Paul Ryan pledges team decision on budget despite conservatives’ rebellion

(Hat tip: KimR) - Republican leaders have agreed to stick to the higher spending levels President Obama is seeking as House Republicans released a $1.07 trillion blueprint Tuesday that is already spurring a feverish backlash among conservatives. Read more at the Washington Times Read More......

Obama budget busts the $4 trillion mark

(Hat tip: KimR) - While the rest of the world focused on the New Hampshire primary, the White House dropped a budget bomb. Congress will get a $4.1 trillion spending plan for FY2017 from Barack Obama, complete with a massive $2.8 trillion tax hike and a set of assumptions that boggles the imagination nearly as much as the topline spending number... Read more at Hotair.com Read More......

70% Of Obama’s Budget Is Writing Checks To Individuals

(Hat tip: KimR) - Budget: What is the federal government's most important function these days? Based on the Obama budget released today, it's not defense, or roads, or education, or the environment. It's cutting checks... Read more at Investor's Business Daily Read More......

How did your Rep vote on the Omnibus?

Congress just passed a 2,009 page, $1.1 trillion spending bill. The bill spent $547 million per page.  How did your representative/senator vote? Find out at Conservative Review (House) and The Right Scoop (Senate)

Votes from Oregon's U.S. Representatives and Senators:

Representatives Bonamici (D-CD1), Walden (R-CD2), Blumenauer (D-CD3) and DeFazio (D-CD4) voted for the omnibus spending bill and Rep. Schrader (D-CD5) voted against it. Senators Merkley (D) and Wyden (D) voted against the bill.

Read More......

How Global Warming Science Ate The NASA Budget

NASA’s obsession with global warming research is crowding out funding for planetary science and exploration, according to Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Read more at The Daily Caller
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

The 3 A.M. Budget Travesty Is Shameful Cave-In By GOP Leaders

Whenever the government does something in the dead of night, you can bet it's awful and they don't want you to see it. That's the case of the just-passed budget. --The fiscal 2016 budget deal that emerged at 3:15 a.m. Friday was little more than a blank check for President Obama's final two years. Now he'll sail into retirement knowing he can spend what he wants with little opposition from a GOP Congress.

Read more at Investor's Business Daily
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

Oregon facing $3 billion budget crisis next biennium (2017-19)?

The big news this week was the revenue forecast, which is up an additional $463 million. This means there is an additional $1.75 billion in this budget cycle. On the front end we should keep in mind the fact the revenue forecast is an educated guess as to what the economy will do over the next two years. The state economists work in consultation with business and labor leaders to come up with the projection, which was announced on Thursday. The May forecast is what the Legislature uses to create the budgets for the next biennium. One complicating factor is the fact that while the current biennium ends on June 1, the final numbers won’t actually be “trued up” until September.

Read more at Oregon Catalyst Read More......

Oregon Supreme Court PERS ruling opens gaping hole in state budget... eventually

Thursday's announcement that the Oregon Supreme Court had overturned a series of Public Employees Retirement System changes approved in 2013 cast a pall on a Capitol that had otherwise been focused on an intensifying legislative session. ✧ That's because, in time for the state's 2017-19 budget, the Oregon Legislature will need to find hundreds of millions of dollars that lawmakers had thought they'd saved when cutting cost-of-living raises for current state retirees.

Read more at Oregon Live Read More......

Republicans pass budgets in both House and Senate, trim $5.1 trillion in spending

Remember when a disagreement between Republicans on the budget was “cataclysmic” for GOP claims to governance? Democrats last passed a normal budget resolution six years ago, but Republicans went all of seven days before both chambers finally passed budget resolutions. Our long national nightmare, at least as envisioned by Politico, is over: The Senate passed a Republican-authored budget plan early on Friday that seeks $5.1 trillion in domestic spending cuts over 10 years while boosting military funding. The 52-46 vote on the non-binding budget resolution put Congress on a path to complete its first full budget in six years. It came at the end of a marathon 18-hour session that saw approval of dozens of amendments ranging from Iran sanctions to carbon emissions and immigration policies.

Read more at Hotair.com Read More......

Republicans Look To Cut ‘Global Warming’ Research From The Defense Budget

Republican lawmakers have unveiled their 2016 budget proposal, which looks eliminate the budget deficit in the next decade and that means spending cuts. One place, in particular, the GOP is looking to cut: federal defense spending on global warming research. Republicans have proposed cutting global warming research programs at the Defense Department and the CIA. “The Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency, two of the most important agencies in our national security apparatus, currently spend part of their budget studying climate change,” the GOP’s budget notes in a section detailing ways to “eliminate redundancies and end the abuse or misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Read more at the Daily Caller
(Hat tip: KimR) Read More......

WSJ: Obama's Hidden Budget

How does President Barack Obama plan to fund the new savings program he announced in January? It remains a mystery, even after Tuesday's release of Mr. Obama's 2015 budget proposal. Expect resistance on Capitol Hill as the President appears to be once again testing the limits of his ability to act without Congressional approval. ✧ In his January State of the Union address and then at a subsequent speech in Pennsylvania, the President touted his new "MyRA" plan, a type of Roth Individual Retirement Account that allows after-tax dollars to grow tax-free and will invest only in government debt. He also claimed the authority to create the program administratively. ✧ Team Obama says that the MyRA plan will allow private-sector workers to enjoy the same returns as government workers enjoy in a retirement plan known as the G Fund, but without paying any of the fees.

Read more at the Wall Street Journal Read More......

Budget Deal Passed: Final House Vote Tally

October 16. 2013 - Every Democrat voted for the Senate-approved budget deal, along with 87 Republicans; 144 Republicans voted no (including Rep. Walden (R-OR)). See how the House members voted. The deal ends the partial government shutdown and provides back-pay for furloughed workers, sequester remains and government, including Obamacare, is funded through Jan. 15. The debt ceiling is raised through Feb. 7th. As usual, bipartisan committees to be formed to present a fix for money problems. The draconian medical device tax remains but a provision to verify the income of those receiving ObamaCare subsidies is included.

Related:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX): When half of Senate Republicans are firing cannons at House Republicans, it sabotages the House effort
Rep. John Fleming (R-LA): Rep. 'This fight didn't end last night' Read More......

Ben Carson: Congress Must "Surgically Excise" Obamacare

Renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson says Congress must "use the purse strings" it controls to kill Obamacare, surgically excising it from the rest of the federal budget. ✧ "Congress has a lot of power. They have powers to propose laws, to make laws. They have the ability to decouple the healthcare bill from the rest of the budget. They can do that," Carson told "The Steve Malzberg Show" Friday on Newsmax TV. ✧ "This is what they should be doing so the president doesn't have a political football to throw around. They need to go on offensive here; don't just always sit around and play defense. You'll never win the game that way. ... Use the purse strings to kill it," he said.

Read more and watch video at Newsmax/Life Site News Read More......

Charen: What the Budget Impasse is Really About

Mona Charen - We are headed for something much worse than the fiscal cliff. ✧ When governments cannot pay their current employees because they’ve gone broke paying pensions to previous employees (among other obligations), you don’t get a “fiscal cliff” or even a bad recession, you get the unraveling of civilization. ✧ That is how Republicans should present the stakes in the budget impasse when speaking to the press. So far, John Boehner has described the president’s proposals as “unserious” and Mitch McConnell has let it be known that he laughed in Tim Geithner’s face. Do either of those responses convince the average voter that something is at stake here beyond Republicans protecting their wealthy friends? Read more at NRO... Read More......

Red State: Only in Washington

By Daniel Horowitz
For those of us who are not schooled in the ways of Washington, here is a glimpse into the duplicity of the “budget savings” as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations.  Read all about it at Red State... Read More......

0-414 vote: House clobbers budget proposal based on Obama's 2013 plan

The House on Wednesday night unanimously rejected an alternative budget proposal based on President Obama's 2013 budget plan, dispatching it in a 0-414 rout.  ✧ The vote came just hours after the White House cast the pending vote as a political "gimmick," an apparent attempt to downplay what many expected to be an ugly-looking vote for the White House. Read more at The Hill... Read More......

Rep. Richardson: Final Gavel Falls-2012 Legislative Session Adjourned

Rep. Richardson's Newsletter, March 7, 2012

This week the final gavel fell ending Oregon’s five-week, 2012 legislative session. For a complete list of what was accomplished during the 2012 Legislative Session, See 2012 Key Votes PDF. ✧ There were four key goals for this short, even-year session: Rebalance the State Budget, pass transformative legislation for education and health care, and create a clear path for Oregon’s economic recovery and jobs for Oregon workers. ✧ Bipartisan cooperation and compromise enabled legislative success in meeting the first three of Oregon’s key goals. Read Rep. Richardson's full newsletter...

Read More......

Obama signs debt deal

With just hours to spare before the deadline, President Obama signs the deficit reduction bill into law to raise the nation's debt ceiling after the Senate approved the measure by a 74-26 vote.

Debt Ceiling: Budget Experts See Deal as 'Spit in the Ocean' - [Excerpt] "This package claims to reduce about $2.5 trillion from what the debt otherwise would have been; but the discretionary spending caps I discussed are just slowed growth. ... When we think about how big the problem is, with the retirement of the Baby Boom (generation), with low revenue coming in as a result of the financial crisis and the economic slowdown, we've got a much bigger problem than $3 trillion of vague cuts can address." Read more at Fox News... Read More......

Moody’s affirms city’s bond rating (Corvallis)

Moody’s Investors Service has affirmed the city of Corvallis bond rating of Aa2 for unlimited tax general obligation bonds and Aa3 for limited tax bonds and assigned a negative outlook. Read more at InBusiness...

(Hat tip: John H. Detweiler)
Read More......

Oregon Ways and Means hearings on roads begin April 19th

(Hat tip: Pat Dysart) Oregon Legislative Assembly: (SALEM) – House Co-Chairs Peter Buckley and Dennis Richardson and Senate Co-Chair Richard Devlin announced today that the Oregon Legislature’s Joint Ways and Means Committee will hold four public budget hearings around the state over the next three weeks.

The hearings will begin at the Sylvania campus of Portland Community College, 5-7 p.m., Tuesday, April 19, (full schedule attached) and will include stops in Bend, Medford, and Newport with video conferencing hook-ups to Pendleton and Coos Bay.

"Two years ago, input from people across the state helped to guide our decisions on the programs we should protect,” said Buckley (D-Ashland). This year, in even tougher budget conditions, I am counting on the citizens of Oregon to shine a light on the path they want us to take to help Oregon emerge from this economic recession."

“The Legislature faces very difficult decisions as we work to pass a balanced state budget. I encourage citizens to attend these very important hearings to share their ideas, priorities and concerns,” said Richardson (R-Central Point).

“The public process is crucial to our decisions on how to balance this budget and protect critical services that Oregonians rely on,” said Devlin (D-Tualatin). “The Legislature is the people’s branch of government and I am committed to making sure this budget isn’t written behind closed doors.”

The co-chairs released their budget outline in late March. It can be found at http://www.leg.state.or.us/comm/lfo/2011_13CoChairBudget.pdf.

Contacts:

Robin Maxey, (503) 986-1605

Steve Lindsley, (503) 986-1210

NOTE: This concerns which programs are deleted from the State Budget in case you are interested in attending. SEIU will be there. Others? Read More......