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Paul Ryan: 'Budget Isn’t a Serious Document; It’s a Campaign Brochure' 'This budget never balances—ever.' Daniel Halper March 4, 2014 11:55 AM Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, slams President Obama's budget in a statement released by his office. “The President’s budget is yet another disappointment—because it reinforces the status quo. It would demand that families pay more so Washington can spend more. It would hollow out our defense capabilities. And it would do nothing to preserve or strengthen our entitlements. The President has just three years left in his administration, and yet he seems determined to do...

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) wants to look tough on budget issues. In an editorial published in USA Today explaining his decision to lead the passage of a budget that reduced vested veteran pensions by an average of $84,000 to $120,000, Mr. Ryan founded his message on the urgent need to “do the right thing.” In doing so, he created a painful irony; Ryan’s budget seeks to save $6B over the next 10 years – equivalent to less than six-tenths of one percent of projected federal spending over that period — by extracting it from compensation already guaranteed to people...

<p>Republican senators were making a last-ditch bid to undo cuts to military retiree benefits in the House-passed budget deal ahead of a crucial vote Tuesday morning in the Senate.</p> <p>Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions filed an amendment late Monday to restore money that was cut from veteran and military retiree pension benefits by closing a loophole that allows illegal immigrants to qualify for child tax credits.</p>

For Florida’s nearly 200,000 military retirees — more than any state except Texas — a budget deal moving through the U.S. Senate Wednesday is projected to shave $20 billion dollars from the country’s deficit in ways that have many veterans organizations outraged. The legislation struck by House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray has a provision that drops the cost of living allowance for military retirees and disabled veterans to 1 percentage point below inflation. That is, if inflation for a given year is 3 percent, cost of living adjustments will rise only 2...

(CNN) – Sen. Patty Murray, co-crafter of the bipartisan budget agreement and member of the veterans affair committee, said Wednesday cuts to pension benefits for some military veterans under the spending plan was a part of a compromise to avoid billions in cuts to the defense industry. "We had to look at how we could find compromises. There are things in this I like and there are things in this I don't like," the Senate Budget Committee chair and Democrat from Washington State said in an interview on CNN's "New Day." "But at the end of the day, if we...

The Senate just voted to cut off debate on the Ryan–Murray budget deal, paving the way for its passage later this week. This vote was the key procedural hurdle the bill will face.

Watch the RINOs..especially you, Hatch..throw in the towel..give Reid a win..60 votes needed

The budget deal that House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) cut with Senate Budget Committee chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) is set to clear the Senate, The New York Times reports. “Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, announced his support for the measure on Monday, appearing to give it the 60 votes it would need to overcome a filibuster threat and bring it to a final vote, which would need only a majority,” the Times’ Jonathan Weisman wrote Monday. “Mr. Hatch joined Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, Susan...

Despite the fact that the Ryan-Murray budget deal passed the House with overwhelming support, it was not a slam dunk in the Senate as of late last week. Without Paul Ryan’s strong influence, individual GOP senators were leery of the deal. Even the defense hawks view this deal as ‘too little too late.’ The Senate whip count began with only one Republican – John McCain – vocally supporting the deal. Moreover, it’s not a sure thing that there won’t be any Democrat defections either. On Sunday, Senator Dick Durbin was worried he wouldn’t get 60 votes for the deal. He...

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), the second-ranking Senate Democratic leader, said Sunday that Republicans jockeying for the White House in 2016 and Tea Party challengers in 2014 have imperiled the budget deal. Durbin estimated that Democrats will lose three members of their caucus on the vote, which means they’ll need at least eight Republicans to cross the aisle and vote with them. The challenge Democratic leaders face in trying to round up the vote has been compounded by the outspoken opposition to the deal from Republicans weighing presidential bids and a slew of Republican primary races in 2014. “A...

The Ryan-Murray budget deal is a fake and a fraud that the Stupid Party thinks is on the level and the Democrats have constructed as a trap for them. It has only just been announced and it has already caused another split in the Republican Party which is just what the Democrats wanted to happen. This “split”was designed to happen. It was a very simple trap that is forcing the Republicans into another intramural war. The Democrats have once again played rope-a-dope with the hapless GOPe; and once again John Boehner, the Charlie Brown of politics, has fallen right into...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told Democratic House members at a meeting Thursday morning to “embrace the suck” and encouraged enough members to back the budget deal on the floor to allow passage, according to an attendee of the meeting. “We need to get this off the table so we can go forward,” Pelosi told her members, according to someone inside the closed meeting of the caucus.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) reportedly finds the budget deal announced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) "deeply concerning." Though Cruz has not been able to fully review the deal that increases spending beyond the sequester levels because of his 20-hour flight back from South Africa after attending Nelson Mandela's funeral, he reportedly has taken issue with deal because it increases spending for minor promises of future reductions in the debt that may never materialize. "We shouldn't sacrifice the modest 2.4 percent spending cuts already in law in exchange for a mere possibility of future reductions," a...

2013 has not been a pleasant year if you work for the federal government. You’ve been subject to pay freezes, furloughs and shutdowns. One of you got yelled at by a Tea Party Republican at the World War II memorial. And if Congress passes the budget deal announced Tuesday night by Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray – a big if – you will get a final Christmas present: You’ll have to pay more into your pension, an effective wage cut that just adds to the $114 billion, with a “B,” federal employees have already given back to the...

If there is one person I respect in Congress, it is Senator Tom Coburn, R-OK. Yes, he is one of my Senators and I voted for him gladly. That's not saying I haven't disagreed with him on issues before, but most of the time, I find myself in complete agreement. He is now being very vocal in his opposition to the budget deal worked out between Paul Ryan and Patty Murray. And unlike a lot of his colleagues in Washington, Tom Coburn is willing to highlight how government spending really works. He has consistently fought against wasteful government spending and...

House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan has now accomplished the astonishing task of pushing House Republicans substantially to the left of the Senate GOP. His budget deal, announced Tuesday night, was achieved by shutting conservative Senate Republicans out of negotiations, by resorting to the old trick of spending now while claiming savings later, by ignoring a symbolically important budgetary red line, and by treating as Democratic “concessions” things to which even Democratic budgeteers already had agreed. The chess equivalent of Ryan’s deal would be trading a castle for a mere pawn. No wonder conservatives are feeling rooked. One need not...

The budget agreement announced yesterday increases spending, raises taxes, and funds Obamacare for two years. It has the support of President Obama, Harry Reid, and countless Democrats in Washington. What is Mitch McConnell doing to stop it? Nothing. In fact, McConnell was completely silent on the deal yesterday. Mitch McConnell may vote against the deal so he can pretend to be a conservative, but don't be fooled. He wants the deal to pass. He made it clear that he won't fight the Democrats on spending and he forced his party to surrender. It's so disappointing because now is the perfect...

...These Republicans had just been briefed on a new, bipartisan budget blueprint that would establish long-term federal government spending caps. The plan, a product of months of negotiation between Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, a Republican, and Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat, lacks many priorities Republicans have fought for during the Obama era. ... Because the new budget deal sets spending levels until 2015, it eliminates the possibility of shutdown battles over the next few years, which serves as a welcomed relief to Democrats and Republicans alike. ... “Most major conservative groups have put out statements blasting this deal,” the...

Republican leaders defended a modest budget deal that would maintain government operations through 2015 amid conservative opposition that could scuttle the legislation in the House. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, lashed out at conservative advocacy groups that have encouraged GOP lawmakers to oppose a budget framework unveiled last night by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. "They're using our members and they're using the American people for their own goals," an animated Boehner told reporters at the Capitol. "This is ridiculous."

"They're using our members and they're using the American people for their own goals," an animated Boehner told reporters at the Capitol. "This is ridiculous.".....In remarks on the Senate floor praising the new budget framework, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., suggested he planned to bring up an unemployment benefits bill and minimum wage increase to the floor in January.