This year, Sen. Rand Paul's effort to balance the federal budget didn't even get a floor vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Paul's proposal called for cutting 2 percent from all federal line items for each of the next five years and would reduce federal spending by about $11 trillion over the next decade-even though spending would rise after the first five years.
It's an adaptation of the so-called "Penny Plan" that Paul has been pushing for several years, though he now says an additional penny in cuts for every federal dollar spent is necessary to get the budget to balance.
According to an analysis from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, about 60 percent of this year's expected deficit is the result of policies-mostly last year's huge increase in spending that shattered those Obama-era budget caps-put in place by current legislators and signed by the current president.
Most Republicans go back to their districts and say they support balanced budgets, Paul said on the Senate floor before the vote, "But they're not really for balanced budgets if they vote for budgets that don't balance."
Last year, Paul was able to get the balanced budget proposal to the Senate floor after striking a deal with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell during an earlier budget impasse to get the bill on the floor.
Before Monday's vote happened, Paul predicted that not a single Democrat would vote for his proposal and more than half the Republicans wouldn't vote for it either.
https://reason.com/2019/06/03/bipartisan-senate-effort-predictably-kills-rand-pauls-plan-to-balance-the-federal-budget/
Paul's proposal called for cutting 2 percent from all federal line items for each of the next five years and would reduce federal spending by about $11 trillion over the next decade-even though spending would rise after the first five years.
It's an adaptation of the so-called "Penny Plan" that Paul has been pushing for several years, though he now says an additional penny in cuts for every federal dollar spent is necessary to get the budget to balance.
According to an analysis from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, about 60 percent of this year's expected deficit is the result of policies-mostly last year's huge increase in spending that shattered those Obama-era budget caps-put in place by current legislators and signed by the current president.
Most Republicans go back to their districts and say they support balanced budgets, Paul said on the Senate floor before the vote, "But they're not really for balanced budgets if they vote for budgets that don't balance."
Last year, Paul was able to get the balanced budget proposal to the Senate floor after striking a deal with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell during an earlier budget impasse to get the bill on the floor.
Before Monday's vote happened, Paul predicted that not a single Democrat would vote for his proposal and more than half the Republicans wouldn't vote for it either.
https://reason.com/2019/06/03/bipartisan-senate-effort-predictably-kills-rand-pauls-plan-to-balance-the-federal-budget/
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