Kline Fails Minnesota

John Kline's vote for the Federal Reconciliation bill shows a complete disregard for the basic American standards of fiscal responsibility, fairness, balance and transparency.

Fiscal Responsibility: Today 'Checks and Balances' points out how John Kline's vote for the Federal Reconciliation bill will result in significant decreases in federal funding to Minnesota's counties'. The bill contained a reduction of federal support for 11 states including Minnesota to services such as Medicare and child support. The total cost is not yet known but it is projected to be between $86 and $110 MILLION dollars annually.

Even the AdministrationÂ’s own numbers indicate that the PresidentÂ’s budget proposals would increase deficits by $192 billion over the next five years, compared to what deficits would be if current laws and policies remained unchanged. In essences Kline voted for a budget that is not fiscally sound and will increase the deficit and shift costs to our state and ultimately to.Localal taxpayers.

Fairness: This budget is a statement of Kline's priorities which clearly show: cuts in numerous domestic programs that serve low- and middle-income families alongside continued — and substantially expanded — tax cuts of very large size that concentrate their benefits on people high on the income scale.

Kline voted for cuts which will be made in hundreds of domestic discretionary programs across the budget, including education programs, environmental protection programs, numerous programs to assist low-income families, children, and elderly and disabled people, and research related to cancer, heart disease, and other medical conditions.

Balance: Shared sacrifice...hardly, Kline voted for cuts which will be made in hundreds of domestic discretionary programs across the budget, including education programs, environmental protection programs, numerous programs to assist low-income families, children, and elderly and disabled people, and research related to cancer, heart disease, and other medical conditions. Still, the bill will give tax breaks to the wealthier 2% of taxpayers. Not too hard to see where Kline's priorities are with his yes vote.

Honest or Transparent: The budget conceals or omits information essential to assessing its impacts on deficits and on programs and services that affect millions of Americans.

The budget omits the costs of funding U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2007. The budget also omits the cost of extending relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax after 2006. CBO estimates show that extending AMT relief will reduce revenues by $914 billion over the next ten years if the AdministrationÂ’s tax cuts are made permanent. (Making the tax cuts permanent greatly increases the cost of AMT relief.) The omission of such information makes various Administration claims, such as the claim that the deficit will be cut in half over five years, rather hollow.

Even more serious, the budget fails to contain figures for revenues, expenditures, and deficits for years after 2011. This omission prevents policymakers and the public from seeing how high the deficits would be in those years under Administration budget policies — and how substantially the deficits in those years would be increased by those policies. Adding to this problem, the Administration also took the step of eliminating the standard budget summary table that shows the effects of the budget’s proposed policies on the deficit over the next five years.

John Kline's support of this budget fails the tests of fiscal responsibility, fairness, balance and transparency but most of all it fails the American public and our nation. We can do better and must if we want a better, safer, stronger future.