Author Topic: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles  (Read 2213 times)

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Offline Rapunzel

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Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« on: February 12, 2014, 01:44:03 am »
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/11/Ryan-Budget-Deal-In-Shambles

Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles

by Matthew Boyle 11 Feb 2014, 2:51 PM PDT

House Speaker John Boehner just threw Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) under the bus.

Less than two months after House GOP leadership threw their weight behind Ryan’s budget deal with Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), and the cuts to veterans’ pensions it contained, they have now backed off from that support.

Boehner had originally planned to make the restoration of veterans’ pensions an exchange for the debt ceiling increase Democrats and the president want, but members in the House GOP conference like Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) were incensed by the effort. Such a move made the normally politically toxic vote to raise the debt ceiling even more painful, as voting against it would mean voting to cut veterans’ benefits. Boehner’s plan crumbled almost as quickly as it formed.

Under intense criticism, Boehner backed off. He split the restoration of veterans’ pensions from the debt ceiling increase. The House GOP gave Obama a clean debt ceiling increase proposal late Tuesday which has now passed but also passed a stand-alone piece of legislation that would restore the veterans’ pension cuts from the December Ryan-Murray budget deal. While the House approved the vets’ pension cut restoration bill, Ryan voted against it.

The veterans' benefits cuts in the Ryan-Murray deal--which were traded for across-the-board sequester cuts that would have hit this year--were controversial because veterans were one of the only groups that were singled out for cuts in the deal.

But Boehner's move to abandon the cuts is even more problematic for Ryan's budget deal, because rather than trade those cuts for meaningful reforms, the spending increase was offset with sequester cuts in 2024, five election cycles from now.

Considering Congress couldn't stand to see the sequester cuts for 2014 go into effect, offsetting new spending with similar cuts in a decade isn't a very meaningful solution.

When Ryan joined with Murray in December, he came under fire from conservatives for the cuts to veterans’ pensions contained in the deal. Specifically, wounded warriors’ pension cuts were a hot topic of debate, and Ryan and Murray agreed to undo cuts to medically retired disabled veterans’ benefits under intense criticism.

But Ryan publicly defended cutting all other veterans’ pension benefits. Ryan took to the pages of USA Today to write an op-ed defending his decision to include cuts to vets’ benefits in the budget deal. "One part of the bill has become particularly controversial: the reduction in cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for working-age military retirees,” Ryan wrote. “The federal government has no greater obligation than to keep the American people safe and we must take care of the men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line. For that reason, Congress is understandably hesitant to make changes to military compensation."

"But even hesitance has a cost," he claimed.

Ryan added that the need for such cuts is “undeniable,” citing recent comments from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel about Department of Defense budget concerns. “Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, a combat vet himself, has said ‘that we can no longer put off military compensation reform. DOD's leadership, Chairman Dempsey, the service chiefs, the service secretaries, and myself, we all know that we need to slow cost growth in military compensation. Otherwise, we'll have to make disproportionate cuts to military readiness and modernization,’” Ryan wrote.

Ryan is still defending such cuts to vets’ pensions. In response to Tuesday’s House vote to undo his plan, he said he thinks the House vote “sidesteps” what he called “the tough choices.”

“I cannot support kicking the can down the road,” Ryan said, according to a Tweet from the Washington Post's Robert Costa.

On Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came out in support of a plan pushed by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) that would restore the vets’ pensions cuts by closing a loophole that allows illegal aliens access to tax credits. Sessions’ idea has the backing of moderates like Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and scores of Senate Republicans and many members of the House GOP conference as well. Reps. Martha Roby (R-AL) and Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) offered a bill in December which would do just that: close a loophole allowing illegal aliens access to the Refundable Child Tax Credit to pay for restoring veterans’ pension cuts.

The Roby-Fitzpatrick bill has widespread support in the House. Many conservatives have cosponsored it, and committee chairmen like Energy and Commerce’s Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) or Oversight’s Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) have signed on to it too.

Ryan has worked against such a plan, and Boehner has refused to endorse it. But, with Boehner now backing restoring vets’ cuts in general--regardless of the offsetting mechanism--such a plan could gain steam even more so now.

More generally, this crumbling of a major plank of the budget deal--with largely nothing in return, at least for now--has major credibility implications for Ryan among conservatives. Madison Project’s Daniel Horowitz told Breitbart News that Ryan’s hypocrisy is on display in public right now.

“There are few people who exhibit such a dichotomy between their rhetoric and their performance as Paul Ryan,” Horowitz said in an email. “He talks a great game on limited government and free markets, but when the rubber meets the road on the most consequential leverage points he is always enabling the side of bigger government.
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #1 on: February 12, 2014, 01:48:00 am »
While the House approved the vets’ pension cut restoration bill, Ryan voted against it.
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Oceander

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #2 on: February 12, 2014, 01:50:39 am »
Quote
Ryan is still defending such cuts to vets’ pensions. In response to Tuesday’s House vote to undo his plan, he said he thinks the House vote “sidesteps” what he called “the tough choices.”

“I cannot support kicking the can down the road,” Ryan said, according to a Tweet from the Washington Post's Robert Costa.

And that is why (a) Ryan is correct, and (b) Ryan will be thrown under the bus by most of the rank-and-file republicans who are constantly calling for cutting the federal government's budget.

It really hurts when your own ox is gored first, don't it?  If you can't deal with it, then how can you rationally expect anyone else to put up with having their ox gored?

And that is why the federal government, and the US, will eventually sail over the cliff of fiscal disaster, sailed merrily in a most bipartisan manner by both republicans and democrats.

Offline Bigun

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #3 on: February 12, 2014, 02:13:26 am »
And that is why (a) Ryan is correct, and (b) Ryan will be thrown under the bus by most of the rank-and-file republicans who are constantly calling for cutting the federal government's budget.

It really hurts when your own ox is gored first, don't it?  If you can't deal with it, then how can you rationally expect anyone else to put up with having their ox gored?

And that is why the federal government, and the US, will eventually sail over the cliff of fiscal disaster, sailed merrily in a most bipartisan manner by both republicans and democrats.

He is, in one sense, correct but what is going to hurt him in taking this posture is there are a million other things that could and should be cut before we get to veterans benefits!
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
- J. R. R. Tolkien

Offline truth_seeker

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #4 on: February 12, 2014, 02:21:24 am »
"Balance the budget, cut the budget"

"Ohs, noes not with that, or with that or with that"

And as always the recurrent theme with "conservatives" whereby yesterday's star and hero becomes today's Rino.
"God must love the common man, he made so many of them.�  Abe Lincoln

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #5 on: February 12, 2014, 02:24:45 am »
Oh there is a LOT of things they could cut and neither side would break a sweat over it.  Want some hints just pull up Coborn's wasteful spending report for this year... or do you think it is necessary for us to fund the yearly Cowboy Poetry thingy in Nevada and a zillion more things like it...

.... or is welfare for illegals more important to you than the vets who fought and were maimed for this country.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2014, 02:26:09 am by Rapunzel »
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Oceander

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #6 on: February 12, 2014, 02:37:08 am »
He is, in one sense, correct but what is going to hurt him in taking this posture is there are a million other things that could and should be cut before we get to veterans benefits!

You cut what you can when you can; you understand your long term goal and you take steps toward it when possible, and you are willing to make trade-offs so long as you accomplish some net step towards your goal.  There is someone else who operated that way; I'll leave it to the rest of you to figure out who.

Do you think Ryan could have gotten agreement from the democrats to any of the innumerable things you think should be cut?  Please.

And if you noticed, Ryan's cuts were done in exactly the same way he's always proposed cutting every other entitlement - you leave alone those who are too old to work enough to offset the cuts and you phase it down for the others until you get to those who still have a substantial number of working years left.

And quite honestly, when it became obvious that the sky wasn't going to fall because of these sorts of cases, then Ryan would have solidly built the foundation for making similar cuts to all of the other federal entitlement programs.

Why the military?  Because (a) that was the only place where he could realistically start, and (b) by using the republican's own favored entitlement as the guinea pig for these cuts, Ryan would have gotten his proof about the benefits of these cuts without that proof getting buried under all the liberal chatter and noise that would have come up if he had tried to go first on any of the other entitlements, the ones that liberals/democrats love.

Ryan is being entirely consistent with the policies and philosophy he's always espoused; very few others are.  And he is being entirely consistent with the very same policies that everyone claimed to love when he was first picked as Romney's VP.

Congratulations on helping the democrats to kick the can down the road - again - and for wrecking what would have been a very good object lesson in proving that Ryan-style cuts to the plethora of other entitlements - the ones that really will end up bankrupting the US - work.

All of this should be contrasted with what all the other republicans are doing - giving up on the debt ceiling hike without getting anything in return.


Cutting federal entitlements is going to be painful - don't fool yourself that it won't - and no one's going to like it, and if you want the credibility and political capital needed to get everyone else to stick it out through that pain, then you need to be seen to be leading from the front, and that means that your side should have taken on that pain first.

Republicans have just proven that when the rubber meets the road they don't have the courage or strength to stick it through the pain.  Too bad, because that pushes the US that much closer to the cliff of bankruptcy.

Congratulations.

Oceander

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #7 on: February 12, 2014, 02:42:43 am »
Oh there is a LOT of things they could cut and neither side would break a sweat over it.  Want some hints just pull up Coborn's wasteful spending report for this year... or do you think it is necessary for us to fund the yearly Cowboy Poetry thingy in Nevada and a zillion more things like it...

.... or is welfare for illegals more important to you than the vets who fought and were maimed for this country.

You're a bigger fool than I thought if you really believe that Ryan - or any republican - could have gotten even a single one of the alternative cuts you mention.

In 1976 the GOP had no clue about Reagan and were hell-bent on keeping him off the national stage.  Ryan is no Reagan - at this point - but he appears to have both the same principled pragmatism and the same willingness to take on his own sacred cows first, and with some more political aging and more practice in plain speaking and 'splaining himself in forthright language, who knows?

Oceander

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #8 on: February 12, 2014, 02:43:31 am »
"Balance the budget, cut the budget"

"Ohs, noes not with that, or with that or with that"

And as always the recurrent theme with "conservatives" whereby yesterday's star and hero becomes today's Rino.

"Everyone else's sacred cow must be sacrificed, but not mine."

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #9 on: February 12, 2014, 02:53:01 am »
"Everyone else's sacred cow must be sacrificed, but not mine."

Yeah, well tell that to Myst - the owner of this site who has been affected by this and has seen both her husband and son do what you will not do... serve this country... but never fear, they are still funding benefits for illegals with the cuts to the military.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2014, 02:57:09 am by Rapunzel »
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Offline sinkspur

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #10 on: February 12, 2014, 02:56:52 am »
Yeah, well tell that to Myst - the owner of this site who has been affected by this and has seen both her husband and son do what you will not do... serve this country.

What a friggin' cheap shot.

Did YOU serve?
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

Oceander

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #11 on: February 12, 2014, 03:00:26 am »
Yeah, well tell that to Myst - the owner of this site who has been affected by this and has seen both her husband and son do what you will not do... serve this country.

Well, you certainly told me off, didn't you?  You've managed to prove my point more succinctly and more elegantly than I could ever achieve.

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #12 on: February 12, 2014, 03:03:31 am »
What a friggin' cheap shot.

Did YOU serve?

My husband, father, grandfathers and relatives all the way back to the Revolution served.  And yes, I'm pissed off at the military being cut after they were promised these benefits and the fact they are taking from the military to give to illegals makes me madder than hell so if you don't like it - too bad.
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Oceander

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #13 on: February 12, 2014, 03:06:01 am »
What a friggin' cheap shot.

Did YOU serve?

It doesn't matter; she just proved my point better than I could have:  conservatives want everyone's ox gored but their own; which makes them part of the problem, not part of the answer.

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #14 on: February 12, 2014, 03:08:09 am »
It doesn't matter; she just proved my point better than I could have:  conservatives want everyone's ox gored but their own; which makes them part of the problem, not part of the answer.

Nope, you made the point.  Don't cut the illegals - but the military - well they are another story, they are expendable - just ask Mystery.
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Offline sinkspur

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #15 on: February 12, 2014, 03:15:01 am »
My husband, father, grandfathers and relatives all the way back to the Revolution served.  And yes, I'm pissed off at the military being cut after they were promised these benefits and the fact they are taking from the military to give to illegals makes me madder than hell so if you don't like it - too bad.

But you didn't.

  Lay off the personal attacks, Rap.

That's what you'd tell me if i'd said what you said.
Roy Moore's "spiritual warfare" is driving past a junior high without stopping.

Oceander

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #16 on: February 12, 2014, 03:38:00 am »
Nope, you made the point.  Don't cut the illegals - but the military - well they are another story, they are expendable - just ask Mystery.

Well, I hate to say it, and I've repeatedly chosen not to do so, but you've asked for it once too often:  just exactly how stupid are you?  I said all I really needed to say about these points earlier, so I'm not going to waste my time and typing fingers repeating them again here; sufficeth to say that Ryan got further toward the goal of eventually cutting all entitlements than any other single republican in the current Congress has done.  Doing that necessarily required using the military as the demonstration that the cuts he's always proffered will not make the sky fall.

I don't like it any more than you do because I feel that members of the military have earned their benefits in a way that no other entitlement beneficiary could ever claim; but republicans - including Ryan - are asking everyone in this country to take on a lot of pain, and that is hard for almost everyone to do.  When you ask people to do something hard, you lead from the front, not the back, and you step up first, ahead of the line, and risk taking your own lumps first before anyone else has to take theirs.  Cutting the military's entitlements first was a painful choice, but also a no-brainer; the democrats would hardly object to cutting the military, which would have meant that the republicans could have gotten their own lumps in first without having to fight for them as well.  And it would have established a precedent that would have given additional weight - and momentum - to cutting all of the other entitlements that need to be trimmed.

As for everything else you think should be cut first:  as a matter of abstract fiscal policy I happen to agree with you; as a matter of practical politics, none of them would ever happen in the current Congress.  Do you really think someone like Cruz would have gotten even a single one of those cuts you mentioned?

I happen to like Cruz' style, but I also recognize that he won't get much achieved by himself and we won't get much achieved if all we had was a GOP congressional delegation full of nothing but Cruzes.  Someone like Cruz only works well if he (or she) has someone like Ryan to work with; politics works best when you have a strong good-cop/bad-cop team.  The GOP would be almost unstoppable if we could get the Cruzes and the Ryans to work together; so far they haven't, and the fault lies mostly with the Cruzes.  And where does that lack of cooperation get us?  To the abject wavering and capitulation we get out of Boehner and the other leaders of the GOP congressional delegation.

If you can't see that, then you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #17 on: February 12, 2014, 04:01:58 am »
"Balance the budget, cut the budget"

"Ohs, noes not with that, or with that or with that"

And as always the recurrent theme with "conservatives" whereby yesterday's star and hero becomes today's Rino.

"When I began entering into the give and take of legislative bargaining in Sacramento, a lot of the most radical conservatives who had supported me during the election didn't like it. "Compromise" was a dirty word to them and they wouldn't face the fact that we couldn't get all of what we wanted today. They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once. If you don't get it all, some said, don't take anything. "I'd learned while negotiating union contracts that you seldom got everything you asked for. And I agreed with FDR, who said in 1933: 'I have no expectations of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average.'

"If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that's what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it." ~~ Ronald W. Reagan, in his autobiography, An American Life

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Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #18 on: February 12, 2014, 04:29:26 am »
 :eatdrink:
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx

Offline truth_seeker

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #19 on: February 12, 2014, 05:10:43 am »
I heard Lou Dobbs just blister Lou Gommert, R TX over raising the debt limit, on Fox Business.


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Offline katzenjammer

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #20 on: February 12, 2014, 05:11:29 am »
He is, in one sense, correct but what is going to hurt him in taking this posture is there are a million other things that could and should be cut before we get to veterans benefits!

Once again, you are very correct!!

Offline katzenjammer

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #21 on: February 12, 2014, 05:13:14 am »
Oh there is a LOT of things they could cut and neither side would break a sweat over it.  Want some hints just pull up Coborn's wasteful spending report for this year... or do you think it is necessary for us to fund the yearly Cowboy Poetry thingy in Nevada and a zillion more things like it...

.... or is welfare for illegals more important to you than the vets who fought and were maimed for this country.

How about cutting every single penny of spending that in any way benefits illegals..... after all, they're illegals!!  Shame that this is even a "debatable" point in this country.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2014, 05:16:49 am by katzenjammer »

Offline Formerly Once-Ler

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #22 on: February 12, 2014, 09:46:55 am »
You cut what you can when you can; you understand your long term goal and you take steps toward it when possible, and you are willing to make trade-offs so long as you accomplish some net step towards your goal.  There is someone else who operated that way; I'll leave it to the rest of you to figure out who.

Do you think Ryan could have gotten agreement from the democrats to any of the innumerable things you think should be cut?  Please.

And if you noticed, Ryan's cuts were done in exactly the same way he's always proposed cutting every other entitlement - you leave alone those who are too old to work enough to offset the cuts and you phase it down for the others until you get to those who still have a substantial number of working years left.

And quite honestly, when it became obvious that the sky wasn't going to fall because of these sorts of cases, then Ryan would have solidly built the foundation for making similar cuts to all of the other federal entitlement programs.

Why the military?  Because (a) that was the only place where he could realistically start, and (b) by using the republican's own favored entitlement as the guinea pig for these cuts, Ryan would have gotten his proof about the benefits of these cuts without that proof getting buried under all the liberal chatter and noise that would have come up if he had tried to go first on any of the other entitlements, the ones that liberals/democrats love.

Ryan is being entirely consistent with the policies and philosophy he's always espoused; very few others are.  And he is being entirely consistent with the very same policies that everyone claimed to love when he was first picked as Romney's VP.

Congratulations on helping the democrats to kick the can down the road - again - and for wrecking what would have been a very good object lesson in proving that Ryan-style cuts to the plethora of other entitlements - the ones that really will end up bankrupting the US - work.

All of this should be contrasted with what all the other republicans are doing - giving up on the debt ceiling hike without getting anything in return.


Cutting federal entitlements is going to be painful - don't fool yourself that it won't - and no one's going to like it, and if you want the credibility and political capital needed to get everyone else to stick it out through that pain, then you need to be seen to be leading from the front, and that means that your side should have taken on that pain first.

Republicans have just proven that when the rubber meets the road they don't have the courage or strength to stick it through the pain.  Too bad, because that pushes the US that much closer to the cliff of bankruptcy.

Congratulations.

Amazing analysis Oceander.  I'm feeling kind of dumb after reading it and wondering why I never considered the strategy, of the military cuts as a proof for other entitlement cuts, but it makes perfect sense and is undoubtedly true IMO.  I don't know where else I could turn to find your kind of cut-through-the-bull focused logic.  It's rare indeed these days.  GOPbreifingroom is lucky to have you.
« Last Edit: February 12, 2014, 09:52:38 am by Once-Ler »

Offline Rapunzel

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #23 on: February 12, 2014, 05:36:16 pm »
I heard Lou Dobbs just blister Lou Gommert, R TX over raising the debt limit, on Fox Business.

I guess I missed what office Lou Dobbs was elected to.
�The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves.� G Washington July 2, 1776

Offline Luis Gonzalez

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Re: Ryan-Murray Budget Deal in Shambles
« Reply #24 on: February 13, 2014, 12:15:52 am »
How about cutting every single penny of spending that in any way benefits illegals..... after all, they're illegals!!  Shame that this is even a "debatable" point in this country.

OK.

That's a fair suggestion.

Can you give some examples of the kinds of cuts you're talking about?
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, i have others." - Groucho Marx