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Sunday, October 16, 2005

House Republicans Push for Budget Cuts

The CATO Institute sent out a notice today that the blogger pressure to enact budget cuts in the wake of Katrina/Rita is working. (See prior post)

House Republican leaders have moved from balking at big cuts in Medicaid and other programs to embracing them, driven by pent-up anger from fiscal conservatives concerned about runaway spending and the leadership's own weakening hold on power, according to The Washington Post.

The article continues: Beginning this week, the House GOP lawmakers will take steps to cut as much as $50 billion from the fiscal 2006 budget for health care for the poor, food stamps and farm supports, as well as considering across-the-board cuts in other programs. Only last month, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) and other GOP leaders quashed demands within their party for budget cuts to pay for the soaring cost of hurricane relief.

In Bush Beats Johnson: Comparing the Presidents (.pdf) published in the Cato's Tax and Budget Bulletin, Cato's director of budget studies Stephen Slivinski uses revised data released during the summer by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to make side-by-side comparisons of the spending habits of each president during the last 40 years. While the data show that all presidents presided over net increases in spending, President Bush is shown to be one of the biggest spenders of them all, even outpacing Lyndon B. Johnson in terms of discretionary spending.

posted by Larry at 1:39 PM - permalink 0 comments

Small Business Reading Room

House Republicans Push for Budget Cuts

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