Sen. Jeff Sessions: “You can’t take a bucket of water from one end of the pool and pour it in the other and gain from this.” Photo credit twitter.com
The final tally was 53 to 46, with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia the sole Democrat to join the Republicans.
The motion, offered by Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, would have returned the Senate’s budget back to committee “with instructions to make it balance by 2023,” according to The Hill.
“Tonight the American people witnessed a remarkable and alarming event: the Senate’s Democrat majority declared they do not want to balance the budget, will not balance the budget, and will oppose any effort to balance the budget in any way,” Sessions said after the vote.
The budget prepared by the House would balance in 10 years according to House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. In contrast, even though the Senate budget raises taxes by an additional $975 billion, it will never balance.
“The budget spends more money, and it eats up the new taxes with new spending. It really does,” he said. “This is a failed plan that’s been produced by the majority party in the United States Senate.
“You can’t take a bucket of water from one end of the pool and pour it in the other and gain from this, especially when the bucket’s going to leak a good bit of it in the process.”
GOP lawmakers have long stressed using spending cuts, however, the amendment offered by Sessions didn’t restrict the method to balance the budget.
“They can balance the budget any way they want to. They can raise taxes, they can cut spending,” Session said
“This motion would simply say this to our colleagues, ‘Do you favor a balanced budget? Is it important to you? Have you said you’d vote for a balanced budget?’” Sessions said. “A goal of balancing the budget isn’t just some frivolous goal — it will mean that we’ll put our government on a sustainable path.”
Democrats are fond of pointing out that the U.S. last passed a balanced budget during the Clinton administration. The government returned to deficit spending during the Bush administration to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Read more at The Hill.
About Michael Dorstewitz
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Surprised? nope – me neither
If we need to do with out anything, we can do with out OBAMA.and Joe Biden. But the Senate and the Congress have to put a budget out and NOW.
I am so sick of the politicians not doing their JOB!!! Paul Ryan put a budget out there!, why oh why cant we just try to work with it…. It is far better than doing what we are right now…. DEMOCRATS GET OFF YOUR DUFFS and accept the budget that has been proposed. Or all of you are going to be fired come election time. I just pray our country last that long! DO SOMETHING!!!!!!!!!!!!! STOP BICKERING!!!!!!!!!!!!, Nancy Pelosi, sit down and shut up, Harry Reid, Shut up and pass the proposed budget from Paul Ryan. ENOUGHT ALREADY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE GETTING HIGHLY UPSET, and with good reason.
I have never been so sick and tired of my government as I am now, and I am embarrassed of who we have in the Whitehouse who is representing this country…. CONGRESS get busy with proceedings for an IMPEACHMENT for OBAMA, and FIRE JOE BIDEN. WE NEED A CLEANING OUT OF OLD RESIDUE … those who have been in there way too long, need to go. There needs to be a cap put on how many times you can serve in the senate and congress. We need fresh untainted public servants.
You have obozo and the demos,or at least some of them wanting to make cuts in all the wrong places.Their out their throwing away billions on pork barrel subjects that have nothing to do with anything at all except to line the pockets of their supporters and nothing more.The gop needs to press foor cuts in that area along with cuts in obozo’s constant tax payers funded vacations and giving billions to other country’s that are our enemy’s etc and leave the defence dept and the military alone cause we nee them both but we don’t need these other things at all
The attitudes and votes of the Democrats in the United States Senate just go to prove exactly why they have not presented a budget for over 3 years and now in the fourth year they finally admit that they will not even try or have any intention of trying to balance their budget for this year either. They did not submit a budget for the three previous years so that none of the Senate Democrats would be put on the spot and have to go on the record as having voted against balancing their budget. Now they are on the record against balancing the national budget for all to see and know their full intentions of continuing to spend taxpayers’ money as though it were water for all of their various and sundry “Pork Barrel Projects” to provide special favors to those in their home states in hopes of getting re-elected. All these career politicians of both parties really care about anymore is doing whatever it takes to insure their on re-election and they will spend and bend whatever laws as necessary to achieve their end-goal. Vote the career politicians out and find and elect politicians who will actually care about the futures of our nation’s children and the future of our nation by paying attention to “We The People” who are their employers.