Ohio budget bill loaded with controversy

From cincinnati.com editorial

It looks like the bill that will lay out Ohio’s spending and tax priorities for the next two years will go to the governor laden with stuff that has nothing to do with the budget.

For some reason, the Republicans in the GOP-controlled General Assembly think the state budget is the appropriate vehicle to inflame the culture wars anew with a series of restrictions on abortion. The most egregious is a last-minute amendment to require doctors to perform ultrasounds to detect a fetal heartbeat. This is a back-door effort to avoid public debate on a highly controversial issue. It is a watered-down version of last year’s heartbeat bill, which GOP leaders took off the table. Now it’s back, tacked onto the budget bill. It deserves to be deleted or vetoed. Politicians don’t need to meddle in the doctor-patient relationship and legislate medicine.

Republicans also kept in the budget bill a provision that would ban abortion clinics from entering into transfer agreements with public hospitals. This is an unnecessary threat to the health of women. By potentially banning a transfer to a public hospital, precisely at the time when women may need advanced medical care, Republicans are putting women at risk. This should be taken out.

The bill also contains a ban on expanding Medicaid. Gov. John Kasich, himself a conservative Republican, has proposed expanding the Medicaid program using federal dollars. It would mean health insurance, and better health care, for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans who don’t have it. The governor should veto this ban, which unnecessarily ties the legislature’s hands.

A new exemption to Ohio’s open meetings law would let city councils, county boards and other public bodies keep the public out of meetings where economic development agreements are discussed. Local and state governments don’t need any more secrecy, especially when it comes to giving tax dollars and tax breaks to businesses. This, too, should go.

A little-known provision would change the make-up of the boards of vocational schools such as Great Oaks. The boards are now made up of elected school board members. The change would result in business executives being appointed to the vocational boards. It would be a big change in governance, and Great Oaks, the largest career-technical district in the state, and other vocational schools oppose it.

The budget itself appears less controversial, but that’s because the taxing and spending issues have been overshadowed by the irrelevant amendments.

This budget would raise taxes on consumers, through an expansion of the state sales tax, and lower them significantly on businesses. It would raise property taxes in the future by doing away with the long-time homestead exemption. Income taxes would be cut by 10 percent, a cut that is a bigger benefit to high wage earners.

Legislators are passing up an opportunity to raise taxes on the energy companies that are rapidly expanding their drilling operations in eastern Ohio. Ohio’s tax on oil and gas extraction, the severance tax, is one of the lowest in the nation.

Kasich proposed raising it, but the Big Oil companies appear to be winning this round.

The budget process also spotlighted the one-party system that Ohio has turned into. With solid majorities in the House and Senate, Republicans were able to exclude Democrats from any serious budget negotiations.

Legislators should keep the budget bill for budget matters so Ohioans can have the benefit of full, open debate on how their dollars are spent.

After Demanding Senate Pass A Budget, GOP Refuses To Enter Budget Negotiations

By Travis Waldron/Think Progress

House Republicans spent most of their time over the last three years reminding Americans that Senate Democrats hadn’t passed a budget in two, then three, then four years. It was a regular Republican talking point, a particular favorite of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s. But now that the Senate has returned to regular order by passing a budget, House Republicans are refusing to come to the table to negotiate a long-term spending plan.

Republicans passed their own budget, the plan Ryan authored, in March, and since the proposal differs from the Senate budget, regular order requires the two chambers to come together in conference to iron out their differences in a compromise budget that is then taken back to the full memberships of each house. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has hinted at forming such a conference for more than a week, but Republicans have shown no willingness to join him. This morning, Senate Republicans blocked Reid from creating a conference committee, a move that led Reid to accuse them of turning “a complete 180″:

“It seems House Republicans don’t want to be seen even discussing the possibility of compromise with the Democrats for fear of a Tea Party revolt,” Reid said.

He noted that Republicans have called for “regular order” for years.

“A strange thing happened: House Republicans did a complete 180 — they flipped. They’re no longer interested in regular order even though they preached that for years,” Reid said.

The GOP offered numerous excuses for why they wouldn’t approve a conference, including that certain rules need to be worked out. Ryan and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions (R), the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, have said they need to agree to “framework” for a deal to make a compromise more likely.

What that “framework” would need to be to get Republicans to agree to conference, however, is clear: a deal that cuts spending but includes no new tax revenue. That has been a consistent GOP demand throughout budget and spending fights over the last three years, a sticking point that has brought the government to the brink of both shutdown and default. It’s also a concession Democrats and President Obama are unwilling to make, given that they have already agreed to nearly $2.5 trillion in spending cuts while receiving little revenue in exchange. Any new deal, in fact, would have to achieve 90 percent of its deficit reduction from tax revenue to balance the overall reductions achieved in the last four years.

Economists Disagree With Paul Ryan’s Claim That ‘Debt Is Crushing Our Economy’

By Travis Waldron/Think Progress

Over the past three years, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) has repeatedly introduced budget resolutions that contain draconian spending cuts in an effort to stave off the debt crisis he says is right around the corner if it isn’t addressed immediately. Ryan’s plans, all three of which have passed the House of Representatives, would almost surely add to the debt instead of decreasing it, but his main view is that America’s current level of debt is weighing down the economy, a claim he repeatedto Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren Thursday night.

“The debt is crushing our economy, it’s slowing us down, and it’s guaranteeing the next generation has a diminished future,” Ryan said. “And we believe we have a moral obligation to balance this budget to get a healthier economy and create jobs.”

The source of those claims is a paper by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff that shows that economies grow more slowly when their debt-to-GDP ratios are in excess of 90 percent. But as Bloomberg reports, there is no economic consensus around those findings, especially when it comes to large economies like the United States:

“The argument that heavy debt loads slow economic growth doesn’t hold a lot of water,” says Guy LeBas, chief fixed- income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia who oversees $12 billion. “It suffers from a mix-up of cause and effect: When weak economic conditions arise, it tends to encourage deficit spending, which is what has led to more U.S. debt being issued, and not the other way around.” [...]

“The Rogoff-Reinhart 90 percent is really quite a fragile number,” says Joseph Gagnon, a former economist in the Fed’s monetary affairs division. “There is no threshold like that for countries that have control of the currency they borrow in.”

Moreover, there is no evidence that the debt is threatening the United States in the short-term. Borrowing costs are at historic lows — as Bloomberg notes, the cost of paying off the debt is lower today than it was when Ronald Reagan was president and financial markets are “begging” the U.S. to borrow. Instead, there is plenty of evidence that the focus on debt and deficit reduction has slowed the economic recovery. Government spending has plateaued since the 2009 stimulus effort that kickstarted the recovery, so while government spending traditionally pulls the economy out of recessions, spending cuts hampered efforts to boost the economy this time.

Investments to help the economic recovery now would fuel growth that reduces deficits and, thus, improve America’s long-term debt outlook as well. The current crisis facing the U.S. isn’t a debt crisis, but rather an unemployment crisis that is being exacerbated by lawmakers who focus too much on the debt.

Romney’s Budget Plan Could Kill Millions Of Jobs Over The Next Two Years

By Travis Waldron/Think Progress

The budget and tax proposals put forth by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney would not lead to the economic prosperity and job growth he has claimed, according to a new study released this week. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute found that Romney’s plans would actually lead to a net loss of jobs over the first two years of his administration, and the losses could grow even larger if Romney were to stick to his promise of reaching a balanced budget.

EPI had to make assumptions about Romney’s plan because of its lack of specificity, but according to its analysis, Romney’s plan to lower taxes and cut spending would cause a net loss of 554,000 jobs over the next two years if Romney abandons his plan to pay for the massive tax cuts he has promised. But if he maintains his promise to balance the budget while also providing the huge tax cuts, his plan would “lead to employment losses of 608,000 in 2013 and roughly 1.3 million in 2014″:

The deep spending cuts Romney has promised are the primary reason for the job losses, EPI’s analysis found. If Romney does pay for the tax cuts, as he insists he will, the spending cuts would get even deeper and thus cause the loss of even more jobs. Another independent analysis, meanwhile, found that fully paying for Romney’s tax cuts would require raising taxes on the middle class.

Romney’s call for a Balanced Budget Amendment would cause even more problems. “Government spending cuts of this magnitude would constitute an economic shock even larger than the one inflicted by the bursting of the housing bubble—a shock that led to the worst recession since the Great Depression,” EPI wrote. But because that shock would be so large, EPI concluded that passage of such an amendment is “exceedingly unlikely” and it chose not to include it in the analysis.

Chris Matthews: Republicans are ‘terrorists’ in budget negotiations

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw story

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said Tuesday it was scary that Republicans like Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) were willing to “not face the warning signs” about raising the federal debt ceiling and take the United States “right of the cliff.”

His guest, Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), noted that it was a misconception that raising the debt ceiling would permit Congress to spend more.

“All we are doing is making good on the spending that has already occurred,” she said. “It’s like they bought a new car and don’t want to make the payments.”

Later speaking with Salon.com’s Joan Walsh, Matthews said that the Republican’s plan to hold the debt ceiling “hostage” until Democrats agreed to budget cuts was “terrorism.”

Watch video, courtesy of MSNBC, below:

Republican budget plan will kill Michigan's workforce development agency Michigan Works!

by: eclectablog/Blogging for Michigan/Eclectablog.com.

Michigan's workforce development agency, Michigan Works!, will close its doors if a Republican budget plan passed by the US House of Representatives this week is made into law.

Michigan Works would have to shut down under a budget passed by the U.S. House, though the Senate has not backed the spending cuts.

The statewide work force development agency, which serves some 3 million Michigan residents, is largely funded by the Workforce Investment Act.

House legislation would eliminate more than $3.6 billion in funding for that act after July 1, as well as rescind $175 million for the current year.

"It would kind of just pull the linchpin out of the middle and everything would collapse," said Doug Stites, CEO of Capital Area Michigan Works.

But, don't forget: jobs are the GOP's number one priority. Right after elminating a woman's right to an abortion, repealing the Affordable Care Act and dismantling as many of the progressive initiatives passed by Democrats over the past two years as possible. Also, too, the deficit. The monster deficit that they were largely responsible for creating.

But, right after all of those things, jobs is absolutely number one.

M.C.L Comment: If you're unemployed and you voted Republican last year you have no one to blame but yourself.

GOP Budget Amendments Would Destroy Health, Economy, Planet

By Brad Johnson

Of the over 400 amendments offered on the House government-funding measure, the2011 Continuing Resolution (H.R. 1), dozens are focused on climate change, energy policy, and environmental protection. The existing language in the budget bill is already designed to deny global warming, slash and burn public health and green jobs, but the amendments would take even more radical steps to reward polluters who are killing our children’s future. Republican amendments, if fully enacted, would:

– Eliminate the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the Special Envoy for Climate Change, the Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, the NOAA Climate Service, the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E, National Science Foundation K-12 funding

– Block US funding for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Global Environment Facility

– Suspend enforcement of fisheries laws and construction and conservation acquisition programs of the National Parks and Department of the Interior

– Block rules for toxic cement plant pollution, hazardous coal ash, industrial boiler pollution, water quality, climate change pollution, climate change adaptation, energy-efficient lighting, mountaintop removal, atrazine, and water conservation

Most of the Republican amendments are budget neutral, not lowering the deficit one cent. Several defund effective jobs programs that cost only a few million dollars. The goal of these amendments is not fiscal responsibility or jobs creation, but polluter protection, even though the pollution is poisoning babies, causing the elderly to suffer, and destroying America’s natural bounty.

Meanwhile Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) has proposed amendments to eliminate billions in dollars in Big Oil subsidies, reduce the deficit, and restore LIHEAP and NIH funding, Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) offered amendments to defend America from the threat of global warming pollution, and Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) proposed amendments to take $66 million from fossil energy research and development and put it into green energy programs.

State officially shut down Lawmakers fail to agree on budget before deadline

By Chris Christoff and Kathleen Gray

LANSING -- State government was officially shut down after midnight, as state lawmakers failed to agree on either a full or temporary budget for the new fiscal year.

The Republican-controlled Senate held final action on an interim budget until after the midnight deadline, over objections from Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who accused them of shirking their responsibility to keep state government from shutting down.

The Senate adjourned until 12:15 a.m., when it was presumed negotiations would continue between the House, Senate and Granholm.

Less than an hour earlier, Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, accused Granholm and Senate Democrats of sabotaging progress on a final budget agreement, although key budget bills remained stalled in the Democratic controlled House.

Wednesday afternoon, Granholm notified some 51,000 state employees that they would be laid off at 12:01 a.m. if no budget was in place.

Only state workers for essential services would be at work, such as prison employees, unemployment offices, State Police patrols and state hospitals and critical health programs.

The closure also means state vendors will not be paid.

If there is no resolution by later in the morning, people camping in state parks will be asked to leave.

Lt. Gov. John Cherry, who presided over the Senate, said, "It's unfortunate it's gotten to this point. Both houses passed continuation budgets, but unfortunately they haven't sent it to the governor's desk so she can sign it.

Cherry said some may have been looking toward an actual government shut down. He added, "Maybe now that it's happened a resolution can be reached."

Two key bills -- one to fund public schools, the other to pay for state government and revenue sharing to local communities -- remained mired in the House with not enough support.

Just before midnight a bill to reduce state aid to schools by $218 per pupil was defeated, 2-106, as the Michigan Education Association engaged an all-out lobbying effort to kill the bill.

"Our goal is to find the money to run our schools," said MEA executive director Lu Battaglieri.

House Democratic leaders vowed throughout Wednesday to pursue legislation to raise more revenue, and use the money to restore some cuts such as aid to schools, the Michigan Promise grant program for college students revenue sharing and Medicaid payments to physicians and hospitals.

A bill to fund public universities would eliminate the Michigan Promise grant program, which was to pay up to $4,000 to eligible college students this school year.

Another bill that stalled in the House would reduce revenue sharing to cities, townships and villages by 11%. House Speaker Andy Dillon, D-Redford Township, couldn't muster enough of his own House Democrats to pass the bill.

Dillon had said he had an agreement with Senate Republicans to balance the budget using spending cuts. Dillon also planned to pursue unspecified taxes to restore programs.

Among the taxes discussed were a 3% assessment on all physicians, a tax on bottled water and a sales tax on tickets for entertainment such as sports events and concerts.

The state House of Representatives barely passed the budget that provides payments to local units of government for everything from police and fire services to maintaining parks and libraries.

The 56-52 vote was enough to pass revenue sharing, which includes an 11.1% cut in payments to municipalities, as well as a $7.1 million allocation for the Michigan State Fair.

The vote came 75 minutes past the midnight deadline to approve a state budget.