Cable News Ratings for Tuesday, April 24, 2012

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1. Ratboy

   Posted April 25, 2012 at 2:05 PM

   had to post this here too!

   Obama’s ‘Truth Team’ Features MSNBC’s Ed Schultz Trashing Mitt Romney

   Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2012/04/25/obamas-truth-team-features-msnbcs-ed-schultz-trashing-mitt-romney#ixzz1t5Xj4z8A

2. Ratboy

   Posted April 25, 2012 at 2:10 PM

   Hannity still is getting the numbers!!! Keep exposing the Obama story and you numbers will get closer to OReilly!

3. Ren

   Posted April 25, 2012 at 2:35 PM

   Out of all the Republican candidates Mitt is the least fun to watch wall to wall bashing of. That’s all msnbc has done for the last few days which is reflected in its ratings. We have 6 more months of this to look forward to on msnbc.

4. Gabriel

   Posted April 25, 2012 at 2:36 PM

   @Ralph: Harry Reid is supposed to bring up his own resolution not vote on the one already passed in the House. That’s why the process as it is right now is a gimmick. If he brings one up to vote, it will be the polar opposite of whatever the republicans passed in the House and reconciling the two will be impossible.

5. Ralph Hahn

   Posted April 25, 2012 at 2:43 PM

   @Gabriel: Either way, it’s Reid’s fault that we haven’t had a federal budget document in three years.

   BTW, thanks for not calling me a ‘moron’.

6. Laurence Glavin

   Posted April 25, 2012 at 2:55 PM

   The far-right-wingers are in a snit because the traditional broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) didn’t interrupt their schedules to broadcast Willard’s triumphalist speech. However, Rachel Maddow in fact DID air the speech in its entirety for the first twenty minutes of her show. It so resembled a 1950s Republican diatribe, it should have been broadcast in black-and-white.

7. Gabriel

   Posted April 25, 2012 at 2:57 PM

   Ralph Hahn
   Posted April 25, 2012 at 2:43 PM
   @Gabriel: Either way, it’s Reid’s fault that we haven’t had a federal budget document in three years.

   BTW, thanks for not calling me a ‘moron’.

   ===================================

   No. Its his fault that we do not have a Senate budget resolution. I don’t see how the one passed in the House can be reconciled with anything that Harry Reid proposes.

8. AppleStinx

   Posted April 25, 2012 at 2:59 PM

   Those 16K in the primetime demo must have been a relief to FBN. They’ve been challenging CurrentTV for the bottom spot among cable channels.

9. Dana

   Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:01 PM

   Gabriel…Harry Reid’s job is to come up with a senate version of a budget regardless of it being reconciled,if only politically,to show that the senate is trying…this excuse of a majority whip is delinquent in performing his actual function. once again,he and the white house gets a free pass because the media is in the tank…

10. Ralph Hahn

    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:07 PM

    @Gabriel: >>> I don’t see how the one passed in the House can be reconciled with anything that Harry Reid proposes. <<<

    Harry Reid doesn't propose anything. He takes his marching orders from the White House. It's Obama who has big problems with the GOP budget because it puts the President on a short leash to doubling the nations'$15-16 trillion debt. That's why Obama wants to tax the so-called "rich" (couples earning more than $250,000 annually) a larger percentage than it is now just to hand it over to the other half of the U.S. population who pay NO federal taxes.

    I'll bet that most of the folks who believe that wealthy people are bad and should pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes would surely change their tune if they were lucky enough to win a multi-million Lotto jackpot.
    That's the only way they could see things from the opposite side.

11. Dana

    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:08 PM

    Lawrence: do not cast dispersions on the 1950s so dismissively,I lived then and outside of the racial realm,America was a better place then…if I had to pick an Eisenhower era to an Obama one, I would go with the former….

12. lbsles

    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:17 PM

    For all

    Note: Reconciliation can only be done on or for a passed and signed, into law, budget.

    United States budget process.

    The process of creating the budget for the United States government is known as the budget process. The framework used by Congress to formulate the budget was established by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921,[1] the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974,[2] and by other budget legislation.

    Prior to 1974, Congress had no formal process for establishing a coherent budget. When newly-elected President Richard Nixon began to refuse to spend funds that the Congress had allocated, Congress needed a more formal means by which to challenge him. The Congressional Budget Act created the Congressional Budget Office and directed more control of the budget to CBO and away from the President’s Office of Management and the Budget. The Act passed easily as the administration was embroiled in the Watergate scandal and unwilling to provoke Congress.[3]

    Overview

    The President, according to the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, must submit a budget to Congress each year. In its current form, federal budget legislation law (31 U.S.C. 1105(a)) specifies that the President submit a budget between the first Monday in January and the first Monday in February. In recent times, the President’s budget submission, entitled Budget of the U.S. Government, has been issued in the first week of February. Thus, President George W. Bush submitted the FY2007 budget in February 2006. The President’s budget submission, along with supporting documents and historical budget data, can be found at the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) website. The President’s budget contains detailed information on spending and revenue proposals, along with policy proposals and initiatives with significant budgetary implications.

    Each year in March, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) publishes an analysis of the President’s budget proposals. CBO budget report and other publications can be found at the CBO’s website. CBO computes a current law baseline budget projection that is intended to estimate what federal spending and revenues would be in the absence of new legislation for the current fiscal year and for the coming 10 fiscal years. However, the CBO also computes a current-policy baseline, which makes assumptions about, for instance, votes on tax cut sunset provisions. The current CBO 10 year budget baseline projection grows from $3.7 trillion in 2011 to $5.7 trillion in 2021.

    The House and Senate Budget Committees begin consideration of the President’s budget proposals in February and March. Other committees with budgetary responsibilities submit requests and estimates to the Budget committees during this time. The Budget committees each submit a budget resolution by April 1. The House and Senate each consider those budget resolutions and are expected to pass them, possibly with amendments, by April 15. Budget resolutions specify funding levels for appropriations committees and subcommittees.

    Appropriations committees, starting with allocations in the budget resolution, put together appropriations bills, which may be considered in the House after May 15. Once appropriations committees pass their bills, they are considered by the House and Senate. A conference committee is typically required to resolve differences between House and Senate bills. Once a conference bill has passed both chambers of Congress, it is sent to the President, who may sign the bill or veto. If he signs, the bill becomes law. Otherwise, Congress must pass another bill to avoid a shutdown of at least part of the federal government.

    In recent years, Congress has not passed all of the appropriations bills before the start of the fiscal year. Congress has then enacted continuing resolutions, that provide for the temporary funding of government operations.

    to be continued

13. DB

    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:18 PM

    So if it is going to be difficult or impossible to reconcile the budgets from the House and the Senate, Harry’s Reid’s course of action is to do nothing. This is great governing and tremendous leadership. Must of gone to the Obama school of governing and leadership. It is also lazy, which Obama has admitted to being also.

    BTW Gabe those years you say the Gop controlled Senate did not pass budgets is not quite the whole story. They were late but not 3.5 years late and they did eventually pass budgets. You libs favorite argument is “well the repubs did it”. If you libs are going to do what the repubs did then lets just elect repubs and skip the copy cat democrats.

14. lbsles

    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:19 PM

    For all

    Note: Reconciliation can only be done on or for a passed and signed, into law, budget.

    Page 2

    Fiscal year
    The federal government’s fiscal year currently begins on October 1 and ends on September 30 of the next calendar year. The fiscal year corresponds to the calendar year in which it ends; thus, fiscal year 2009 would begin on October 1, 2008 and end September 30, 2009. The federal fiscal year’s starting date was shifted from July 1 to October 1 in 1976. The period between the end of FY1976 and the start of FY1977 was called the Transition Quarter. An earlier shift in the U.S. government’s fiscal year was made in the 1850s.

    The process:

    The President’s budget request
    Congressional consideration of the federal budget begins once the President of the United States submits a budget request, which is formulated over a period of months with the assistance of the Office of Management and Budget, the largest office within the Executive Office of the President. The budget request includes funding requests for all federal executive departments and independent agencies.

    The President submits the budget request each year to Congress for the following fiscal year, as required by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. Current law (31 U.S.C. 1105(a))[4] requires the President to submit a budget no earlier than the first Monday in January, and no later than the first Monday in February. Typically, Presidents submit budgets on the first Monday in February.

    The President’s budget request constitutes an extensive proposal of the administration’s intended spending and revenue plans for the following fiscal year. The budget proposal includes volumes of supporting information intended to persuade Congress of the necessity and value of the budget provisions. In addition, each federal executive department and independent agency provides additional detail and supporting documentation to Congress on its own funding requests.

    Budget resolution

    The next step is the drafting of a budget resolution. The United States House Committee on the Budget and the United States Senate Committee on the Budget are responsible for drafting budget resolutions. Following the traditional calendar, by early April both committees finalize their drafts and submit it to their respective floors for consideration and adoption.
    A budget resolution, which is one form of a concurrent resolution, binds Congress, but is not a law, and so does not require the President’s signature. The budget resolution serves as a blueprint for the actual appropriation process, and provides Congress with some control over the appropriations process. No new spending authority, however, is provided until appropriation bills are enacted.

    Once both houses pass the resolution, selected Representatives and Senators negotiate a conference report to reconcile differences between the House and the Senate versions. The conference report, in order to become binding, must be approved by both the House and Senate.

    Authorization and appropriations

    In general, funds for Federal Government programs must be authorized by an “authorizing committee” through enactment of legislation. Then, through subsequent acts by Congress, budget authority is then appropriated by the Appropriations Committee of the House. In principle, committees with jurisdiction to authorize programs make policy decisions, while the Appropriations Committees decide on funding levels, limited to a program’s authorized funding level, though the amount may be any amount less than the limit.

    In practice, the separation between policy making and funding, and the division between appropriations and authorization activities are imperfect. Authorizations for many programs have long lapsed, yet still receive appropriated amounts. Other programs that are authorized receive no funds at all.[citation needed] In addition, policy language—that is legislative text changing permanent law—is included in appropriation measures.

    From :wikipedia

15. lbsles

    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:22 PM

    The Budget “Reconciliation” Process

    From time to time, Congress makes use of a special procedure outlined in the Congressional Budget Act known as “reconciliation.” This procedure was originally designed as a deficit-reduction tool, to force committees to produce spending cuts or tax increases called for in the budget resolution. However, it was used to enact tax cuts several times during the George W. Bush Administration, thereby increasing projected deficits. This practice has since been barred, by House and Senate rules adopted in 2007 at the same time as the PAYGO rule.

16. lbsles

    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:24 PM

    What is a reconciliation bill?

    A reconciliation bill is a single piece of legislation that typically includes multiple provisions (generally developed by several committees) all of which affect the federal budget — whether on the mandatory spending side, the tax side, or both. A reconciliation bill, like the budget resolution, cannot be filibustered on the Senate floor, so it only requires a majority vote to pass.

    How does the reconciliation process work? If Congress decides to use the reconciliation process, language known as a “reconciliation directive” must be included in the budget resolution. The reconciliation directive instructs committees to produce legislation by a specific date that meets certain spending or tax targets. (If they fail to produce this legislation, the Budget Committee Chair generally has the right to offer floor amendments to meet the reconciliation targets for them, a threat which usually produces compliance with the directive.) The Budget Committee then packages all of these bills together into one bill that goes to the floor for an up-or-down vote, with only limited opportunity for amendment. After the House and Senate resolve the differences between their competing bills, a final conference report is considered on the floor of each house and then goes to the President for his signature or veto.

    Constraints on reconciliation: the “Byrd rule.” While reconciliation enables Congress to bundle together several different provisions affecting a broad range of programs, it faces one major constraint: the “Byrd rule,” named after the late Senator Byrd of West Virginia. This Senate rule makes any provision of (or amendment to) the reconciliation bill that is deemed “extraneous” to the purpose of amending entitlement or tax law vulnerable to a point of order. If a point of order is raised under the Byrd rule, the offending provision is automatically stripped from the bill unless at least 60 senators vote to waive the rule. This makes it difficult, for example, to include any policy changes in the reconciliation bill unless they have direct fiscal implications. Under this rule, authorizations of discretionary appropriations are not allowed, nor are changes to civil rights or employment law, for example. Changes to Social Security also are not permitted under the Byrd rule.

    In addition, the Byrd rule bars any entitlement increases or tax cuts that cost money beyond the five (or more) years covered by the reconciliation directive, unless these “out-year” costs are fully offset by other provisions in the bill. This is one reason that Congress made the 2001 tax cuts expire after ten years, rather than making them permanent.

    In short, the annual federal budget process begins with a detailed proposal from the President in February; Congress next develops a blueprint called a budget resolution that sets limits on how much each committee can spend (or reduce revenues) over the course of the year; and the terms of the budget resolution are then enforced against individual appropriations, entitlement bills, and tax bills on the House and Senate floors. In addition, Congress sometimes uses a special procedure called “reconciliation” to facilitate the passage of deficit reduction legislation or other major entitlement or tax legislation. Finally, a companion PAYGO rule helps ensure that tax cuts and entitlement increases are paid for and do not add to the deficit.

17. Rod D

    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:24 PM

    Please — enough with the budget gobbledygook.

18. lbsles

    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:26 PM

    The way Congress develops tax and spending legislation is guided by a set of specific procedures laid out in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. The centerpiece of the Budget Act is the requirement that Congress each year develop a “budget resolution” setting aggregate limits on spending and targets for federal revenue. The limits set by the budget resolution, along with a companion “pay-as-you-go” rule, apply to all tax or spending legislation developed by individual committees as well as to any amendments offered on the House or Senate floor.

    The following is an overview of the federal budget process, including:

    ?the President’s annual budget request, which kicks off the budget process;
    ?the congressional budget resolution — how it is developed and what it contains;
    ?how the terms of the budget resolution are enforced in the House and Senate; and
    ?budget “reconciliation,” a special procedure used in some years to facilitate the passage of spending and tax legislation.

19. d.d.

    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:27 PM

    Rats,

    This is a video of the wind power for our Postal Service that you mentioned in the last room.

    Tom Carper: Save the US Postal Service with Wind Farms, Battery-Powered Delivery Trucks

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnL0TrfLR00

    You just can’t make this up… Obviously, Senator Carper missed the report that wind farms are failing to deliver value for money and distorting the development of other renewable energy sources.

20. Gabriel

    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:43 PM

    Dana
    Posted April 25, 2012 at 3:08 PM
    Lawrence: do not cast dispersions on the 1950s so dismissively,I lived then and outside of the racial realm,America was a better place then…if I had to pick an Eisenhower era to an Obama one, I would go with the former….

    ====================================

    Hahaha. Am I the only one who thinks this guy is a fake internet black person?