Tag Archives: House

There’s no way that both sides ‘do it’ when one side refuses to compromise

Posted on by

Greg Sargent writes, “And so it’s now sinking in that: 1) Republicans are not getting the entitlement cuts they want without agreeing to new revenues; and 2) Republicans are explicitly confirming that there is no compromise that is acceptable to them to get the cuts they themselves say they want.

“The GOP position, with no exaggeration, is that the only way Republican leaders will ever agree to paying down the deficit they say is a threat to American civilization is 100 percent their way; they are not willing to concede anything at all to reach any deal involving new revenues to reduce the deficit, or to get the entitlement reform they want, or to avert sequestration they themselves said will gut the military and tank the economy.”

Republican logic: things that make sense only on Fox “news”

Posted on by

Norquist magic! 

Politicalprof: as I so often say, it all makes sense if you don’t think about it.

###

In reality, though, only 85 “Rs” voted to cut taxes for working and middle class Americans — 151 of them voted no because… rich people are what really matter.

257 to 167

Posted on by

The measure, brought to the House floor less than 24 hours after its passage in the Senate, was approved 257 to 167, with 85 Republicans joining 172 Democrats in voting to allow income taxes to rise for the first time in two decades, in this case for the highest-earning Americans. Voting no were 151 Republicans and 16 Democrats. — NBC News

There’s an incredible number of articles / posts that are judging the “winners” and “losers” of yesterday’s lengthy House soap opera (see this). I happen agree with John Cole’s assessment the most:

The winners in all of this are Obama, the Senate, and Nancy, who once again impressively whipped her caucus and had only 16 no votes. The vote was effectively over when 30 Republicans voted in favor, but Pelosi still managed to keep all but 16. I have no idea who they are, but I am sure it will be an mix of folks voting against for idiosyncratic district regions and a few diehard progressives. Pelosi is perhaps the best leader I have ever seen at whipping her caucus. She’s better than DeLay, and she leaves no fingerprints. She’s really fucking amazing.

The biggest loser, I think, is Cantor, who came out against the bill before Boehner and then could not deliver 218 votes for an amended bill. Boehner probably worked with Pelosi and delivered the necessary votes from safe districts and then released others in more difficult situations to vote against. Don’t be confused by the small number of Republican “yea” votes, as right now, Cantor, Louis Gohmert, the teahadists, and manic progressives like Matt Stoller (all of whom are nihilists) are probably singing Bill Joel at a piano bar over scotch in Georgetown. Boehner’s support was deep enough in the caucus to deliver that many votes while releasing dozens of others to vote against, and he is probably safe as speaker. Cantor, I think, is done.

Boehner and Paul Ryan voted for the bill; “Dead Eyes” Cantor and Marco Rubio voted against it (let taxes go up on the real ‘Mericans!). The GOP presidential primary in 2016 will be interesting since Republican base-rubes are such complete masochists.

Boehner’s turn: the importance of timing and semantics

Posted on by

Boehner couldn’t get his caucus to agree on letting tax cuts expire for incomes over $1,000,000 — why would they now agree to expire the tax cuts on incomes at $400-$450,000 and over?

Steve Benen explains the importance of timing / semantics:

 It may seem like semantics, but after midnight, the rates go up automatically. Given this, if the Senate approves a package that applies lower rates to income up to $450,000 and higher rates on all income above $450,000, that vote is qualitatively different tomorrow than today — before midnight, it’s a vote to allow rates to go up on the very wealthy; after midnight, the rates for the wealthy would literally stay the same because they will have already gone up.

Republicans could vote, or at least consider voting, for a Senate package without anyone suggesting they voted for higher taxes. The Senate package, at least in its current, incomplete form, would be solely a tax break on income up to $450,000 — while maintaining a new status quo on rates applying to all additional income.

Would these nuances really matter than much to House Republicans? You bet they would.

On another note, unfortunately, even after eight years of war and economic crisis and bailouts, and one of the largest expansions of the federal government and the debt, George W. Bush continues to ‘win’ with the tax cuts still being dubbed “the Bush tax cuts.”

New Year’s Deal

Posted on by

Brian Beutler: “It took until after 2 a.m. on the morning of January 1, 2013 — a few hours after the Bush tax cuts had technically expired — but the Senate passed legislation that will reinstate tax cuts for middle-class taxpayers, and lock in a variety of higher rates on income above $450,000. [...]

By passing the legislation with overwhelming support from members of both parties, the Senate has handed House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) responsibility for following suit, and averting the vast majority of the austerity measures in the so-called fiscal cliff.

Just days ago, Boehner was unable to round up sufficient support in the House for legislation that would have locked in the Bush tax cuts for income up to $1 million. The Senate-passed legislation raises significantly more revenue than Boehner’s plan would have, and will provide the Treasury with more than $600 billion than it would have collected over the next 10 years if all the Bush tax cuts had been extended.”

Some data:

  • The final vote was 89-8. The eight senators opposing the bill were: Democrats Tom Carper (D-DE), Tom Harkin (D-IA), and Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Republicans Mike Lee (R-UT), Richard Shelby (D-AL), Rand Paul (R-KY), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Marco Rubio (R-FL).
  • Unemployment benefits are extended for a year.
  • The bill delays the sequester — and all the automatic, deep spending cuts to social safety net programs and defense — for two months, as well as delaying an increase in the deficit.
  • The House will take up the bill today in a rare New Year’s Day session.
  • And at least one positive thing can be said: no giveaway on Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Basically, no spending cuts at all
  • See Suzy Khimm’s Fiscal Cliff cheat sheet.

The losers:

  • Those of us who got a break on the payroll tax. That will expire.
  • Federal workers whose pay, for whatever reason, continues to be shackled to Congressional pay. Obama was going to lift the federal employee (and congressional) pay freeze, but now that’s reimposed.

I’m still not certain I care if the House passes this legislation or not. Is it worth another round of reindeer games in 2 months? If the House doesn’t pass this, it all will need to get fixed much sooner. That might not be a bad thing.

Harry Reid says it looks like we’re going over the fiscal cliff, is Boehner’s fault

Posted on by

Business Insider: “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said this morning that it “looks like” Congress will fail to come to a deal to avert the year-end fiscal cliff. ”It looks like that’s where we’re headed,” Reid said. “I don’t know, time-wise, how it can happen now.” [...]

“Reid opened the Senate session by launching into a lengthy criticism of the House and Speaker John Boehner, saying he “seems to care more about his Speakership” than making a deal on the cliff. The House is being run “by a dictatorship of the Speaker,” Reid said. He accused Boehner of waiting until the election of the Speaker on Jan. 3 to get involved with negotiations. And he urged the lower chamber to pass the Middle Class Tax Cut Act, which the Senate narrowly passed in July. The bill made permanent all of the Bush-era tax cuts on incomes of less than $250,000 for couples and $200,000 for individuals. Reid also slammed the House for not being in session on Thursday. He said that instead of being in Washington, Republicans are “out watching movies.”

“They had to have a conference call,” he said.”

How close are we to a deal or the fiscal cliff?

Posted on by

Think Progress: The House will vote on two separate proposals to extend the Bush tax cuts for people making $250,000 and below or for people making $1 million and below on Thursday.

Steve Benen - Obama, Boehner inch closer to debt deal: “This is no small concession of the president’s part. He proposed higher marginal top rates on income above $250,000, while Boehner counter-offered with a $1 million threshold. Obama, despite a strong public mandate on the issue, has moved his figure to $400,000 in this latest offer, with the expectation that the Speaker will be similarly flexible.

“The president has also lowered his overall tax revenue target to $1.2 trillion, from his initial offer of $1.6 trillion.

“On the other side of the ledger, Obama is offering $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, including $400 billion in health care savings, $200 billion from other mandatory programs such as farm price supports, $100 billion in military spending cuts; $100 billion from domestic programs, $290 billion in savings from lower interest on the debt, and $130 billion is savings from “chaining” the Consumer Price Index. More on that in a moment.

“As part of the same package, the president would expect an extension on unemployment benefits, new infrastructure investments, another Alternative Minimum Tax extension, and a two-year debt-ceiling increase (it’d be up to the administration to do the paperwork, though Congress could try to vote for default if it wanted to).

“Is this a good deal? At a certain level, it doesn’t matter, since Boehner says it’s not good enough and it wouldn’t pass the House. But since it may very well serve as the framework for an eventual agreement, it’s worth paying close attention to its most glaring flaws.”

Greg Sargent – Should progressives accept emerging fiscal cliff deal? The big picture: With this deal Obama will have broken the GOP’s fundamentalist opposition to raising tax rates on the rich (albeit only on income over $400,000) something that would have been deemed very unlikely a year ago. He will have held the line against the GOP demand for two years of Medicare — a victory. Debt ceiling hostage taking will have been deferred for two years, meaning it won’t get tied up in the next elections. He will have obtained stimulus spending — on infrastructure, and in the form of an extension of unemployment benefits — and as Paul Krugman notes, that wouldn’t happen if we go over the cliff. (I’m told the talks have not focused on the exact sum of stimulus spending the White House wants.) The price: The expiration of the payroll tax cut and the cut in Social Security benefits. That’s bad, but the damage could be limited, if the White House insists on it. Obama told us both sides would have to get out of their “comfort zones” in the quest for a deal, and it has been apparent for some time that he prefers a deal to going over the cliff. We now are beginning to see what getting out of that comfort zone looks like.

Paul Krugman - Rumors of a Deal: But the cuts are not nearly as bad as raising the Medicare age, for two reasons: the structure of the program remains intact, and unlike the Medicare age thing, they wouldn’t be totally devastating for hundreds of thousands of people, just somewhat painful for a much larger group. Oh, and raising the Medicare age would kill people; this benefit cut, not so much.The point is that we shouldn’t be doing benefit cuts at all; but if benefit cuts are the price of a deal that is better than no deal, much better that they involve the CPI adjustment than the retirement age. But is this rumored deal better than no deal? I’m on the edge. It’s not clear that going over the cliff would yield something better; on the other hand, those benefit cuts are really bad, and you hate to see a Democratic president lending his name to something like that…

###

No cuts to Social Security: 

 

Fiscal cliff: the House is in session this week and next week … then, vacation.

Posted on by

“If we can get a few House Republicans to agree as well I’ll sign this bill as soon as Congress sends it my way. I’ve got to repeat, I’ve got a pen.” — President Obama urging Congress to pass his tax plan before Christmas. (via CNN)

The House is in session this week and next week. Then they go on vacation. If the past is any guide, the GOP members will happily leave Washington regardless if a solution to the fiscal cliff is agreed to beforehand. 

The 112th Teapublican-heavy Congress: the least productive Congress in 64 years

Posted on by

NBC News reports on the aftermath of the Republican Party’s losing strategy to put party before country, in a very unpatriotic attempt to make Obama a one-term President by bringing government to a halt, resulting in two years of Doing Nothing and Getting Paid For It:

“By passing just 196 bills into law so far, it is in the running to become the least productive Congress since the 1940s. In fact, that amount is 710 fewer public laws than was produced by the 80th Congress (from 1947-48), which first earned the moniker “Do-Nothing” Congress.

[...] The U.S. House Clerk’s office keeps official records of all congressional activity dating as far back as 1947. During those 65 years and 33 different Congresses, more than 20,000 public laws have been passed. The 104th Congress (1995-1996) currently holds the record low for passing the fewest pieces of legislation since 1947 — just 333 bills were passed into law during that two-year span.

[...] The 107th Congress (2001-2002) is next, passing only 377 new laws during its time in Washington. To avoid earning the distinction as the least productive Congress since 1947, 138 bills must move through the House and Senate before the end of this Congress next month.”

— WORST CONGRESS SINCE THE 1940S

The 113th Congress may not be much better. The Washington Post reports that Eric Cantor released the 2013 schedule for the House, and they’re scheduled to meet ONLY 126 DAYS IN 2013!

House lawmakers are scheduled to meet for 126 days in 2013, a slight increase from this year, but in line with the Republican strategy of giving lawmakers extended periods to spend back home. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) released the schedule for the first session of the 113th Congress on Friday. The Senate has not yet announced its 2013 schedule, but if history is any guide, senators will generally be in session for four-week stretches between recesses. As with both sessions of the 112th Congress, the House will keep with a two-weeks-on, one-week-off plan that was a boon for the 89 GOP freshmen lawmakers who sought reelection this year. Democrats regularly bemoaned the schedule, arguing that lawmakers should have been spending more time in Washington working to address the nation’s struggling economy and that the time spent away from the Capitol contributed to the rancorous, partisan nature of most debates. But Cantor said Friday that lawmakers need the time back home for what his office has dubbed “district work periods.”

The Republican War on the Federal Workforce

Posted on by

It’s a good thing that Democrats have the backs of federal workers.

Senate rejects pay freeze extension for federal workers 

 The National Treasury Employees Union and the American Federation of Government Employees cheered the amendment’s failure.

“Rejecting this amendment is clear evidence that many members of the Senate understand the need for shared sacrifice among every group in our society, rather than turning to federal employees for even greater contributions, especially to fund matters unrelated to the federal workforce,” NTEU President Colleen Kelley said in a statement Wednesday.

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., voiced dissent to the bill during floor debate Wednesday, calling the amendment “another Republican attack on the federal workforce.”

“Enough is enough. Every amendment, they’re picking on the federal workforce,” Cardin said. Roberts did not mention the federal pay freeze measure during the debate.

The House passed a pay-freeze extension similar to the Robert’s amendment in February.

House Passes Pay Freeze Extension – How Did Reps Vote?

The House voted late Wednesday to pass HR 3835, Rep. Sean Duffy’s (R-WI) bill that would extend the current pay freeze for federal employees and members of Congress for one year.

The bill passed by a vote of 309 to 117. 72 Democrats joined Republicans in support of the legislation and only two Republicans voted against it.

A group of 17 Democrats in Congress recently sent a letter voicing their opposition to additional cuts that would harm federal employees. Interestingly, all but one of these members of Congress kept their word on voting against bills such as this pay freeze extension legislation. Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) voted in favor of the pay freeze bill while the other eligible members voted against it.

Senate rejects plan to extend federal pay freeze

By a vote of 47 to 51, the Senate rejected an amendment to a highway funding bill introduced by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) that would have extended the freeze through Jan. 2014 to fund energy projects, an adoption tax credit and tax deductions for college expenses and for state and local property taxes.

The vote came during debate on a bill to provide federal highway funding. The White House has said it will oppose any effort to extend the pay freeze for another year to pay for other federal programs or to pay down the federal deficit.

A coalition of groups representing federal employees angrily denounced the bill Monday as the latest attempt to curtail federal pay to offset the costs of tax breaks and policies completely unrelated to the public sector workforce.

Last month, the National Treasury Employees Union released a list (PDF) of more than 20 “legislative proposals harmful to the federal workforce,” including several measures that would extend the pay freeze through 2015; measures imposing a two-week unpaid furlough for federal workers; a bill to cut the workforce and impose a hiring freeze through 2014; proposals to allow the hiring of one employee for every three who leave federal service; and bills that would force federal workers to sharply increase their pension contributions.

Another hand in the pockets of federal workers

If it’s Tuesday, or any day that ends with “Y,” it must be time for another move on the wallets of federal workers.

The latest attempt in a seemingly unending series of proposals to cut their pay or benefits is scheduled for a Senate vote Tuesday. And once again, the plan is to use their money for unrelated projects.

[...] “While some in Congress continue to make it a priority to protect the wealthiest Americans from contributing anything to deficit reduction, this [Roberts] amendment would cut another $26 billion from this one group of middle class workers,” said Kelley’s letter.

[...] But Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) said he opposed the part-time amendment because: “I must stand up against Congress’s new habit of treating federal employees like a piggy bank. Congress must stop taking from our dedicated federal employees . . . to fund completely unrelated priorities. ”

War on the middle class, income redistribution, class warfare: brought to you by the 21st Century Republican (tea)Party.

Well, this sucks: “House” will come to an end in April

Posted on by

Just what we need – an end to another great show that had “writers,” probably to be replaced by some crap reality show.


Source: angelic37

“House”, starring British actor Hugh Laurie as the cantankerous but brilliant doctor Gregory House, started in 2004 and will have been on air on Fox in the United States for 175 episodes when it comes to an end in April. “After much deliberation, the producers of ‘House M.D.’ have decided that this season of the show, the 8th, should be the last,” executive producers David Shore, Katie Jacobs and Laurie said in a statement. – TV medical drama House to end after 8 years | Reuters




Source: poisonouschicken

Morning, y’all! PIPA / SOPA updates

Posted on by

So here’s an update on yesterday’s protest, petitions and calls to the Senate from fightforthefuture.org:

Google launched a petition.  Wikipedia voted to shut itself off.  Senators’ websites went down just from the sheer surge of voters trying to write them.   NYC and SF geeks had protests that packed city blocks.

… Approaching Monday’s crucial Senate vote there are now 35 Senators publicly opposing PIPA.  Last week there were 5.   And it just takes just 41 solid “no” votes to permanently stall PIPA (and SOPA) in the Senate.  What seemed like miles away a few weeks ago is now within reach…

Via cheatsheet:

More politicians have retracted their support of either or both the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) since Rep. Ben Quayle (R-AZ) and Rep. Lee Terry (R-NB), two co-sponsors of SOPA,did so yesterday and today.

Talking Points Memo reports that Senator John Boozman (R-AK), an original cosponsor of the bill, has also withdrawn support for PIPA, posting a note to his Facebook page this afternoon, writing:

I can say, with all honesty, that the feedback I received from Arkansans has been overwhelmingly in opposition to the Senate bill (S.968, the PROTECT IP Act) in its current form. That is why I am announcing today that I intend to withdraw my support for the Protect IP Act.

Senators Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Jerry Moran (R-KS), also cosponsors of PIPA, tweeted their withdrawals today as well. Additionally Senators Jeff Markey (D-OR) and Allen West (R-FL) also withdrew support. Not to be outdone, Representatives Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Mike Honda (D-CA) blacked out their websites in support.

[via TPM]

Via thedailyfeed:

It looks like the online blackout to protest SOPA and PIPA is working — key lawmakers, including original PIPA co-sponsor Sen. Marco Rubio, either yanked support for the bills or spoke out against them for the first time.

Sen. Jim DeMint, who had remained silent on the issue, tweeted today that he opposes both SOPA and PIPA, calling them “misguided bills that will cause more harm than good.”

Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash went so far as to join the protest, disabling posting to his Facebook wall and replacing his picture with the words “SOPA” and “PIPA” crossed-out.

We have to keep at them, though. The vote is next week, and they need to hear from all of their constituents. Go to the Senate.gov website and find the contact information for your Senator — then call, email, fax, or drop by their local office:

SOPA is the House’s “Stop Online Piracy Act” and in the Senate the bill is called the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).

PIPA would give the government new powers to block Americans’ access websites that corporations don’t like. The bill lets corporations and the US government censor entire websites and cut sites off from advertising, payments and donations.

Watch this video, sign a petition, but contact YOUR Senator / Representative directly as well — tell them to vote “NO” on their respective bill.