Magnifisyncopathological

The AP via The Guardian: Senate Passes $2.8 Trillion 2007 Budget

Congress pushed the ceiling on the national debt to nearly $9 trillion Thursday, and the House and Senate promptly voted for major spending initiatives for the war in Iraq, hurricane relief and education.

Like drunken sailors in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve.

Fucking despicable.

The House approved $92 billion in new money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for relief along the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.

The Senate adopted a $2.8 trillion budget blueprint that anticipates deficits greater than $350 billion for both this year and next.

It is so much easier to spend money when it ain't your money.

All told, senators endorsed more than $16 billion in increases above Bush's proposed $873 billion cap on spending appropriated by Congress each year.

This stinking turd passed 51-49.

John Cornyn (R-TX), Yea
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Yea

I have authorized neither of you to represent me. Neither of you were given permission to act as my representative, in my name. Had you bozos asked me, I would have told you to vote the shit down in the barest, barest example of haltingly shy fiscal conservatism.

Senators earlier voted 52-48 to send Bush a measure that would allow the government to borrow an additional $781 billion and prevent a first-ever default on Treasury notes.

As a result, the government could pay for the war in Iraq without raising taxes or cutting popular domestic programs.

[...]

The debt limit increase was the fourth of Bush's presidency, totaling $3 trillion. With the budget deficit near record levels, an additional increase in the debt limit almost certainly will be required next year.

Treasury Secretary John Snow applauded Congress for ``protecting the full faith and credit of the United States.'' He said it ensures that the government ``can deliver on promises already made, such as Social Security and Medicare payments and aid for the victims of the 2005 hurricanes.''

Another ignorant step towards total financial collapse. Wonderful. Are these people aware how foolish this process looks to repeatedly bump up the limit when it goes close to threatening the system, how absurd and arbitrary it is? Value doesn't produce itself and it doesn't explode into reality via government edict.

Full faith and credit of the United States of America? There's something worth assaulting, challenging, and exposing as total fraud!

The budget blueprint advanced without Cheney's vote in the Republican-led Senate when Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu supported the plan after winning concessions to help her hurricane-damaged state of Louisiana and rest of the Gulf Coast.

A two billion dollar bribe was all it took. Here's your "art of the compromise" in all its tainted, bruised glory. Here's "governance."

Among the specific votes for the budget plan were:

-$3 billion more for heating subsidies for the poor. It passed 51-49.

-$7 billion more for education, health and worker safety accounts. It passed 73-27.

-$3.7 billion more for military personnel costs.

-$1.2 billion more for aviation security and stopping Bush's proposed increase in airline ticket taxes. They advanced by voice vote.

-$1 billion more for benefits for military survivors.

Peanuts in a very large pile.

The Senate votes Thursday set up a confrontation with the House, which is certain to oppose the additional spending.

[...]

``House conservatives are going to look at this budget and say, 'Whoa, what happened to fiscal conservatism,''' said top Budget Committee Democrat Kent Conrad of North Dakota.

What happened to something that has never existed in the first place?

The votes dismayed deficit hawks such as Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H. He already had decided to drop Bush's proposals to cut the growth of Medicare, strengthen tax-free health savings accounts and advance legislation to make permanent his 2001 tax cuts.

And yet you voted for it, you hypocrite. All praise the Grand Old Party!

Republicans are eager to show their conservative supporters that they are getting serious about cracking down on spending. Last weekend, GOP presidential aspirants at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis, Tenn., promised to be more thrifty with the people's money.

But GOP moderates such as Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania apparently did not get the message. His amendment to add $7 billion for education, health and labor programs won support from most Republicans, including Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, who has criticized Congress for embarking ``down a wayward path of wasteful Washington spending.''

``All the talk in Memphis just doesn't comport with the realities of these important items'' such as education and health research, Specter said.

The system is unreformable because the philosophy of the system is being utterly ignored.

Unlike last year, when Congress passed a bill trimming $39 billion from the deficit through curbs to Medicaid, Medicare and student loan subsidies, Senate GOP leaders have abandoned plans to cut mandatory programs.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

Coercive altruistic collectivism reigns supreme.

As a side note, this article was written by Andrew Taylor. I wonder if it was written by the same Andrew Taylor I lauded as a renegade? Obviously the names are the same, but check out the URL of the Yahoo News piece where I first read this: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060317/ap_on_go_co/deeper_in_debt.

Deeper in debt. I'd say there isn't a word to adequately describe the kind of debt this government has foisted upon the citizens of this nation.