So we’ve just passed the budget/ debt-ceiling raise and narrowly averted what I’ve been referring to as “Economapocalypse.” Because the deal was passed in the eleventh hour, there are plenty of questions about what this bill actually contains.
View the “Budget Control Act of 2011” in its final version here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s365enr/pdf/BILLS-112s365enr.pdf
Some points of interest within the Bill:
1)Caps the amount that is available for an increase to the budget of the Disability portion of Social Security to $1,309,000,000 for additional new budget authority by 2017, to be continued at that rate from that point forward.
2)Introduces limits for additional new budget authority for Healthcare Fraud and Abuse control. (Similar to the caps on Social Security Disability.)
3)DISASTER RELIEF. This is a measure I’m particularly concerned about given the recent wave of devastating natural disasters in the U.S. This measure would limit the amount of disaster relief spending on any given incident to an average of disaster relief spending over the last 10 years, excluding both the highest and the lowest years.
4)Sets Discretionary Budget increase limits per each year. Discretionary spending includes both the security and non-security categories. Here is the breakdown over the next decade or so for the additional discretionary budget authority by year:
2012 $1,043,000,000,000
2013 $1,047,000,000,000
2014 $1,066,000,000,000
2015 $1,086,000,000,000
2016 $1,107,000,000,000
2017 $1,131,000,000,000
2018 $1,156,000,000,000
2019 $1,182,000,000,000
2020 $1,208,000,000,000
2021 $1,234,000,000,000
Certainly, there is tons and tons of material to read through, but those are some big factors in this legislation. Also of note are multiple changes to the higher education funding system, specifically to Pell grants, but I have not yet had time to review that portion of the legislation so I can’t tell you exactly what is contained within. There are also concerns regarding the creation of a “Super Congress” which is a newly created committee consisting of 3 members from each party that will act in some capacity of budget enforcement. Lastly, there are extreme implications for the judicial system including the questionable level of increase of judiciary authority (“legislating from the bench” or, activist judges) as well as a potential decrease in the level of court accessibility for tort and other average citizen-brought cases.
There is definitely a lot of information to sift through here and I’m positive we haven’t heard the last of this mess. Take some time to review the legislation yourself too and let me know if there is anything in particular you would like me to further research!
