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I shall post videos, graphs, news stories, and other material there. We shall use some of this material in class, and you may review the rest at your convenience. You will all receive invitations to post to the blog. (Please let me know if you do not get such an invitation.) I encourage you to use the blog in these ways:
To post questions or comments about the readings before we discuss them in class;
To follow up on class discussions with additional comments or questions.
To post relevant news items or videos.

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Wednesday, April 17, 2013

A Call for Retro-Budget Process

Politico is reporting that over 80 House members have signed on to a letter urging Republican leadership to return to regular order for budgeting. The article also brings up some interesting points as to why regular order is such a difficult task. No word on whether this was caused by congressional umbrage that Pitney Gov 101 students are not even learning the traditional process of passing budgets these days.

More than 80 House Republicans have signed onto a letter aiming to increase the pressure on GOP leadership to follow the regular legislative process regarding the budget. 
Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) circulated the letter, which urges Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to pass the individual appropriations bills that fund the federal government instead of moving endless stopgap measures known as continuing resolutions.
 
Republicans tried to pass the appropriations bills — which all fund different agencies — last year, but it’s a tedious process which consumes a lot of time on the House floor. Plus, conservatives spend lots of time trying to craft amendments to cut additional spending, while some Democrats try to plus up federal programs. In order to avoid CRs, the House and Senate need to negotiate the spending bills, come to agreement, pass them through both chambers and send them to President Barack Obama. It’s how the legislative process was designed to work, but with deep divisions in both chambers, it’s a tall task.

Sticking to the regular legislative order is a continuing narrative of this Congress. When Boehner took the speakership in 2011, he was immediately sucked into backroom negotiations with Obama and most of them failed. He suffered some backlash from his colleagues, and in 2013, vowed to keep most negotiations in the open.





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