Mar 9, 2011

Senate Fails To Pass Appropriations

From the Associated Press:
The Democratic-led Senate on Wednesday emphatically rejected a budget-slashing House spending bill as too draconian. It then immediately killed a rival Democratic plan that was derided by moderate Democrats as too timid in its drive to cut day-to-day agency budgets. ...

The GOP plan mustered 44 aye votes; the Democratic measure received just 42 votes, with 10 party members and liberal independent Bernard Sanders in opposition. Moderates Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Ben Nelson, D-Neb., Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and McCaskill — each face potentially difficult re-election bids next year — were among those opposed to the Democratic version.
Update: There are straws in the wind suggesting that some very large multi-year agreement is in the works. Since this would be dependent upon the existence of some reservoir of good will between the parties, I am not going to get carried away with optimism.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"budget-slashing House spending bill", the media needs to stop using biased words like this that are an outright lie. 60 billion out of a 3.7 trillion dollar budget is not slashing. 60 billion is 1.6 percent. More like a budget nick.

Anonymous said...

Depends on who is being nicked, pal. You Tea Baggers need to chill out. Budgets are about more than mere numbers.

Anonymous said...

http://reason.com/archives/2011/03/09/tiny-cuts-big-complaints