Monthly Archive for February, 2010
HCR has already passed the senate with a supermajority. Budget reconciliation is the appropriate process for making small changes to reconcile it with house bill.
I know, now that Scott Brown has been elected, that the Republicans would like a do-over. But the Democrats already got their 60 votes, thank you very much.
Take John Cornyn, R-TX, for example:
CNN anchor Kiran Chetry twice tried to ask Cornyn if there is “anything Republicans would be willing to give on in return,” but Cornyn responded by criticizing the existing legislation:
CORNYN: Really, I think it’s not possible to take this bill or this proposal, this 11 page summary and to work with it around the edges. We’re going to have to put it on the shelf. That’s what the American people want us to do and start over and we would be glad to do that.
On Nov. 14, 2008, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service put out a report on reconciliation bills between 1981 and 2009. There have been 22 of them, including three that were vetoed by President Bill Clinton. It’s been used for health insurance portability (COBRA), nursing home standards, expanded Medicaid eligibility, increases in the earned income tax credit, welfare reform, start-up of the state Children’s Health Insurance Program, major tax cuts and student aid reform.
…
By our count, eight of the reconciliation bills were initiated by a Democratic-controlled Congress. The rest, 14, were done by a Republican-controlled Congress.
Now, some of you may want to point out that not all of those bills were particularly controversial. And PolitFact considered that. On bills that it says were passed via reconciliation to avoid a filibuster, Republicans lead 6 to 2.
But please, Republicans, don’t let that stop you from bellyaching about liberal tyranny.
A new CNN poll finds that Americans think both Democrats and Republicans are failing to act in a bipartisan manner — and that the Democrats should be the first ones to give up some of their proposals.
Democrats should be the first ones to give something up?? They’ve already given everything up! They gave up single-payer right from the start, and now they’ve given up the public option as well. What else should they give up — trying to insure every man, woman, and child? And what have the Republicans given up? They haven’t moved an inch from their stance of do nothing.
Frankly, though, this is the Democrats’ fault. They should have come out with a proposal for a strong single-payer system and gotten bargained down to the public option. Instead, they came out of the gate with a relatively weak version of the public option, and then they were (surprise!) forced to drop that.
There’s still a lot of work ahead, so hopefully the Dems have learned their lesson — make sure you leave yourself room to negotiate.
Budget reconciliation, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) told reporters Tuesday, “was never designed for a large, comprehensive piece of legislation such as health care, as you all know. It’s a budget exercise, and that’s why some refer to it as the ‘nuclear option.’” [NPR]
Umm, excuse me? Who the heck refers to it as the nuclear option? Given that Republicans have used it for many of their key proposals over the last two decades, I’m sure it wouldn’t be any of them.
NPR goes on to show that Kyl is way off target:
But health care and reconciliation actually have a lengthy history. “In fact, the way in which virtually all of health reform, with very, very limited exceptions, has happened over the past 30 years has been the reconciliation process,” says Sara Rosenbaum, who chairs the Department of Health Policy at George Washington University.
- 2005 - Legislation That Reduced Spending on Medicaid and Raised Premiums on Upper-Income Medicare Beneficiaries
- 2003 - President Bush’s 2003 Tax Cuts
- 2001 - President Bush’s Signature $1.35 Trillion Tax Cut
- 2000 - $292 Billion “Marriage Penalty” Tax Cut (VETOED)
- 1997 - Balanced Budget Act
- 1996 - Legislation to Enact Welfare Reform
- 1995 - “Contract With America” Agenda
This has been due for almost a year. I say, good for the Democrats for finally deciding not to let recalcitrant Republicans take the Senate hostage.
The massive stimulus package passed last year to blunt the impact of the worst U.S. recession in 70 years created up to 2.1 million jobs in the last three months of 2009, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday.The package boosted the economy by up to 3.5 percent and lowered the unemployment rate by up to 2.1 percent during that period, CBO said. [MSNBC]
Boy, that’s a lot more jobs than the zero Republicans keep estimating.
Also, another incredible finding by the CBO:
Direct purchasing of goods and services by the federal government and states have been the most effective provision of the act, CBO said. Among the least effective: a tax credit for first-time homebuyers and a tax cut for the wealthy.
I am shocked — SHOCKED — to find out for the tax cuts for the wealthy don’t stimulate the economy. I presume all conservatives will now stand corrected and change their policy suggestions, right?
So the truth of the matter is, is we are going to have to reform entitlement programs. I’ve done this in Minnesota, for example, with our bus drivers in the Twin Cities. They had post-retiree health insurance benefits, and the premise was this, if we made a promise to you, we’ll keep it. We’re not going to cut people off in terms of their pensions if we’ve made a promise to you. But for people who are new to the system, who are coming on, where we can fairly give them notice and fairly change expectations, the system’s going to change. And we did it.
Notice that Pawlenty phrases this as vaguely as possible, for exactly the reason I mentioned above. Most people will read this as Pawlenty suggesting we eliminate Social Security and Medicare. I would be willing to wager that T-Paw will do nothing to disabuse conservatives of that notion. Then, if hell freezes over and he receives the GOP nomination, he can say “I never said eliminate. I said reform.”
For what it’s worth, I don’t support eliminating Social Security. I don’t think that’s a very controversial position on my part. It will be easy to keep Social Security solvent. Personally, I think we should lift the cap on Social Security payroll taxes. It makes no sense to me whatsoever that the higher your income, the less of it you should have to pay into the system. Fix that, and we’re done. Seems better than Pawlenty’s solution to me.
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s how the Pawlenty-style compromise works:
- The Governor proposes an absurdly low number.
- The DFL proposes a higher number.
- The Governor flies into a rage at the merest suggestion that the two sides meet in the middle, and vows to veto anything that exceeds his number by even a penny.
- The DFL gives the Governor exactly what he wants.
If we’re going to have a real compromise, count me in. But if we’re going to have a Pawlenty-style compromise, then I say send him the bill and force him to explain why he’s making such a fiscally irresponsible veto.
Exasperated House Democratic leaders have compiled a list showing that they have passed 290 bills that have stalled in the Senate.
That doesn’t include bills that have been voted down in the Senate — that’s all of the bills the Senate hasn’t even touched.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) must be very happy lately:
“I love gridlock,” Coburn said. “I think we’re better off when we’re gridlocked because we’re not passing things.”
That seems to sum up the mindset of every Republican in the Senate.
1. The Senate will get to vote on something!
The Democrats have achieved the votes necessary to consider a jobs bill. Note that the bill hasn’t passed, it’s just overcome a procedural hurdle. These days, that’s a bigger deal than actual passage.
That’s why, in every single biennium, and sometimes even in off years like this one, we are forced to find a new budget “fix.” Those budget fixes more often than not rely on one-time funds and new accounting gimmicks, rather than real solutions. A real budget solution wouldn’t just keep us above water for 8 months; it would find the right mix of spending cuts and revenue increases to leave us with a surplus each year instead of a deficit.
Despite his complete failure to propose a responsible budget during his tenure, Pawlenty loves to chide the DFL and call them fiscally irresponsible. The most recent example of that came as Pawlenty, from a hotel in Washington, indicated he would veto the bonding bill. Pawlenty’s action will force the state to delay major projects that could create jobs immediately. More importantly, if he gets his way, we won’t spend the money when we can get good prices and when our state needs the jobs; instead, we’ll do the same projects in two or four years, but they’ll just cost more.
Citing our budget deficit for vetoing a bonding bill is, quite frankly, short-sighted. Bonding deals with improvements to our infrastructure, whose costs are spread over 15 to 20 years. It’s more fiscally responsible for us to get a good deal while it’s available.
- Issuers cannot retroactively change the rate on an existing balance unless the account is 60 days delinquent.
- A consumer payment above the minimum applies first to the balance with the highest rate.
- Issuers cannot charge over-limit fees on credit cards unless the consumer has signed up to allow such transactions.
- For consumers under 21 years old, a company must get the signature of a parent or another to take responsibility for the debt, or it must obtain proof that the under-21 consumer can repay credit.
- Issuers cannot charge fees to pay by mail, phone, and electronic transfer or online, except for expedited service.
A new study by the Pew Foundation shows that the changes being rolled out this month will save consumers over $10 billion per year:
Democrats will finish their health reform efforts within the next two months by using a majority-vote maneuver in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.
Reid said that congressional Democrats would likely opt for a procedural tactic in the Senate allowing the upper chamber to make final changes to its healthcare bill with only a simple majority of senators, instead of the 60 it takes to normally end a filibuster. [The Hill]
Not only that, there’s also likely to be a final vote on the public option. It looks like the Democrats have finally realized that they would never receive one iota of Republican support, and that the vocal minority opposed to reform would vote against the Democrats whether they passed reform or not.
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