Can't let politicians get away with thinking they aren't seedy for a day.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said that Congress does not need an official federal budget because it can just adopt appropriations bills and authorization policies as needed to keep operating.
Last Friday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), referencing the last debt ceiling deal, said, We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year. Its done, we dont need to do it.
They seem to be right. The debt ceiling increase deal last summer looks like it detaches revenue raising (which should include borrowing) from the House, where the Constitution put it, and gave it to the President, since it now takes new Conressional action to prevent the President from raising the debt ceiling. Have I interpreted that right?
But I still don't see how this is satisfied (Art.1, Sect. 9 Clause 7):
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time. I guess 'time to time' can be in excess of 1000 days. Maybe Darth Vader Ginsberg is right, and this document is just not up to modern standards, like South Africa's.
#1
The appropriation bill is the legal requirement for the dispensing of money.
The 'budget' is a means to set priorities for all the appropriations and authorizations. The Budget Act of 1974 requires an annual, overall budget with various timelines and milestones, but there is no legal penalty on Congress if they fail (of course!!). But they can spend to their hearts' content as long as they pass an authorization and appropriations bill for that sum.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/08/2012 15:25 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Karma would be for those, who ignore the law in order to have their way, to one day be sitting before a tribunal and be claiming protection of a document which by their own act, they had destroyed.
#6
Yet the President was late again in proposing a budget. Our money and nations wealth mean nothing to the vapid sagging skin suits that call themselves representatives.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
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Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
