Category Archives: Congress
Senate Dems Grow a Pair
I need to interrupt our gleeful snarking about Mitt Romney and his money and point to something significant that has happened in the Senate:
Until last week Senate Democrats seemed to lack a majority of votes to extend the middle class tax cuts alone. That allowed Republicans to portray the battle as between President Obama and Congress. But that changed when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) challenged Republicans to permit separate up-or-down votes on middle-income and high-end tax cuts, signaling he’s rounded up the votes to win. Republicans denied the offer.
Democrats hardened their position this week as party’s fourth-ranking Sen. Patty Murray (WA) vowed that Democrats won’t permit the lower rates for the rich to continue beyond their Dec. 31 expiration date, even if Republicans repeat their 2010 strategy and block tax cuts for the middle class if the wealthy don’t also get a full break.
Democrats scoffed at the Republican attacks Tuesday and pressed their advantage.
In other words, they are calling Mitch McConnell’s bluff. They will allow ALL Bush tax cuts to expire rather than extend the tax cuts for the wealthy.
Senate Republicans are frantically claiming the Dems are playing Russian Roulette with the economy, or saying they are holding the economy hostage. Of course, Dems say the same thing about Republicans.
Polling on what the public thinks is all over the map, btw. A recent McClatchy-Marist poll says that 52 percent of Americans want all tax cuts extended, while a recent Pew poll said they favor ending tax cuts for the wealthy by 2 to 1. I suspect the way the question is framed makes a big difference.
Games Republicans Play
Since the country apparently has no real problems that Congress needs to be addressing, Republicans in Congress have invented a game called “let’s defeat Obama’s budget.” Here’s how it works —
Every few months, to fight the boredom, some Republican will crank out some farce legislation and submit it for a vote as “President Obama’s budget.” Be clear that the legislation is not, in fact, President Obama’s budget, but a Republican concoction inspired by those crazy copy-and-past 5,000-word emails you get from your wingnut uncle. As near as I can tell, the “budgets” are created by taking top line numbers from the President’s actual budget and leaving out about 1,944 pages worth of details, including revenue enhancements. The result is a monstrosity that the White House wouldn’t vote for, either.
For example, the here’s how the White House responded to the most recent gag budget, introduced by Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of MississippiAlabama —
Thus, a White House official said, the Sessions proposal was a “shell that could be filled with a number of things that could hurt our economy and hurt the middle class,†a White House official said. “For example, rather than ending tax breaks for millionaires his budget could hit the revenue target by raising taxes on the middle class and rather than ending wasteful programs, his budget could hit its spending target with severe cuts to important programs.â€
Jason Linkins explains further:
This vote, on a Potemkin “Obama Budget,” is not intended to be taken seriously. It’s a stunt designed to get a slag into the newscycle, and they tend to work. What happens is a Republican legislator presents a “budget proposal” that’s designed to be a satirical presentation of an “Obama budget.” Democrats don’t vote for it, because they recognize that it bears no resemblance to their budgetary preferences.
Good times! Anyway, the Republicans then put the “President’s budget” up for a vote, and because it’s such a joke no Democrat votes for it, either. Then the Republicans send out press releases saying that the President’s budget was unanimously defeated. And that Democrat-controlled liberal media cranks out amusing headlines repeating the charge about the unanimous defeat. The news stories often leave out the detail about how the defeated budget actually was a joke, which makes it all even funnier. And then wingnut bloggers write posts about it like this one:
It’s Hope and Change we can believe in as Obama proposes legislation that sweeps to unanimous votes in the House and Senate:
President Obama’s budget suffered a second embarrassing defeat Wednesday, when senators voted 99-0 to reject it.
Coupled with the House’s rejection in March, 414-0, that means Mr. Obama’s budget has failed to win a single vote in support this year.
It’s great to see Obama uniting Washington and developing some momentum. Especially as that momentum seems to be carrying him to the exit.
Of course (wink, wink) the legislation that was voted down was not what President Obama proposed, but what a Republican imagined the President would propose if he were as demented as they are. But it’s great to see so many people keeping their sense of humor through all these trying times of not having anything else to do.
Update: See also What It Means That The ‘President’s Budget’ Went Down 99 To 0 In The Senate
Update: Some are complaining that the Democrats haven’t introduced a budget lately. Jason Linkins writes,
But if you want to divine what another famous character of the stage termed the “method in the madness,” look at the latter half of Stephens’ statement, and the complaint that the Democrats have not put forth a budget. That’s fair, but it invites a trip into the weeds. There are reasons why the Democrats haven’t done so: 1) they know that any real “Obama budget” is a legislative nonstarter in the current climate of obstruction, and 2) the Democrats hold that the conditions created by the Budget Control Act are their de facto budget. This does not cover the lack of a budget in 2010 and 2011 — those didn’t happen because of the aforementioned obstruction, and some off-year election Democratic Party theories that failed votes would be more costly at the polls than no vote at all. (The results of the 2010 elections suggest that this was, perhaps, too clever by half.)
Let’s face it; Republicans would go ballistic and vote NO NO NO NO if Obama submitted so much as a deli menu. Even so, Dems might as well submit the real budget, which would get a majority of Dem votes. Call out the game-players.
Wingnutism as an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Along with not being able to control their fear/loathing of women, wingnuts also are decidedly knee-jerk when it comes to government social programs. So it is that some Republican Senators (Rand Paul, LIndsey Graham, Jim DeMint, and Mike Lee) have trotted out a new plan to “save” Medicare by destroying it.
If you’re thinking of answering this in the affirmative, you might want to pause long enough to learn what transpired on the third floor of the Capitol on Thursday. There, four prominent Republican lawmakers announced their proposal to abolish Medicare — “sunset†was their pseudo-verb — even for those currently on the program or nearing retirement. …
… For years, Republicans have insisted that they would not end Medicare as we know it and that any changes to the program would not affect those in or near retirement. In the span of 20 minutes Thursday, they jettisoned both promises.
And in an election year, too, although I don’t know if any of these four is up for re-election this year. Rand Paul isn’t, of course.
DeMint and his colleagues think the time to end Medicare is now — with a cold-turkey conversion to a private program, effective in 2014. “I think if Americans actually find out the truth about what we’re doing, it will be a very big positive for Republicans in the fall,†DeMint forecast.
The plan is to scrap Medicare and enroll seniors in the health care plan for federal workers. Exactly how this would save money is a mystery to me, although Rand Paul says it would save Medicare $1 trillion over ten years, a figure I assume he pulled out of his ass. It’s possible he doesn’t appreciate that adding all those seniors to the federal group insurance plan would drive up the cost of the federal group insurance plan.
At Thursday’s news conference, Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times pointed out that the lawmakers were proposing to do with Medicare almost exactly what President Obama’s reforms do for non-retirees: Direct them into private insurance with a subsidy for those who need it most.
Paul was flummoxed. “Uh, anybody want to comment on that?†he asked, producing laughter in the Senate TV studio.
DeMint gave it a try. “Medicare’s already set up as a government program, so we’re beginning to privatize with this idea,†he said. He said his plan takes Medicare recipients “out from under that manipulative umbrella of the Democratic Party.â€
I’ve seen primary exit polling that suggests many seniors vote for Republicans because they believe they will “save” Medicare from the evil President Obama, who wants to “cut” it. Of course, the opposite is actually true. The President is trying to keep the program as it is but keep it solvent by putting tighter controls on payments to providers. On the other hand, all of the GOP candidates, including Mittens, have endorsed some variation of the Paul Ryan Medicare-killing plan. But a big talking point with them is a promise to maintain the current program for people already on it.
Now Rand, DeMint et al. are challenging the candidates to go even further Right on Medicare than they were already, which would be a disaster for whichever one of them is in the general election. That they couldn’t contain themselves and wait until after the November election to make this proposal makes them all look even more like lemmings than they did already.
Related: “The Case for Crazy.” John Avlon argues that the best thing that could happen to the GOP is to nominate Rick Santorum and lose in a historic landslide in November.
If Mitt Romney does finally wrestle the nomination to the ground, and then loses to Obama, conservatives will blame the loss on his alleged moderation. The right wing take-away will be to try to nominate a true ideologue in 2016.
But if someone like Rick Santorum gets the nomination in an upset, the party faithful will get to experience the adrenaline rush of going off a cliff together, like Thelma and Louise—elation followed by an electoral thud.
Part of the delusion that is “movement conservatism” is the belief that a large majority of the American people agree with teabaggery, and that only a fringe of elitist liberals stand against them. A teabag candidate sinking like the Titanic might wake some of them up, and might also be a warning to the small group of gazillionaires underwriting this nonsense that there’s a limit to what their money can buy, even in the age of Citizens United.
TGIF
They Blinked
Well, the Senate is blinking, anyway — Mitch McConnell has called on the House Republicans to pass the two-month extension on the payroll tax bill. And then President Obama and Sen. Harry Reid came out and said they agreed with Mitch McConnell. The House GOP is truly painted into a corner.
The timing of McConnell’s announcement was rather remarkable. House Republican leaders, including Speaker Boehner, had just wrapped up a press conference on the Hill, telling reporters that the House GOP caucus won’t give in, won’t pass the temporary extension, and won’t do anything until a conference committee convenes (the conference committee would invariably kill the tax cut).
McConnell, almost immediately after Boehner wrapped up his remarks, cut the legs out from underneath the House GOP leadership and sided with Harry Reid’s proposed solution.
I honestly can’t remember the last time we saw a Senate Republican leader and a House Republican leader this far apart on a high-profile policy dispute. Everything about McConnell’s new statement appears intended to smack Boehner down, just as the Speaker tries to find his footing.
And then President Obama spoke at the White House —
President Obama today endorsed a proposed compromise by the Senate Republican leader on the payroll tax cut impasse: have House Republicans pass a temporary two-month extension, while Senate Democrats agree to negotiate a year-long extension at the same time.
“We should go ahead and get this done,” Obama said at the White House. “This should not be hard.”
In pitching his compromise, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the Republican-run House should approve a two-month extension now, while the Democratic-run Senate should agree to immediate negotiations on a year-long extension as requested by the House. “We can and should do both,” McConnell said in a statement.
Senate Majority Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Democrats seconded McConnell’s idea: “Once the House passes the Senate’s bipartisan compromise to hold middle class families harmless while we work out our differences, I will be happy to restart the negotiating process to forge a year-long extension.”
As far as I can see the “proposed compromise by Senate Republican leaders” is what the Senate had already approved on Saturday before the House GOP decided to throw a hissy fit.
Apparently GOP senators now are worried the payroll tax standoff will hurt them politically.
And, truly, I can’t imagine what the House GOP were thinking when they decided to throw their tantrum. Talk about an overplayed hand. The word last Monday was that Boehner had tried to sell the extension to the House GOP, but he was shot down by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (Tex.).
Today Boehner tried to muddy the waters once again by claiming the GOP is opposed to a two-month deal:
“A one year bill, like the president requested and like the House produced, is simply better for jobs and better for our economy. A one year bill provides, on average, about $1,000 for American workers as opposed to the Senate bill which would provide a measly $166.”
But the “deal” was never an either/or between two months and twelve months. The two-month extension was just to give Congress more time to negotiate before the old bills expire, on January 1.
Actually, all the players say they’d like a year-long extension. The sticking point, however, has been how to pay for it, with Republicans demanding spending cuts to programs that benefit middle and lower income Americans while Democrats have wanted taxes to be increased on households reporting gross adjusted income of $1 million or more.
President Obama told Boehner yesterday that until next year, his only options are to pass the two-month extension or go piss in the wind. And now Mitch McConnell is seconding that.
Today on CSpan
Apparently this clip was posted on YouTube by Nancy Pelosi’s office.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is the one doing most of the talking. Here is Pelosi’s caption:
This morning, Speaker Pro Tempore Michael Fitzpatrick (R-PA), under orders from Speaker Boehner, refused to allow Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer to speak on the floor and ask for unanimous consent to bring up the Senate bipartisan compromise to extend the payroll tax cut. Whip Hoyer and Congressman Chris Van Hollen are continuing to try to offer the Senate compromise even though Republicans walked off the floor. Once again, Republicans are risking a tax increase on 160 million Americans and the loss unemployment benefits for those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.
Steve Benen says the reason the video cuts off suddenly is that the Republicans demanded CSpan turn off the cameras.
The Ryan Albatross
Steven Taylor, one of the few self-identified “conservative” bloggers I actually respect — well, OK, the only one I respect — asks of the Ryan budget plan — WTF does the GOP intend to do with it? Are they actually thinking of trying to pass it? Are they crazy?
Remember: we know that some attendees of Tea Party rallies have brandished signs demanding that the government keep its hands off Medicare.* Further, many Republicans ran for office in 2010 by campaigning on the notion that the PPACA was damaging to Medicare (for example: Coates Ad: Obama Forcing Seniors into “Government Run Healthcare†and Blunt Ad Complains of Cutting Medicare…to Support “Government-Run Health Careâ€).
Remember also (and more importantly): the public overwhelmingly opposes Medicare cuts: “76% of respondents oppose cutting Medicare (30% find it “unacceptable†and 46% find it “totally unacceptableâ€)†(see link for details on the given poll—which replicates a consistent result in poll after poll on this topic).
So again: will the GOP actually go to the mattresses for this plan?
Let me give you my utterly unsupported guess as to what’s going on with Ryan and his budget — Ryan’s plan actually has been rattling around for several months, under the title “Roadmap for America’s Future.” And it got mentioned a lot in GOP talking points, although until recently you had to wade into the fine print on your own initiative to understand what the plan actually provides.
My impression all along has been that the GOP kept bringing it up not because they were all in love with Ryan’s ideas — although destroying Medicare is always a plus for them — but because it was the closest thing the GOP had to a concrete deficit-reduction proposal. So, for most of them, it was a prop. It was a stack of paper they could wave around and claim to be a plan that would solve everyone’s problems while they carped ceaselessly on whatever it was President Obama was doing.
Ryan himself — possibly not the sharpest pencil in the box — may not have understood it was the appearance of a plan, not the plan itself, that had value to the GOP. So a couple of weeks ago, from his position as chair of the House Budget Committee, he submitted the thing as a serious proposal.
Given Ryan’s timing, he might have thought that popular support in Washington for his ideas would cause Congress to drop other budget bills in progress and adopt his budget instead. And given the pundit-world swoon that followed, one suspects that the Puppet Masters were behind the release of the budget and had put out a general order to the puppets to start swooning.
One thing to keep in mind about the Puppet Masters is that most of them became rich and powerful because they inherited more money than God. And while they may possess a large degree of shrewdness, it’s a myopic kind of shrewdness. I suspect their “smarts” have serious limits. They may have imagined they could use their influence to get some version of the Ryan budget passed into law. And it may have just dawned on them over the past couple of days that they made a huge miscalculation. This would account for the over-the-top hysteria in right-wing media — if Daddy ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.
President Obama’s decision to stay behind the scenes until Ryan threw his pitch may turn out to be one of the smartest moves he ever made. If the Dems play this right — please — the Ryan budget could become the Mother of All Wedge Issues and an albatross to hang around the neck of every Republican running in 2012.
See also: Paul Krugman, “Who’s Serious Now?”
Update: What makes anyone think the President didn’t know full well the microphone was on? This is exactly the kind of thing the President needs to be saying to everyone, loudly and often.
Update: Ryan and his fellow travelers think the President was being mean to them in his speech last week.
They expected a peace offering, a gesture of goodwill aimed at smoothing a path toward compromise. But soon after taking their seats at George Washington University on Wednesday, they found themselves under fire for plotting “a fundamentally different America†from the one most Americans know and love.
“What came to my mind was: Why did he invite us?†Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said in an interview Thursday. “It’s just a wasted opportunity.â€
The situation was all the more perplexing because Obama has to work with these guys: Camp is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, responsible for trade, taxes and urgent legislation to raise the legal limit on government borrowing. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Tex.) chairs the House Republican Conference. And Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is House Budget Committee chairman and the author of the spending blueprint Obama lacerated as “deeply pessimistic†during his 44-minute address.
Unbelievable. I’m starting to think Ryan really is a clueless wonder. See also Matt Yglesias.
Boehner, Um, Scandal?
It took a lot of will power to not make a pun out of this.
Sen. Robert Byrd, 1917-2010
Truly, the end of an era.
Update: Thanks to everyone who corrected the date in the earlier headline. I had the senator dying at the age of minus seven.
I may have heard that the Senator could play the fiddle, but I never heard him play. Here is the Senator performing “Cumberland Gap.” I’ve heard it sung better, but it’s real decent fiddlin’. (h/t Ezra)