See How Your Representative Voted on the Ryan/Murray Tax & Spend Budget Here!

The House, as expected, voted to pass the budget deal reached by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), by a margin of 332-94.  62 Republicans, and 32 Democrats, voted against the measure. You can see how your representative voted HERE.

This budget, an amended version of H.J.Res. 59, would spend $63 billion more than the spending caps established in 2011, raise fees on air travel and customs, and contains a provision that will make it more difficult for senators to stop spending and tax hikes in the future.  All this in exchange for a supposed deficit reduction of just over $20 billion over ten years.

Paul Ryan clings to those promised savings. Yet, history has been pretty clear that when you trade immediate spending for future cuts, those future cuts have a way of never arriving. The recent Vice Presidential hopeful also gloats that this bill contains no tax hikes. Now he’s just arguing semantics. The bill collects billions in new fees from consumers so that the government can feed its spending addiction. By pretty much any measure, this is bad policy.

The fight moves on to the Senate, where the future of this spend and tax deal is far from certain.  Already a number of Republican senators, including top leaders McConnell and Cornyn, have come out against the bill.  Presuming that the Democrats are able to hold their membership in support, they still need at least five Republicans to get them to the 60 votes needed to pass this ridiculous plan.  

You can take action to urge some of the less reliable Republicans to hold their ground by voting against cloture on the budget deal HERE.