Remember These Votes!

The debt bill that our president signed today is not now, nor will be, good for our economy. In about 15 months, most of the people who voted Yea or Nay on this bill will be up for election.

You should know how they voted.

And as a service to all the blog readers, you can click below to find out how your representatives and senators voted. And of course, the president signed it.

How the House of Representatives voted

How the Senate voted

Who Voted for the Ryan Bill?

Today the U.S. House passed a bill on a 235-193 vote for a budget plan which was spearheaded by Paul Ryan (R-WI). It likely won't even see a vote in the Senate, but even if it got through there, it is likely the president would veto it.

Every single D in the House voted against it. Every Republican except four of them voted for it. (Not sure what those four—Jones, McKinley, Paul, and Rehberg—were thinking.) Feel free to contact your Congressman and let him know what you think about his vote.

Full details on the vote can be found here.

Who Voted for the Budget Bill?

Earlier today, the House and Senate passed a budget for the remainder of the fiscal year. President Obama is expected to sign the bill on Friday, April 15. [Ponder the irony for a moment.]

It did, however, receive bipartisan opposition. In the House, 108 D's opposed it while only 81 supported it; 59 R's opposed it while 179 carried the bill to passage. The Senate saw it passed by a 81-19 vote, with 3 D's and the quasi-democrat Sanders (I-VT) in the "Nay" column.

The bill, if looked upon as a serious attempt to deal with annual federal spending, is actually a joke. Consider this quote from the afore-linked FoxNews article:

Conservatives in particular were disappointed after a Congressional Budget Office report showed the package only saves $352 million from non-war accounts this year -- compared with the $38.5 billion in cuts Boehner had claimed.

The CBO study confirmed the measure trims more than $38 billion in new spending authority relative to current levels, but many of the cuts come in slow-spending accounts like water-and-sewer grants that don't have an immediate deficit impact. Other cuts come in areas where the government was unlikely to spend the money anyway, CBO suggested.

$352 million?? At the rate of the past two years, that's about 2 hours' worth of deficit!! And it's slightly less that 1% of what was "claimed" as a $38.5 billion cut. In short, this is merely a token. It should not be claimed as any sort of serious effort at reducing federal spending.

I am happy to say that my U.S. Representative, Trey Gowdy (R-SC 4th district), and both my U.S. Senators (Jim DeMint and Lindsay Graham) voted against the bill. Had I still lived in MI today, my U.S. Representative, Fred Upton (R-MI 6th district) and one of my U.S. Senators (Debbie Stabenow, D-MI) voted for it. The other senator, Carl Levin (D-MI), voted against it.

Find how your U.S. Representative voted here.

Find how your U.S. Senators voted here.