Posted on 03/03/2009 5:09:59 PM PST by pleasenoobama
President Obama’s budget director said the White House would consider using a Senate procedural tactic so that only 50 votes would be rquired to pass major healthcare and energy reforms.
Peter Orszag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the administration would prefer not to use the budget reconciliation process to push through its package. But he added: "We have to keep everything on the table. We want to get these.... important things done this year." Orszag called healthcare in particular "the key to our fiscal future."
Orszag made the comments on ABC’s "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."
Because they can not be filibustered, budget reconciliations only require 50 votes to pass the Senate. Democrats hold strong majorities in Congress, but still come up short of the 60 votes necessary in the Senate to end debate, which makes it easier for Republicans to block legislation. House rules in comparison make it harder for the minority party to stop bills.
Still, using budget reconciliation to pass policy proposals is controversial, even among some Democrats who believe doing so strains Senate rules and tradition.
The Obama blueprint calls for major changes in both energy and healthcare policies that is likely to engender significant opposition from Republicans and business lobbies. The reforms are expect to win widespread support from Democrats and more left-leaning constituencies.
The budget plan calls for a cap on carbon emissions, for example, and projects $645 billion in revenues from an auction of pollution permits that a variety of business groups, including oil companies, large manufacturers and utilities, would have to purchase.
On healthcare, the plan calls for a $634 billion reserve fund to pay for a first step on healthcare reform.
The president would pay for it in large measure by raising taxes on wealthy people and businesses by about $1 trillion over 10 years.
Republicans on Sunday criticized the document as a return of big government that would dramatically raise the deficit without providing the needed jolt to the economy.
The budget is "proposing massive tax increases on people and on businesses that can’t afford to pay them," said House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who also appeared on This Week.
Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Jon Kyl said the budget was "terrifying" in its policy implications and "mind-boggling" in its numbers.
But Orszag defended the $3.6 trillion budget plan by saying the plan cuts taxes for 95 percent of all working Americans.
"I just reject the theory that the only thing that drives economic performance is the marginal tax rate on wealthy Americans and the only way of being pro-market is to funnel billions and billions of dollars of subsidies to corporations," Orszag said.
Still, Democrats like Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) have expressed concern about rising deficits. The budget estimates a deficit in 2009 of $1.75 trillion, quadruple the level the previous year. It also projects rapidly shrinking deficits, however, by the end of Obama’s first term.
Considering the political difficulties attendant on budget issues and the tenuous state of the economy, Stephanopoulos asked Orszag if the administration would support the creation of a budget commission that would make spending and tax recommendations that would be either voted up or down with no possibility of amendments. Such a process is now used to close military bases.
Orszag left the door open on such a proposal, and also indicated a less ambitious commission focused only on health care as a possibility as well.
It's looking pretty bad. The liberals want to run this government like a dictatorship: end all debate and push their socialist agenda through congress as quickly as possible, bypassing all standard procedures in order to do so. I'm afraid this is the end of democracy as we know it.
So what about the debates and hearings? Are the people’s representatives just supposed to bend over and take it from the one?
We are crossing into uncharted territory here.
The GOP had its chance to play rough and it chose powderpuff tactics so as not to appear “mean”.
Fools.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2196762/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2196955/posts
Do you remember back when you had to actually win elections in order to get more votes in order to pass laws? Instead of just changing the goal posts?
Why no Democratic resistance...oh yes...they will the new Party Members in the USSA.
Its not unprecedented, communist leaders have done this sort of thing many many times.
Oops, apparently I don’t know how to use search properly. Tutorial?
I expected this a long time ago.
so what? they can pass anything they want.
its not like the GOP even wants to stop them anymore
Why would business lobbies reject it when they won't have to pay health care for their workers any longer? I think that's a bunch of bull hockey. Americans don't want nationalized health care. Plain and simple, but who ever listens to us any longer?
“So what about the debates and hearings?”
Could never get carbon credit trading through that way.
Obama has been with the carbon credit team from early on at Joyce Foundation.
He wants that through bad.
USSA = United Soviet States of America. “crying hysterically”
The Democrats want to make it look like capitalism has failed, so they will have a good pretext for ushering in full-bodied socialist collectivism. And so far, they’re doing a great job killing the economy! They’re doing such a good job, there’s no need or reason to “hope” that they fail to save the economy: Their failure is guaranteed by their own actions, which have either been excruciatingly stupid, or else diabolically clever!
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C. S. Lewis
Horrible as it is to waste hundreds of billions, that bill would have been way over a trillion if the Democrats only needed 50 votes. I wouldn’t be surprised if, if they only needed 50 votes, they had simply nationalized the whole economy.
they aren’t done yet. They are just getting started.
In a Republic the rule of law is supposed to prevail. And make it up as you go to win is not what is supposed to be. Our representative bodies are for debate before laws are passed.
But with Democrats, lie cheat and steal is all they know ...
Next, if anything in their agenda for change is threatened by a filibuster, they will simply change the Senate rules regarding cloture down from 60 to 50.
They do at least have the balls to do it.
What’s next...this man is the most unscrupulous power grabber ever...he will stop at nothing to do irrepairable damage to the country all in the name of “progress”...
scary scary times...
If now isn’t the time to take off the gloves in the fight against Socialism, then I don’t know what is.
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