Tag Archives: appropriations committee

The Real Budget Battle

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The real budget battle in Washington is not between Republicans and Democrats or conservatives and liberals. The real budget battle in Washington is between discretionary spending vs. entitlement spending.

What the hell does that mean?

Discretionary spending is basically money authorized and then approved each year by Congress. Entitlement spending is money that automatically Continue reading

Appropriations King Hal

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from FeeheryTheory.com

It has been a long time, but the Appropriations Committee has finally got its mojo back. And Hal Rogers, the first term Chairman of the once powerful and feared Committee, is the chief reason why.

The House completed work on all of its appropriations work for the first time in years, and that was chiefly because of the quiet persistence of Chairman Rogers.

The Appropriations committee’s work can be mind numbing. When I worked fo House Minority Leader Bob Michel, I used to have to sit on the House floor when the Subcommittees be grinding through their schedule in the dog days of summer, churning through amendments and fighting over obscure funding projects. Some of the disputes seemed pretty insignificant to a young staffer like me. Continue reading