WORD!
If they want me to vote for evil then I will do it right!
Posted on 12/11/2013 6:54:47 PM PST by Mount Athos
Senate Republicans scrubbing the Ryan-Murray budget deal have come across a little-noticed provision that will limit the GOP’s ability to block tax increases in future years.
The bill includes language from the Senate Democrats’ budget to void a budget “point of order” against replacing the sequester cuts with tax increases.
The process is quite complicated, but in practice it grants Harry Reid the authority to send tax increases to the House with a bare majority, rather than the 60 vote threshold that would be required under the point of order.
The provision has angered key Republican Senators. Reeling from Harry Reid’s unprecedented use of the “nuclear option” to end the filibuster on presidential nominations, they are incredulous that Paul Ryan would have backed another limit to their power.
“This is an appalling power grab that should never have been allowed to be in a final agreement. It’s essentially the ‘nuclear option’ part two, eroding minority rights in the Senate even further. Harry Reid must be very happy,” a Senate GOP aide says.
A House aide says Reid can send tax bills to the House all he wants, since they will never fly in the lower chamber. “House Republicans would never approve a tax increase,” he says.
While the point is true, the change will likely give Reid a potent political cudgel with which to hit Republicans over, since passage of a bill can put pressure on the other chamber to follow suit.
In the Ryan-Murray bill, the change is found on 17-18 in the legislative text, where the bill sets up a “deficit neutral reserve fund” and incorporates 57 individual sections of the Senate Democrats’ budget as having “force and effect.”
These provisions are a big loophole for Paygo rules that give senators the authority to raise a point of order on spending and tax bills, setting a 60 vote threshold. There is a detailed explanation for the process in this 2009 document from then-Senator Judd Gregg’s staff when he was Budget Committee ranking member.
Although the (current) Senate rules generally require 60 votes for passage of a bill, a bill can be amended after cloture has been achieved. In the case of the fall shutdown fight, Republicans helped provide the 60 votes to obtain cloture on the CR, after which Reid took out the defunding Obamacare provision and passed the bill with a bare majority.
Under normal rules, even after cloture had been achieved, any amendment would still be subject to a point of order and 60 vote threshold if it “pays for” spending increases by raising taxes. The Ryan-Murray deal waives that point of order in many cases, prompting the fear that Reid will use it to put political pressure on the House to replace the sequester with new taxes.
You can never trust a TARPer.
This is the other side of the coin. The tax increases that WILL come to pay for this spending.
In 2012, both the top and the bottom of the ticket were Big Government losers.
By all rights, 2014 should be a big -- big -- year for the GOP. But why bother? I'll do my bit in the primaries, but when Nov comes around, I will not be supporting any Liberals, even if they are "the lesser of two evils".
Ryan is a tool hungry for attention. He’d serve anyone willing to stroke his ego and satisfy his desire to author the greatest economic plan ever known to mankind.
Maybe the GOP should take the Senate back 2015 and change the rules to pass tax CUTS on a simple majority.
Not much is passing in House after this.
I am beginning to build a real dislike for Ryan.
He appears to be selling us out a little at a time.
Of course I wouldn’t trust pat Murray as far as I could toss her.
100% sellout.
Obama must have some kind of juicy file on Ryan. He’s turned into a Fabian stooge.
The “deal” includes tax hikes, like a 124% security “fee” on airline tickets
WORD!
If they want me to vote for evil then I will do it right!
That’s what I’m thinking.
The deal is a total betrayal, and doesn’t even show the slightest hint of conservative principle.
How is it that Harry Reid would be sending tax increases to the House anyway. All revenues are supposed to start in the House.
Gawk I wish someone thought it mattered!
Ryan is naive.
Getting your clock cleaned by somebody like Rimshot Joe Biden during a debate would really mess up your brain. Ryan seems to have never recovered.
Let the TEA Party primary him.
When Dems passed the seatbelt law here they promised not to let the police pull people over for it.
Well 15 years later they bought police night vision to catch us not wearing them in the dark.
Yeah, that was our first clue.
Ryan isn’t stupid. He’s a fraud.
he was already dead to me, he can’t be any more dead.
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