friday vote without going around House rules. Releasing the bill that late in the week could be the best way to cut off a rebellion from the right, and conservatives on Monday were already expressing wariness. “I’m resigned...

This week the House of Representatives will vote on its Budget Committee plan, which would bring federal finances into balance by 2023. The plan would do so by gradually slowing the growth in federal spending without raising taxes. Still, the plan has been denounced by naysayers who assert that it would harm the economic recovery and that, at the least, any spending reductions should be put off until later. This thinking is just as wrong now as it was in the 1970s. According to our research, the spending restraint and balanced-budget parts of the House Budget Committee plan would boost...

The House will vote this week to give its main investigative arm one of the smallest funding increases of any committee — a sign that oversight of a Democratic administration isn’t a leading priority for the Democratic Congress. The Oversight Committee, where Chairman Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) has pledged to bird-dog the $700 billion Wall Street bailout and the $787 billion economic stimulus plan, is getting a 3 percent increase, the second-smallest boost of any committee. Overall this year, committees got a 9 percent increase, with the Small Business Committee getting the largest percentage increase, 21 percent. Oversight remains the second-highest-funded...