Judd Gregg is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. Whether he knows anything about budgets, economics or accounting is unknown to me. His filing of the "Stop Over-Spending Act of 2006", or as he likes to say S.O.S., leads me to believe he knows jack about any of those subjects.
I know that the federal government is not a business, but in virtually all economic endeavors of man there are costs and, hopefully, revenues. Gregg's bill totally removes revenues from the economic equation. He is quite happy to remove any consideration of repealing the tax cuts when considering the nation's budget, despite the fact that, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the cuts to just the wealthiest 1% will total nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.
While our current deficit is largely due to the inability of our leaders to say no and the wars, usually deficits occur when the economy is weak. Yet, Gregg's bill calls for the largest budget cuts to occur when the economy is weakest.
Gregg stands up for our troops. No cuts will be made in our defense. His S.O.S. affects only entitlement programs. Cuts will only be made in such frills as Medicare, Medicaid, veteran's benefits (oh, veterans don't fight our wars, do they?), military retirements (those nasty soldiers, again), Head Start, WIC, NIH, clean water programs - you know, all those things that are vital to our neediest citizens, as well as we average Joes.
Gregg believes in presidential power. His bill calls for a line item veto which allows the president to stop the spending of funds for up to 90 days, which 90 days could occur near the end of a fiscal year thus preventing appropriated funds being spent even if the Congress has overridden the president's veto.
I know where Gregg's head is. The name of one of his fellow sponsors, Crapo, reminds me.
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