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Ralph Winnie Jr. with the Mongolian President

Ralph Winnie Jr. with the Mongolian President

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Thursday, January 23, 2014

Ralph Winnie, Jr.'s Lead Article in Federal Allies News, December 2013

Federal Allies Applauds: Paul Ryan and Patty Murray

Federal Allies Institute applauds Rep.
Paul Ryan (WI-1) and Sen. Patty Murray (WA) in reaching a deal to fund the federal government and avoid another government shutdown. Federal Allies recognizes that another government shutdown would
have adversely impacted its membership composed of government contractors who routinely navigate the federal government contracting system in order to secure favorable government contracts to expand and grow their businesses.
It is important to recognize in this spending
deal that it applies to only the discretionary portion of the federal budget. Recognizing how previous Congresses have established funding mechanisms, the funding and spending for so-called “mandatory” programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and the Affordable Care Act are all “effectively on auto-pilot” and would not be affected by whether or not a budget deal was ever reached. The amount of spending provided through Fiscal Year 2015 is $2 billion higher, which is an increase of .2% from Fiscal Year 2014’s total of $1,012 billion with the revenue raised coming from fees.
Federal Allies member companies recognize how important it is for lawmakers to work together. Congressman Randy Hultgren (IL-14) said, “by actually capping discretionary spending levels below two previously passed House budgets and the caps put in place by the Budget Control Act of 2011 - without raising taxes - we are preserving fiscal responsibility and opening the door to true reform of our 17 trillion debt problem.”
Governing through continuing resolutions and short term budgets “hurts our ability to properly oversee federal spending, endangers our national defense and squelches opportunities to pass debt solutions that require looking further than six months down the road,” said Hultgren.
Federal Allies recognizes that this budget agreement reflects an attempt to at least debate a balanced budget and, according to the White House, marks an important moment of bipartisan co-operation. Furthermore, Federal Allies recognizes that this deal shows that Washington can stop governing by crisis and both sides can work together to get things accomplished.
The Ryan/Murray deal is an incremental step to lower spending and the deal is projected to reduce the federal deficit by roughly $23 to 28 billion and does not impose new tax increases.
Consequently, while critical of the budget deal, Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN-6), recently conceded that the Ryan/Murray budget does provide some much needed certainty to job creators and small business owners who have openly advocated that Washington, “should stop governing by crisis and both sides can work together to get things done,” though, at the time of the writing of this article, another response to the deal by Senator Kelly Ayotte (NH) highlights a $6 billion allocation for Vet COLA.

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