Budget

President Obama’s 2014 budget would raises taxes on the poor and the middle class despite his repeated vows not to increase taxes on those making less than $200,000 a year, according to a new analysis.

The non-partisan Tax Policy Center on Monday said poor households making less than $10,000 a year would face an average of $18 more in taxes in 2015 if Obama's budget were enacted. Households making as little as $30,000 a year would pay an average of $61 more in 2015 and $54 in 2023.

The Obama budget contains a new measure of inflation known as the chained consumer price index and new tobacco taxes, both of which would both hit the middle class.

“His proposed increase in the tobacco tax would disproportionately affect low- and moderate-income taxpayers, who spend a bigger share of their income on cigarettes than the wealthy," the Tax Policy Center’s Howard Gleckman wrote in a blog post. Read more...

Budget Committee ranking member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who supported the original deficit plan, criticized it on Friday.

Erskine Bowles, one of the decade’s leading champions of deficit reduction, on Friday dismissed the apparent discovery of major errors of the most influential economic study of recent years.

Bowles has repeatedly cited the study by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff entitled  “Growth in a Time of Debt” to support his calls for spending cuts.

Senate Republicans including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) referenced it this week.

The debt-ceiling fight this summer gives lawmakers a narrow window for a deal, the fiscal hawks said.

The former chairmen of President Obama’s 2010 fiscal commission are hoping to revive a debt grand bargain this year.

The Speaker said he is following “regular order” after Democrats accused him of dragging his feet.

President Obama's nominee to be the next director of the Office of Management and Budget easily won approval of the Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday

The committee cleared the nomination of Sylvia Matthews Burwell by a voice vote, after the dramatic defeat of the Senate gun bill.

Earlier in the day the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee also cleared the Burwell nomination on a voice vote. 

Although Obama's 2014 budget was pilloried by Senate Republicans last week, Burwell has attracted no real enemies in her confirmation process.

 She served as deputy budget director under President Clinton and can claim credit for helping to balance the budget in the late 1990s.

It appears unlikely that she will face a filibuster as did Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. 

Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who at times has called former Obama budget director Jack Lew a liar, had the opportunity to call for a roll call vote in a committee on Burwell to register an objection but he did not. 

In addition to producing the annual president's budget, Burwell will be responsible for overseeing all federal regulations, hence the Homeland Security Committee vote. 

“Sylvia Burwell is an extremely qualified and exceptional choice to lead the Office of Management and Budget and I am very glad that her nomination was approved by the Senate Budget Committee with strong bipartisan support. I am confident that she is going to do a great job at OMB working to boost the economy and tackle our deficit and debt in a balanced way, and I am looking forward to the full Senate approving her nomination as quickly as possible,” Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a statement. 

All 17 Democrats on the House Budget Committee sent a letter to Boehner calling for the committee to be created.

President Obama's nominee to be the next director of the Office of Management and Budget easily won approval of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday. Read more...

Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said Wednesday that he supports a one-year fix to reverse sequestration in 2014.

Levin said at a Senate Armed Services hearing Wednesday that Congress should find a one-year solution to sequestration if a “grand bargain” to avert the cuts could not be reached.

“We simply cannot continue to ignore the effects of sequestration,” Levin said at the hearing, where Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey were to testify about the 2014 budget.