Posted on 03/13/2008 1:05:38 PM PDT by bahblahbah
While senators gravely speak about the nation's fiscal health all day during the Senate budget debate, they're not above making purely political points aimed at embarrassing one another.
To wit: Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican from Colorado, has crafted a massive budget amendment that claims to fund every policy proposed by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on the presidential campaign trail. Allard's amendment — doomed to fail by a significant margin — includes $1.4 trillion in spending over five years by proposing Obama's universal health care program ($65 billion a year), expanding the Army ($6.6 billion a year) and eliminating income taxes on lower income seniors ($10 billion a year).
This is an old Senate trick during budget season, where senators take campaign rhetoric and pump up the theoretical budget numbers behind the proposals then force a vote on the matter. The political impact on Obama is minimal, since the drudgery of the Senate budget debate is unlikely to create waves in the presidential campaign. And Obama has never promised to implement his dozens of domestic policy ideas all in one budget year, but that's not the point for Senate Republicans behind this maneuver.
Allard is a prime candidate to sponsor the amendment — he is retiring from the Senate and there's no political cost to actually sponsoring $1.4 trillion in Democratic policy proposals.
Allard said his proposal was "an amendment that I think needs to be a part of the process — that will budget for some of the rhetoric we are hearing on the campaign trail."
The only thing to watch with this proposal is to see if Obama actually votes in favor of it the way it has been packaged by Allard.
I love it, absolutely love it. Way to go Allard!!!!
That even sounds like a lowball number. I think it should be closer to $2.0 trillion if he really included everything Obama has proposed.
They need to be careful - when it comes to proposing spending increases it’s hard to tell when they are kidding. (There is so much spending already that they had to be kidding about, but it actually was passed)
Don’t get me wrong this is hilarious but doesn’t the senate have better things to do? Like approving emergency drilling in ANWAR and off the coast?
That’s how they sneak stuff by.
Ha HA!
Now that’s intelligent Politcs. Don’t get caught up with middle-name-gate, explain to people that there aren’t enough printing machines to print the money that is going to be needed to fund these Hope-Pipe-Dream.
It's especially difficult to tell when they are kidding when it's a Republican proposing the spending. They've proven themselves able to shovel the dollars as well as any demoncrat.
Senator Allard hasn’t made much noise during his tenure but I notice that he has consistently voted conservative positions and expressed more than average good sense while serving in the Senate. I am happy that I have had the opportunity to vote for him.
Speaking of ANWAR, and off-shore drilling, how long will either of those take to get oil into our refineries, and helping to drop oil from $110 a barrel?
Sometimes I look towards DC and wonder ‘what the ^*&%^ are they thinking?’
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