Thursday, March 29, 2007

The Marvel that is the Democratic Budget

House Democrats have passed a budget plan that includes a tax increase of nearly $400 billion, which they say will bring federal spending into balance by 2012. That's a neat trick, considering that if we do nothing the federal budget will see a $170 billion surplus in 2012.

According to the Democratic-run Congressional Budget Office, the President's plan will yield a $9 billion deficit in 2012 - without any tax increases.

Are you happy with the change in Washington?

Update: Since I've made a cottage industry lately of looking at Democrats taking votes that might cause problems in the 2008 election, I'll do it again here. There are the 18 Freshman Democrats in swing seats who voted for the a date certain for Iraq withdrawal last week and the Democratic budget today:

Michael Arcuri
Kirsten Gillibrand
John Hall (all 3 of NY)
Jerry McNerney (CA)
Zack Space (OH)
Gabrielle Giffords
Harry Mitchell (both of AZ)
Steve Kagen (WI)
Joe Sestak
Jason Altmire (both of PA)
Ron Klein
Tim Mahoney (both of FL)
Tim Walz (MN)
Paul Hodes
Carol Shea Porter (both NH)
Nancy Boyda (KS)
Ed Perlmutter (CO)
John Yarmouth (KY)

Let me just make clear that I'm not predicting all these candidates will lost next year. I'm just saying that they're all giving their opponents and the NRCC significant issues to use against them. The likelihood is that a few of them will lose, and when we do the post-mortem, we'll point at votes like this one.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mitchell az05 voted against each of the budget proposals offered. He's already feeling the heat and had his flak try to spin out of the Iraq withdrawl saying he "might" vote against the conference.