The Senate Once Again Refuses to Pass a Budget

Even the most liberal Senators wouldn’t attach their name to it.

Last Wednesday, the U.S. Senate unanimously rejected President Obama’s budget with a 0-99 vote, following a similar disastrous 0-414 defeat in the House. You read that right: even Majority Leader Harry Reid and his ring-leaders Senators Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer voted it down. Why? Because the American people could easily see that it spends too much, taxes too much, and puts us even further into debt.

The Senate also rejected four conservative budget alternatives, with House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s budget and Senator Pat Toomey’s “Restoring Balance” budget receiving the most votes among them. AFP issued a key vote urging support of both the Ryan and Toomey plans.

No Democratic Senator cast a single Yea vote for any budget, preferring to criticize their opponents while avoiding accountability for what they do support. This is the third year in a row the U.S. Senate has failed to pass a budget, and it’s no coincidence that we’ve also seen three straight years of trillion-dollar deficits.

Will the President Go Back on his Promise to “End Corporate Welfare”?

Also last Wednesday, both chambers of Congress passed a bill to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank and increase its loan limit from $100 billion to $140 billion. Now the bill is sitting on President Obama’s desk, awaiting his decision.

The President frequently claims he wants to end corporate welfare, and he even singled-out the Ex-Im Bank as one of the biggest offenders as a candidate back in 2008. Signing the bill to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank would be a total reversal, so AFP has called on President Obama to veto it. AFP President Tim Phillips argued for its termination in a recent editorial in the Washington Examiner. We’ll find out later this week if the President is willing to follow through with his promises.

Americans for Prosperity® (AFP) is a nationwide organization of citizen leaders committed to advancing every individual's right to economic freedom and opportunity. AFP believes reducing the size and scope of government is the best safeguard to ensuring individual productivity and prosperity for all Americans. AFP educates and engages citizens in support of restraining state and federal government growth, and returning government to its constitutional limits. AFP has more than 2,000,000 members, including members in all 50 states, and 35 state chapters and affiliates. More than 90,000 Americans in all 50 states have made a financial investment in AFP or AFP Foundation. For more information, visit www.americansforprosperity.org

Washington Examiner, Tim Carney: Big banks binge on Bush-Obama 'venture socialism'

Largely out of the media spotlight, the federal government operates a network of financial subsidy programs that benefit big banks by putting taxpayer money at risk. And President Obama, that self-styled populist scourge of Wall Street, is increasing this racket of private profit and public risk that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) aptly dubbed "venture socialism."


In its latest act of venture socialism, the Obama administration has offered a novel taxpayer backstop to General Electric, the multinational industrial conglomerate that is famously close to this administration, and that spends more on federal lobbying than any other company. The government accessory in this instance is the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a federal agency that finances U.S. exports at taxpayer risk.


Ex-Im exists to subsidize U.S. businesses, with most of the subsidy dollars facilitating Boeing sales. Other industrial titans like GE, Bechtel, and General Dynamics devour most of the rest of the Ex-Im subsidy pie. But manufacturers aren't the only beneficiaries of this little-known federal agency -- banks profit from it, too. For instance, when Ex-Im recently approved $1 billion in financing to subsidize Pemex, Mexico's government-owned oil company, 3M and other U.S. exporters of oil-field equipment benefited, but so did some big banks. Bank of America and JP Morgan financed these sales, and so if Pemex defaults, it's these megabanks the U.S. taxpayer will be bailing out.

Now Obama has created a new Ex-Im subsidy for banks. The name is a mouthful: "The Supply-Chain Finance Guarantee Program."


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