To help win passage, Democrats are also adopting -- in a vote later Thursday afternoon -- budget rules designed to curb a spiraling upward annual deficit -- projected by Obama to hit a record $1.56 trillion for the budget year ending Sept. 30. The new rules would require future spending increases or tax cuts to be paid for with either cuts to other programs or equivalent tax increases.

Pay as you go, as this is referred to, is overrated. It doesn't do much. We don't need a pay as you go program. We need government to spend less money than it takes in period.

If the rules are broken, the White House budget office would force automatic cuts to programs like Medicare, farm subsidies and unemployment insurance. Current rules lack such teeth and have commonly been waived over the past few years at a cost of almost $1 trillion.

    Most other benefit programs -- including Medicaid, Social Security and food stamps -- would be exempt from such cuts, and Republicans said that the rules lack teeth.

    "In place of real fiscal discipline, it offers a phony pay-as-you-go rule that is more loopholes and exceptions and does nothing to tackle our government's long-term structural deficit," said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas.

    Skeptics say lawmakers also will find ways around the new rules fairly easily. Congress, for example, can declare some spending an "emergency" -- a likely scenario for votes later this month to extend jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

In other words, the supposed safeguards are smoke and mirrors. It was thrown in because this is unpopular, and those who voted for it can pat themselves on the back and say they are watching the spending. In reality, they are doing jack.

"We don't have a choice," said Rep. John Tanner, D-Tenn. "We are on an unsustainable march toward a fiscal Armageddon." Obama's budget projects the government's debt doubling to $26 trillion over the next decade. It offers few solutions for seriously closing the gap other than promising to appoint a bipartisan commission to come up with a plan to address the problem.

Commissions. Another joke. How about passing a budget that spends less money than it takes in. Period. That's it. It's not hard. All it takes is discipline, hard works, and balls. That's something that congress lacks, and that Obama never had.  

Thomas has the roll call vote. 217 yes votes. All democrats. 212 nays. 175 Republican and 37 democrat. 5 didn't vote, 2 democrats and 3 republicans.

Of the Michigan delegation.

District 1 - Stupak - Y

District 2 - Hoekstra - N

District 3 - Ehlers - N

District 4 - Camp - N

District 5 - Kildee - Y

District 6 - Upton - N

District 7 - Schauer - N

District 8 - Rogers - N

District 9 - Peters - N

District 10 - Miller - N

District 11 - McCotter - N

District 12 - Levin - Y

District 13 - Kilpatrick - Y

District 14 - Conyers - Y

District 15 - Dingell - Y

Schauer and Peters voted no. Feeling the heat from the populace? Or are you being chameleons? In reality, the no vote from Peters was crap. Schauer's wasn't, and give credit where it is due. Peters however was for it before he was against it. Here's the procedure vote to consider the resolution in the first place. Peters voted yes to consider this, and then voted no for the final vote to make himself  look good.