LostWithAClue

I am going to give you a little background about me, I am in the National Guard currently serving in Iraq. During this deployment my wife found out she has breast cancer and had to have two surgeries because of it. During the budget crisis I wrote the same email to Debbie Stabenow, Carl Levin, and Tim Walberg; all from Michigan. I requested replies to the letters just to see what each person had to say, so far I have received one reply. Below is a copy of the letter and the response from Tim Walberg. If Debbie Stabenow or Carl Levin ever reply to the letter I will update this post.

My name is Ron Rieves, I am from Grand Ledge Michigan and currently deployed to Iraq. I looked at my leave and earnings statement today to find that the rumors about military members not being paid during a government shutdown are true; we have already had the debt payment taken from our LES. While I do not live paycheck to paycheck I cannot afford to go without a paycheck for an extended period of time, eventually I will qualify for Army Emergency Relief. I pay my bills electronically so I will have to wait until I have a letter from my creditors to show that I am having difficulties in paying my bills to qualify for the AER.

A deployment is stressful on spouses and children that are left behind. Not only did I deploy but my family deployed, our lives have been turned upside down by the events of this past year. While I was in Kuwait waiting to come to Iraq my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. After two surgeries and radiation her cancer is under control. Last week she was told she may have to have another surgery which is related to her cancer. My wife is under enough stress with me being in Iraq, two boys 17 and 20, breast cancer, possible ovarian cancer or endometriosis, and now I have to tell her that I am not going to be paid and our creditors will be calling her if this is an extended shutdown.

I am one of thousands that this budget crisis is affecting; I thought I would share with you how it is affecting me on a personal level. Each Soldier, Sailor, Airman, and Marine has an individual story on how this budget crisis will affect him or her. Why is a government of the people, for the people, by the people not standing behind the people that it entrusts to protect it on a daily basis? Why isn’t the pay of military members, those people who fight and die for our country on a daily basis not guaranteed in a budget crisis?

After we make it through this budget crisis can will sponsor a bill that would set up a fund that would protect the pay of our military regardless of budget status?

Ron Rieves

Considering Carl Levin is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee I guessed he would be the first to respond, that guess was wrong.

Here is the response I got from Tim Walberg

Dear Mr. Rieves,

Thank you for contacting me about compensation for members of the military in the event of a government shutdown. I appreciate hearing from you.

You will be pleased to know that I am a cosponsor of H.R. 1297, the Ensuring Pay for Our Military Act, which will guarantee pay for members of the Armed Forces regardless of congressional funding gaps. Rest assured I share your concern for securing the benefits and pay for the men and women of our Armed Forces and will continue to monitor this bill closely.

In addition I voted for a continuing resolution, H.R. 1363, on April 7 that would fund our troops and military operations for the rest of fiscal year 2011 and continue funding the non-defense agencies through April 15. This bill passed the House by a vote of 247-181, and I hope that the Senate will consider this legislation soon so that our troops in the field are not held hostage by our current spending debate.

Again, thank you for contacting me. Please make sure to sign up for my e-newsletter at: http://walberg.house.gov/, so I can keep you updated on my activities in Congress.

Sincerely,

Tim Walberg

Member of Congress

Today 4/25/2011 I received a response from Carl Levin, here it is:

Dear Mr. Rieves:

Thank you for sharing your concerns with me regarding appropriations for fiscal year (FY) 2011. I appreciate hearing your views on this subject.

In recent years, due to a variety of factors, including differing views on funding levels and spending priorities, Congress has been unable to pass all of the 12 appropriations bills required to fund various functions of the federal government by September 30th, the end of the fiscal year. In such instances, a stop-gap measure, commonly known as a continuing resolution (CR), must be passed to appropriate funds for a designated period of time to keep the federal government operating.

Despite repeated attempts during the last Congress, the Senate was unable to overcome a procedural filibuster of comprehensive legislation intended to fund federal government operations for FY2011. Unfortunately, we were only able to garner enough support to pass a series of short-term CR's.

From the beginning of the new session in January, Congress continued to grapple over an acceptable solution to bridge the funding impasse. While there is no doubt we must take action to reduce our budget deficit, there is disagreement over how we should dig ourselves out of the current deficit ditch. Importantly, we need to ensure that, when tackling the deficit problem, we seek a balanced approach that provides adequate funding for our national priorities. And, we must accomplish this in a responsible manner.

On March 2, 2011, the Senate was presented with the opportunity to vote on two different options for funding the federal government for the remainder of FY2011. The first vote, a proposal that had already passed the House of Representatives (H.R.1), was overwhelmingly rejected by the Senate. H.R.1 proposed cuts in nondefense discretionary spending, and in that area alone. Simple math suggests that we cannot meaningfully reduce the deficit in this manner, as these programs represent less than 15 percent of the total budget. In fact, H.R.1 would only have reduced our deficit this year by a token amount of less than one percent.

However, the one percent that was targeted by H.R.1 would have done significant damage by cutting or eliminating many programs and agency budgets many Americans depend on, including: Head Start and other early-childhood education; Pell Grants for college students; food inspection programs to protect against food borne illnesses; the Women, Infants & Children program (WIC); the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) budgets to police the financial markets that all too recently devastated our economy; Veterans Administration efforts to provide better service to our veterans; the National Science Foundation research budget; Department of Energy research and programs to support renewable energy sources and energy conservation to make us less dependent on foreign oil; clean water programs to protect public health; Great Lakes restoration efforts to help clean up our Great Lakes, on which hundreds of thousands of jobs depend; and border security funding.

Following the Senate’s rejection of H.R.1, a short-term CR to fund the government for an additional two weeks was brought up for consideration. Although this was passed by Congress and signed into law, I voted against that proposal, as well. I could not support it because, while it avoided blindly hacking at the budget like H.R.1, it too focused solely on cuts in nondefense discretionary spending.

During the two-week extension, Congress was still unable to reach a long-term funding agreement. So, on March 17, 2011, the Senate again considered another short-term CR. For the same reasons I opposed the previous short-term CR, I also voted against this three-week funding extension.

Finally, on April 8, 2011, House and Senate leaders reached an agreement to avert a government shutdown and to provide funding for the federal government through the end of FY11. On April 14, 2011, both the House and Senate passed this legislation (H.R.1473) and President Obama signed it into law the following day (P.L.112-10). I am pleased there are some important programs that escaped the worst cuts in this legislation, such as misguided attempts to reduce the maximum Pell Grant award and efforts to deprive financial regulatory agencies of the resources they need to prevent the next financial collapse. I also am glad the bill contained a full year Department of Defense Appropriations Act, so that our troops and their families will no longer have any doubt about when their next paycheck will arrive. And, I am pleased it did not include ideologically motivated policy riders that would interfere with women’s health care and environmental protection.

But, overall, this bill lacked balance. It sought solutions only in cutting domestic programs that make our nation safer and more prosperous, that protect our environment, and that help the families who have suffered most during the financial crisis and recession. Meanwhile, it protected the tax cuts that benefit only those at the very top. Because of that lack of balance and lack of fairness, I voted against this bill as well.

We need to raise additional revenue without slowing the economy, and we need to be realistic about where that revenue should come from. For example, the cost of continuing the Bush-era tax cut for the upper-income bracket costs about $30 billion a year. Ending this unnecessary tax cut, which disproportionately benefits the top two percent of Americans, could allow us to avoid drastic cuts in important programs.

Increasing revenue makes sense, not only from a deficit reduction perspective, but it also is fair. Those at the top of income scale have done very well as a group in recent decades, while incomes for most Americans have stagnated. To be specific, the top 1 percent of all income earners has more than doubled their share of total U.S. income over the past three decades, up from nearly 9 percent in 1976 to almost 24 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, median household income, the income of the typical American family, is now five percent lower than it was in the late 1990s. It would be a grave injustice to eliminate programs critically important to working families while maintaining tax cuts for those whose incomes have soared.

There also are other revenues we can look to if we are truly serious about deficit reduction, such as closing a number of tax loopholes. For example, we should not continue to give corporations a tax deduction when they send American jobs overseas. We also should not allow corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid U.S. taxes by hiding assets and income in offshore tax havens. And, we should not allow hedge fund managers to earn enormous incomes and yet pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries’ pay.

I am encouraged that we are finally engaged in an open and honest debate over the vision we should follow for the future of our country. In the weeks and months ahead, we will seek an answer to the question of whether we will all share in the sacrifices required, and whether the same people who have done so very well over the last decade or so will be asked to contribute. It is my belief that as we move forward with efforts to secure the long-term fiscal health of our nation, we can craft a plan that makes prioritized and necessary cuts in spending as a part of a balanced, fair and comprehensive approach that also includes revenues. Thank you again for contacting me.

Sincerely,

Carl Levin

A solution to Washington spending too much money may be as simple as having Congress and the President enroll the Financial Peace University class by Dave Ramsey. Maybe he could get them on a zero balance budget and teach them how to pay down debt. If most households in America can live within their means why can't Washington? Do they run their individual households the same way they run the government, I hope not.

As an update to this my wife found out she does not need surgery yet. The doctors want to monitor her issues for now.
Ron

LostWithAClue

Monday, April 25, 2011

Terry Jones

Monday, April 18, 2011

Budget Crisis