Tag Archives: 2012 budget

Five things liberals can like about the Debt Deal

Posted on by

As Jay Newton-Small argues, if we lived in a world where the teaparty didn’t exist, this wouldn’t be a good deal. But the teaparty does exist — at least for now — and when you look at things a little closer, some of this deal is pretty okay:

  1. The 2012 budget: At one point in the negotiations, the 2012 budget was to be slashed by $36 billion. The final number of cuts: just $7 billion. And just to ensure we don’t have another bruising government shutdown fight over cuts in September, the deal deems and passes the 2012 budget. Yes, that’s right, the old Gephardt Rule or Slaughter Solution, is back. What’s deem and pass? It’s a legislative trick that essentially means that Congress will consider the budget passed without ever actually having to vote on it.
  2. The trigger: This is counterintuitive, but the trigger is actually pretty good for Democrats. For all that MoveOn thinks that it would force benefit cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, it actually wouldn’t trigger benefit cuts to any entitlements. The only cuts it would force would be a 2% or more haircut for Medicare providers. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, along with most Democrats, has never opposed provider cuts. Not only that, most progressives actually want the Pentagon cuts. So if the committee deadlocks and the trigger is pulled, Democrats won’t be miserable.
  3. The commission: Again, for all the liberal carping about a “Super Congress,” the commission of 12 members — three from each party in each chamber — set up to find the second phase of $1.5 trillion in cuts by Thanksgiving is actually rigged to force some revenue increases. Yes, the Bush tax cuts are off the table. But there are plenty of loopholes, subsidies and other corporate welfare programs that are on the table. And with such a strong trigger, it’s hard to imagine at least one Republican not voting to kill corporate jet subsidies over slashing $500 billion from the defense budget – even if the revenues aren’t offset. The question is: who are Republicans more afraid of, Grover Norquist or the joint chiefs? Democrats’ money is on the joint chiefs.
  4. The immediate cuts: It may seem like a lot, but the $917 billion in the first phase of cuts were carefully negotiated by Vice President Joe Biden and his group. They include $350 billion in Pentagon cuts – a win for liberals. They don’t touch entitlement benefits, another win. And they set top line numbers for the next decade of budgets that aren’t draconian. It still cuts where liberals might prefer to spend, but most of the savings are backloaded to avoid extreme austerity in next few years of fragile economic recovery.  Just $7 billion would be cut in 2012, and only $3 billion in 2013. And of that combined $10 billion, half would come from the Pentagon. On top of that, the discretionary spending caps on budgets in future Congresses are subject to revision by those bodies.
  5. The debt ceiling: Raising the debt ceiling through 2013 will not be contingent on the second round of cuts. There will merely be a vote of disapproval. This avoids another messy fight in January and another round of painful forced cuts.

Maybe someday, say after the 2012 elections, the teaparty will be a bad memory. That’s something everyone can help make possible — if they just vote this time.

Reid and Pelosi: calling the Teaparty Republicans bluff

Posted on by

Harry Reid would like his fellow Senators who do and do not support Paul Ryan’s Path to Poverty / Soylent Green for Everyone Budget to stand up and be counted:

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will hold a Senate vote on Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) controversial budget plan, Raw Story has confirmed.

The plan, recently approved by the House, has virtually no chance of passing the Democratic-led Senate. The vote would serve to put Senate Republicans on the record in favor of slashing taxes on the rich while replacing Medicare with a voucher program.

“There will be an opportunity in the Senate to vote on the Ryan budget to see if Republican senators like the Ryan budget as much as the House did,” Reid told reporters on a conference call. “Without going into the Ryan budget we will see how much the Republicans like it here in the Senate.”

Nancy Pelosi would like those in Congress who do and do not support stripping highly profitable oil companies of their tax breaks to  to stand up and be counted as well:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) pressed Speaker John Boehner to call for a vote on stripping tax breaks for oil companies, after the Ohio Republican signaled openness to the idea.

“House Democrats have long advocated eliminating outdated and costly taxpayer subsidies that provide billions of dollars to highly profitable oil companies,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to the Speaker sent Tuesday night. “I am writing to request that you schedule a vote on ending these tax breaks on the House floor upon our return to Washington next week.”

She added that “we have had several votes on this subject in the House, and have been disappointed that these proposals have not been supported by the Republican leadership.”

What do the Teaparty Republican voters think of these issues? Would they be FOR Ryan’s Path to Poverty (ending Medicare) and FOR subsidizing Big Oil? Or do they never have to deal with such concerns since Fox “News” concentrates on things like birth certificates and the “War” on Easter…

h/t BobCesca

Paul Ryan’s base is losing that teabaggy feeling

Posted on by

Ryan is used to his teaparty base only half-listening to his nonsense and applauding like they’re paid to do it.  After all, Ryan has been officially identified as “One of Us” and these folks are usually anxious get  home and microwave their Banquet fried chicken dinners before Beck or Hannity’s show starts. 

So the questions and the booing at one of his townhall meetings this week must have been more than a little confusing for brave Paul Ryan:

Ryan argued against “redistribut[ing]” in this manner. After the constituent noted that “there’s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down,” Ryan argued that “we do tax the top.” This response earned a chorus of boos from constituents:

CONSTITUENT: The middle class is disappearing right now. During this time of prosperity, the top 1 percent was taking about 10 percent of the total annual income, but yet today we are fighting to not let the tax breaks for the wealthy expire? And we’re fighting to not raise the Social Security cap from $87,000? I think we’re wrong.

RYAN: A couple things. I don’t disagree with the premise of what you’re saying. The question is what’s the best way to do this. Is it to redistribute… (Crosstalk)

CONSTITUENT: You have to lower spending. But it’s a matter of there’s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down.

RYAN: We do tax the top. (Audience boos). Let’s remember, most of our jobs come from successful small businesses. Two-thirds of our jobs do. You got to remember, businesses pay taxes individually. So when you raise their tax rates to 44.8 percent, which is what the president is proposing, I would just fundamentally disagree. That is going to hurt job creation.

Also, too. Are the small businesses that Ryan claims to be protecting really “small?”

How the Teaparty Republicans plan to molest Medicare and Medicaid

Posted on by

I’m not sure how the tea party base, many of whom are retired and receive Medicare themselves, will justify supporting what the Republicans would like to do to them and their friends and neighbors. But they’ll find a way, if for no other reason than their howling, rabid and irrational hatred of Obama and all Democrats.

Think Progress: When President Obama proposed ensuring affordable health care to all Americans, Congress spent a year hashing out how best to achieve this goal. Yet when Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) decided that he wanted to phase out Medicare, the GOP-controlled House took only two weeks to debate and pass this radical proposal. [Yesterday] afternoon, House Republicans overwhelming endorsed his plan to eliminate Medicare, slash education, and jack up the middle class’ taxes. 235 Republicans supported the Medicare elimination bill, with just 4 GOPers casting a vote to leave Medicare unmolested:

Seniors will feel the effect of the GOP’s draconian plan long before it succeeds in phasing out Medicare. According to the CBO, total health care expenditures for a typical 65-year-old “would be almost 40 percent higher with private coverage under the GOP plan than they would be with a continuation of traditional Medicare” in the very first year that the GOP plan goes into effect.

Or as David Corn puts it: Lemmings, meet cliff.

That’s one way of viewing the 235-to-193 party line vote in the House of Representatives on Friday afternoon for the 2012 budget proposed by Rep. Raul Ryan (R-Wisc.), the chair of the House Budget committee…

[T]he Ryan proposal presents the Republicans in all their Republicaness, as the party that wants to end Medicaid and Medicare as these programs currently exist (that is, wipe out the guarantee of medical care for the poor and for the elderly), while tossing a trillion dollars in tax cut bonuses to well-to-do Americans. (Only four House GOPers voted against the measure.)

Government Shutdown: Ezra Klein thinks it’s probably going to happen

Posted on by

Ezra Klein says there may be not just one but two shutdowns because of Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget proposal, which Klein describes as, “also completely, almost gleefully, unacceptable to Democrats.” Among many other things, Ryan’s budget “privatizes and voucherizes Medicare, dismantles Medicaid“ (and DOESN’T specify daily rations of Soylent Green for Grandma):

We look to be headed for a government shutdown — and maybe two of them. The first is slated to happen at the end of the week. Talks between House Republicans and Senate Democrats have broken down. The entire Republican leadership has released statements saying that $33 billion in cuts — which is $1 billion more than they initially proposed — is insufficient as a compromise. The White House has told top agency officials to begin preparing for a shutdown, and John Boehner has begun distributing information to his members detailing their responsibilities in the event the federal government closes its doors.

The fact is that the House must have a budget deal in place by TONIGHT to avoid a shutdown on April 8 at midnight. Klein reports that Boehner has “flatly rejected” the $33 billion in spending cuts offered by the Democrats.

Ed O’Keefe reports that as of last night, “The process of shutting down the federal government is underway.” OMB is currently reviewing shutdown contingency plans.

Teabaggers may get their wish on a shutdown. But that’s only because they’ve been told repeatedly they’ll get their Social Security checks anyway.

Oh, and the House will continue to receive their federal salaries, since the GOP – Teaparty members amended a bill they already knew wouldn’t pass, which said they wouldn’t be paid in the event of a shutdown.  On Friday, the House Dems fought for a separate bill on that issue, one already approved by the Senate, but the GOP-Teaparty House members, obviously, want to get paid.

See all posts on Government Shutdown…

House Republican – Teaparty’s “2012 Soylent Green for Everyone” Budget Proposals

Posted on by

Yep, the extremist wing of the ‘new’ Republican Party is now fully out of the closet for 2012 (emphasis mine):

If anything will make it easier for House conservatives to back off on shutting down the government this week, it’s the prospect of a different, and much larger fight over the federally funded social safety net. House Republicans are preparing to introduce a 10-year budget Tuesday that will eliminate Medicare and replace it with a private insurance system that closely resembles the new health care law, and end Medicaid as an entitlement program all together.

[...] Ryan’s plan will also propose tax reforms that lower corporate and upper-income tax rates, while eliminating certain loopholes. The details of that part of his plan are unclear, but if they adhere to his Roadmap for America’s Future, the GOP budget will propose to overhaul the tax code in a way that reduces the burden on the wealthy and increases it on the poor and middle classes.

More tax cuts for the wealthy, which will be funded by all the services taken away from the poor, elderly and middle-class. Same GOP game plan, different year.

These are the lawmakers that Democrats hope to compromise with by tomorrow night to avoid a government shutdown.

Government shutdown choice for GOP – Teaparty freshmen: fight or “play pattycake”

Posted on by

The Hill reports on how tough the Teaparty freshmen have it:

“I didn’t come here to play patty-cake or to do business as usual in Washington,” added Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.).

[...] however, GOP leaders have been preparing the rookies for eventual compromise. In last week’s meeting, they stressed the consequences of a government shutdown with an emphasis on how it would be considerably different than the interruptions of 1995-96, when Congress had already appropriated money for some federal agencies. No appropriations bills are in effect past April 8.

Unveiling Ryan’s 2012 budget tomorrow may be a squeaky ball the Republican – Teaparty plans to throw at the teabaggers, so they’ll be too occupied to notice the pattycake being played the compromises being made to avoid a government shutdown.

Government shutdown: Monday morning opinions

Posted on by

Washington Post: they have until TOMORROW NIGHT (Tuesday, April 5) to post a bill on funding for 2011 because of a NEW RULE ENACTED TO “APPEASE THE TEAPARTY.”  No matter though, because Rep. Paul Ryan (R) plans to unveil his 2012 budget tomorrow, even though the government may shutdown in five days because of this year’s budget.

Under new House Republican rules, any bill to be voted on Friday would have to be posted by Tuesday night. Republican leaders have also come out against approving another stopgap measure to keep federal agencies open a few extra days as they finish their work.

[...] Some House aides have floated the idea of breaking the 72-hour pledge, but such a move would be risky, given that the rule was an offering to the tea party activists who accused Democrats of crafting deals behind closed doors and rushing them to the floor when they ran the House.

The only option to avert a brief shutdown might be the passage of a seventh short-term funding plan to be approved, but GOP leaders have said publicly they do not want to continue funding the government with these bite-size measures.

John Dickerson of Slate says there probably won’t be a shutdown because the Republicans and Democrats realize it might harm the improving economy.

Steven Hurst | AP: about that 2012 budget that the Republican – Teaparty plans to “unveil” tomorrow:

What’s more, the huge political divisions may only harden on Tuesday when Republicans reveal their plans to further slash government outlays for the next fiscal year, a spending outline that was expected to call for profound changes in funding for U.S. social safety net programs, particularly government-funded health care for the elderly and the poor.

Those programs, known as Medicare and Medicaid, along with Social Security pension benefits and defense spending consume the vast majority of government spending. None of them is under consideration in the current battle over cuts for the remainder of this fiscal year, even though a special Obama commission on the debt has recommended dramatic changes in all that spending and in the American tax laws.

NY Times | The Caucus:

  • Democrats — Reid, Schumer, Warner, Durbin all say something will be worked out, even though the GOP House leadership are afraid of the Tea Party.
  • Republicans — Sessions, McConnell, Graham, Ryan all say something will be worked out, but negotiations on amounts and details continue.