Senate GOP offers new budget rules (2 year spending plans?)

[UpInArms]

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?dist=newsfinder&siteid=mktw&guid=%7B6A188977%2D3BE9%2D43A8%2DAC12%2DFC61B5677BE6%7D&symbol=

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Senate Republicans unveiled a proposed set of budget rules Wednesday that sponsors say would rein in spending on soon-to-balloon entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and return the federal budget to balance by 2012.

"This is a chance to renew and redesign, redraft, re-create, restructure the way we approach budgeting here at the federal level and have it be real so that we can move forward with an effective and a strong fiscal policy, which delivers the type of government that people want but is an affordable government," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H.

The bill includes provisions that would move from annual budgets to two-year spending plans. It would also give the president a power similar to a line-item veto by allowing the White House to target wasteful spending, by requiring Congress to take quick action on presidential requests to rescind individual items. It would also reestablish some of the budget rules that were in place in the 1980s, including procedures that would automatically slow the rate of growth of entitlement spending.

It also reinstates caps on discretionary spending -- measures that must be approved by Congress each year, and would require across-the-board cuts if legislators fail to heed the limits. The bill also creates two bipartisan commissions, with one charged to study the efficiency of government programs and the other to examine pressures on entitlement spending as baby boomers begin to retire.

...more...

So if they pass a crappy "budget" - it will now take 2 years to change it?

These freaks just don't get it.

[Sadie5]

1. If you will notice

when they "reign in spending", it always includes the programs beneficial to the poor and middle class. They still keep the programs which tend to fatten their own wallets.

[JudyM]

2. I hope the dems put together a list totaling the costs of all the GOP's

'favors' to contributors. They are obviously trying to build a case for their fiscal responsiblitlity. Another case of whitewashing the truth.