On Thursday night, after House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) gleefully denounced conservative groups as “losing all credibility,” 169 House Republicans joined Democrats on a march toward more spending and bigger government. It is a sad day that only sixty-two Republicans think that increasing spending is a bad thing.
By quickly passing the budget sell-out authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the establishment Republicans decided to flatly reject the fiscally conservative mandate they received in 2010 after reclaiming the majority in the wake of Obamacare’s passage and ballooning debt.
The Budget Control Act of 2011, which was also passed with bipartisan support, set clear budget caps for discretionary spending. However, in an act of intentional political amnesia, this Ryan-Murray budget blasts through those caps by spending an additional $63 billion. In fact, this deal is actually worse than inaction because Republicans would have retained the small budget reductions from the sequester. Maintaining those cuts would have locked in $32 billion more in savings during the next two years. This deal negotiated away those savings. With so much new spending, how can this budget be considered a “compromise?”
The Ryan-Murray deal spends money that America does not have. It also raises numerous fees in exchange for questionable promises of cuts in the future. That budgeting tactic is one of the dirtiest tricks in Washington, kicking the can down the road while handing crushing debt to younger taxpayers.
Republicans took control of the House in 2010 on the promise to get our fiscal house in order with the help of the very conservative movement Speaker Boehner attacked. Ironically, it will now be left to the Republican minority in the Senate to stop this deal. Conservatives must stand with them as they fight this horrendous budget, and conservatives must be allowed at the budget negotiating table. Now is no time to wither while establishment Republicans conduct business as usual.
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