Posted on 07/30/2011 8:22:43 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
After yesterday’s embarrassing plea to Mitch McConnell to save him from a cloture vote, Harry Reid went back to the drawing board. The Hill reports that Reid has altered his plan to raise the debt ceiling by borrowing more from the plans of McConnell and John Boehner, hoping to shake loose enough Republicans to get past the procedural hurdle:
The biggest change is that Reid would give the president almost unilateral power to raise the debt limit, borrowing an idea introduced by Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Reid would have President Obama request a $2.4 trillion debt-limit increase in two installments of $1.2 trillion each. The requests would be subject to congressional resolutions of disapproval, but these would do little to restrict the president.
Obama could veto any resolution of disapproval, and it would take a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress to override him.
According to a Senate Democratic aide, Reid also increased the total level of spending cuts from $2.2 trillion to $2.4 trillion, in part by using the January baseline — a budget maneuver House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) used on a previous version of his debt-limit plan. The January budget baseline does not count cuts Congress implemented in legislation passed this spring to avert a government shutdown.
The McConnell mechanism wouldn’t stop Obama from raising the debt ceiling limit in the next installment, but Republicans might be more inclined to see that as a bug rather than a feature by now. The “cuts” – such as they are – would come up front, with the possibility for getting more cuts down the line. Obama would have to raise the limit himself, and Republicans in both chambers would be able to vote against it, forcing Democrats to own the hikes. It’s not pretty, but it would set up the debate in 2012 as well as can be expected for the GOP at this point.
Reid also is rumored to be offering a vote on a balanced budget amendment as a sweetener for Republicans in the Senate, although not requiring passage. That’s also a good development for the GOP. A properly written amendment would force Congress to control spending rather than raise taxes by limiting the federal budget to a constant percentage of GDP. If Democrats vote such a plan down, it’s yet another point for the 2012 debate.
However, according to The Daily Caller’s Amanda Carey and the Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee, the Reid plan has a big and unpleasant surprise for Republicans on taxes. Reid’s figures rely on current law — and current law has all of the Bush-era tax rates expiring and rising to their previous levels. It also assumes that Congress won’t provide a “patch” for the AMT:
Reid’s proposal includes a provision that “deems” budget resolutions for fiscal years 2012 and 2013, but Senate Democrats have not yet produced a 2012 budget proposal, much less one for 2013.
Within those anticipated budget resolutions lie the tax increases, according to the analysis, and here is where it gets tricky.
When the Congressional Budget Office scores a proposal, it uses either current policy or current law as its baseline. Reid’s bill is based on current law, which assumes certain tax breaks will expire according to pre-determined scheduled. That is a big deal.
The 2001–2003 Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2012. And some business tax breaks, “death tax” cuts, and the patch for the Alternative Minimum Tax expire at the end of 2011. Reid’s proposal assumes that Congress will not act to renew or extend those expiring tax breaks.
Total tax hike over 10 years, according to the GOP analysis? $3.8 trillion. And those would not just be tax hikes on the “wealthy,” either. Those tax hikes would hit the middle class like a freight train, both on basic rates and the AMT creep that Congress has parried for years. If this analysis is correct, Reid either wants to hit the US with the biggest tax hike in its history, or he’s offering bogus deficit reduction that will never occur.
If this sounds like a bad deal to you, keeping in mind what Tina wrote yesterday as well, then it just shows that you’re paying attention. It could get worse, though, as this Star Wars parody shows:
I was actually looking for the original clip when I came across this one — which describes the situation far better. Who knew Lando Calrissian was a Tea Party supporter?
$3.8 trillion.
and the horse you rode in on
Reid thinks that we are all imbeciles who cannot see through what he’s doing.
Only one thing happens after political wooing... stand by for a screwing.
There it is there. The republicans are trying to make the democrats "own" the tax hikes. They are all about the politics of the situation.
The truth is that the American Taxpayer is going to "own" the tax hikes.
The taxpayers are going to be stuck with a backbreaking debt that will take generations to pay off at best. At worst, who knows?
How is giving one man the power to raise the debt ceiling going to woo Republicans? I’m lost.
woo who?
Which RINOs are in his crosshairs, so to speak?
This is political. I would rather see taxes get raised temporarily and have Obama and the Democrats own the economy totally going into next years election then the Tea Party win a Pyrrhic victory this year and Obama pins the blame on them. Like it or not, we have to win a majority of independents to get rid of the clown Obama. If Obama wins the election next year, count on a liberal supreme court majority within four years. If we win the Senate and the Presidency, we can roll everything back, but right now we cannot do much with 1/2 of Congress.
Implied link ....What Tina wrote yesterday:
What’s so wrong with Reid’s bill?
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House Speaker John Boehner’s debt-ceiling-and-deficit-reduction bill, now through Revision Round 2 and headed for likely passage, has hogged most media attention over the past few days, but, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now touting his bill as “the only compromise there is,” the lesser-known parts of Reid’s proposal deserve a little bit of attention.
First and most importantly, the bill actually explicitly seeks to excuse the Senate from passing a budget resolution for the next two years. Reid and Senate Democrats have enjoyed a more-than-800-day vacation from crafting a budget in the first place, but that’s just not enough – never mind that the law requires the Senate to pass a budget every year. So, how does the Reid plan enable the Senate to skirt its responsibility even further? It “deems” a budget for this year and next year.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) explained today on the Senate floor just what this means:
The Reid amendment to increase the debt limit deems two consecutive budget resolutions for fiscal years 2012 and 2013. In other words, it basically takes over the budget process and sets the basic spending number. Does the president think the Senate should go two more years without crafting or passing a budget? We’ve already gone two. The Reid amendment sets spending allocations for most Senate committees at the Congressional Budget Office’s rising baseline. … So it just says we’re going to deem the amount we spend, what C.B.O. has projected our growth and spending to be. And C.B.O. projects growth in spending. They don’t set that as right for America, but they project that’s what will occur under current circumstances. … So without hearings or debate on these allocations, this provision would provide a further excuse for avoiding a budget and increase the likelihood … the Congressional Budget Act will be violated for the third straight year. This is an abrogation of the responsibilities of the Senate and of the Budget Committee of the United States Senate. We were not elected to the Senate and chosen to serve on the Committee on the Budget … to see most of the budget levels automatically raised based on a set of spending growth projections by some apparachix in the C.B.O.
Sessions is right. It is an abrogation of responsibility — and one that’s been little remarked upon in discussion of Reid’s amendment.
Next, Reid’s bill boasts the largest debt increase in U.S. history — $2.7 trillion. Up to now, the most sizable increase has been $1.9 trillion (also an Obama increase). Debt ceiling increases might be routine — but hikes of this magnitude are not. Far better — and, frankly, more in line with precedent — to split that increase into two “smaller” amounts (even split in half, the increase is monstrous!).
Finally, as has been repeatedly pointed out, the savings in Reid’s bill aren’t exactly real. Reid touts dollar-for-dollar savings, but that’s a ruse. The bill actually delivers just $1 trillion in cuts in exchange for that unprecedented $2.7 trillion increase. The Global War on Terror savings are a gimmick. The administration has never requested current levels of funding for the war for the next ten years (i.e. the administration has never planned to spend $160 billion each year on the war for the next 10 years). Not funding what the administration was never going to fund doesn’t qualify as a cut.
Yet, Reid still claims his bill represents a compromise, whereas Boehner’s bill does not. Here he is today, making it sound as though he’s doing a favor to moderate Republicans who recoil from the lack of compromise Boehner has put forth:
Right now, this is the only compromise there is. … What is being done in the House is not a compromise. It’s being jammed through there with all kinds of non-transparent dealings. We’re recognizing the only compromise there is, is mine. Ours is truly a bipartisan piece of legislation. Republicans realize that. I’ve had a number of Republicans come to me. I had one Republican come to me and say, “Thank you” for your legislation. … I’ve asked my friend Sen. McConnell to meet with me and try to work this out. … The stakes couldn’t be higher. The security of our nation, every family, is at stake here. If the debt ceiling is not increased, every American family will feel an increase in their taxes, all their payments, credit cards, loans that they’ve taken out for their children to go to college, car payments, mortgages on their houses. So I say here to my Republican colleagues in the Senate to put the American people first. … The people we all represent want us to come together.
But what does the bill offer that Republicans want? Equivalent cuts? No. Enforceable future cuts? No. A vote on a balanced budget amendment? Certainly not.
Why aren’t House Republicans writing Reid a letter to say they won’t support his bill if it makes it to the House? Why isn’t Boehner saying it’s DOA?
http://twitter.com/#!/SpeakerBoehner
SpeakerBoehner Speaker John Boehner
DOA: @SenatorReid’s bill a non-starter in the House (and the Senate?) http://j.mp/o2UbyD
58 minutes ago
The Republicans should tell Reid to go straight to H-— and take his trolls with him..
With the dems, there is no such thing as a temporary tax hike. The dems want socialism, and right now the only way to stop them is to make them accept the fact that they have run out of other people's money. We can't change policy since we are not the party in power, however, we can stop being enablers (by drying up their revenue base).
Thanks for the info.
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Update: Fred Bauer says S&P is counting on the expiration of all the Bush tax rates, too.
oh, the very genteman Senator from KY assumes the voters will all hold the GOP blameless and blame obama if he owns the power to unilaterally raise the debt limit and ruin our economy beyond repair, don’t you see?
because obama is a normal sane kind of guy who will ultimately be shamed by cavalier old white men, into being responsbible for his excesses, his party and he will be acountable to the voters, and obama will therefore put the nation above his ideology
SARC
See #11—
Me: It was a turd when McConnell suggested it too!
Reid would have President Obama request a $2.4 trillion debt-limit increase in two installments of $1.2 trillion each. The requests would be subject to congressional resolutions of disapproval, but these would do little to restrict the president.
Obama could veto any resolution of disapproval, and it would take a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress to override him.
Are you fscking kidding me? Does anyone really understand what Reid is doing here? He's literally giving away the House's ability to regulate the economy by allowing the Executive branch to raise the debt limit ad infinitum.
This is drastically bad news if it passes. I don't see anything positive coming out of this deal.
This proves, universally, that Democrats and Liberals, specifically, are evil people Hell bent on resurrecting Marx and destroying America as we know it.
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