Tea-Publicans were opposed to the “reconciliation” process before they were for it (when it suits their need to feed the GOPropoganda machine). The only principle they have is whatever works for us.
The GOP’s alleged boy genius and Ayn Rand fanboy, Rep. Paul Ryan, “the zombie-eyed granny starver from Wisconsin” who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee and is the heir apparent to Speaker of the House after a vote next week, drafted a reconciliation bill that partially repeals “ObamaCare” and defunds Planned parenthood for a year. “No healthcare for you!”
The Hill reports, House passes partial ObamaCare repeal:
The House voted along party lines on Friday to approve a budget reconciliation bill that would repeal parts of ObamaCare and halt federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
Only seven House Republicans voted against the partial ObamaCare repeal bill, though it has become a target of opposition from 2016 presidential candidates Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), as well as powerful groups such as Heritage Action for America.
The final total was 240-189. Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), a vocal opponent of abortion, was the only Democrat to break ranks.
The seven Republican defectors were Reps. Ken Buck (Col.) Bob Dold (Ill.), Richard Hanna (N.Y.), Walter Jones (N.C.), Mark Meadows (N.C.) and Matt Salmon (Ariz.). Jones is facing a primary challenger, while Dold’s seat is one of the top targets for House Democrats in the 2016 cycle. [Salmon’s opposition is because it did not go far enough.]
The bill would knock down key pillars of the president’s healthcare law, including the individual and employer mandates and the so-called Cadillac tax and the medical device tax. It would also halt funding to Planned Parenthood for one year.
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“This bill does not repeal all parts of ObamaCare but it certainly repeals egregious parts of it,” said Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), who leads one of the committees charged with drafting the bill, said.
Republicans have hailed the rarely used reconciliation process as a way to make President Obama answer for his healthcare law. Under the Senate’s rules of reconciliation, the bill can make it to the president’s desk without being subject to a Democratic filibuster, forcing a veto.
“With this bill, we can finally confront the president with the reality confronting working families every day: higher costs and lower quality,” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who helped craft the reconciliation bill as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and who is expected to be elected Speaker next week.
But the bill’s fate is in question in the Senate.
Three Senate conservatives, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), have vowed to oppose the bill, accusing party leaders of abandoning their promise to fully repeal ObamaCare.
And with three other Republican senators voicing concerns about defunding Planned Parenthood, the opposition from some on the party’s right flank has the potential to sink the legislation.
That leaves no room for error for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who will have to keep the rest of his 54-member caucus united to secure the 51 votes needed for passage.
GOP leaders have spent months shaping a reconciliation bill that would roll back major pieces of ObamaCare while following the complex — and sometimes subjective — Senate rules.
But several conservatives, as well as outside groups like Heritage Action for America and Freedom Works, have condemned the bill for not going far enough.
Heritage Action held a key vote on the reconciliation bill, with a vote in favor of the bill working against the group’s scoring of a lawmaker’s record.
Despite pressure from outside conservative groups, no House Republicans had publicly come out against the bill before the vote.
Even the hard-right House Freedom Caucus didn’t decide to oppose it, Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said Thursday. “There may be one or two of our members who don’t for some very personal reason they have, but I would say the vast majority of us will.”
Before the vote’s passage, House Republicans spent two hours railing against nearly every part of ObamaCare in floor speeches and making an argument that reconciliation was the best approach available to attacking ObamaCare.
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The attacks on ObamaCare were met with forceful defenses from Democrats, who used their time to criticize the GOP as taking on ObamaCare while threatening to let the country default on its debt.
“Here we go again, with the 61st time repealing ObamaCare,” Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said from the floor. “Give us a break, it’s a waste of everybody’s time.”
“Essentially what we’re now facing is the dangerous bankruptcy of this majority party in the House of Representatives,” Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) added.
This is a “show” vote to provide grist for the right-wing noise machine of the conservative media entertainment complex. If Senate Tea-Publicans do not torpedo the House Tea-Publicans’ reconciliation bill, it will be vetoed and that veto has no chance of being overridden by Congress. Everyone knows how this ends. This is a futile temper tantrum by infantile Tea-Publicans who can’t have their authoritarian way because democracy! All this does is run out the clock and move us closer to a government shutdown.
If Tea-Publicans don’t pull their infantile heads out of their ass in the next ten days, the U.S. faces a default on the full faith and credit of the United States on November 3. That would lead to economic catastrophe. Steve Benen writes, House GOP plays with matches; will the economy burn?:
If lawmakers fail to meet their responsibilities, the country won’t be able to pay its bills, we’ll default on our debts, the full faith and credit of the United States will be in jeopardy, and the economic consequences will be severe.
At this point, congressional Republicans appear to be divided into two groups. The first, which includes the GOP leadership, knows it must raise the debt ceiling, but this faction has no idea how to complete the simple task. The second, which includes far-right members in both chambers, wants to hold the debt ceiling hostage, threatening to crash the economy on purpose unless Democrats meets their demands, but this faction hasn’t bothered to fill out the ransom note.
So far, markets aren’t panicking, because everyone is working from the assumption that Republicans won’t deliberately create a recession for no reason — though anything’s possible.
What’s striking, though, is how little work is getting done. We’re 12 days away from a dangerous deadline — Congress is only in session for 7 of those days — and Congress isn’t even trying to move towards a resolution yet. Instead, the GOP-led House spent time yesterday on something called the “Default Prevention Act.”
With the potential for an unprecedented federal default two weeks away, House Republicans on Wednesday plan to pass legislation not to avert disaster, but rather to manage it, channeling daily tax collections to the nation’s creditors and Social Security recipients if the government’s borrowing limit is not lifted.
Let’s put this in everyday terms. Imagine a gang told you they plan to burn down your town unless their demands are met. You’re skeptical and tell the gang to go away. But the gang members stick around and say, “Before we burn down your town, let’s start making plans to prioritize which parts of the town you might want to rescue before we turn violent.”
That, in a nutshell, is what the “Default Prevention Act” is all about — the gang members passed a bill yesterday to prioritize which bills they’ll allow the United States to pay, and which bills will get burned by their fire.
The problem, of course, is that all of this is completely insane.
What we’re talking about is a plan in which Republicans try to manage the fire from their own arson, “channeling daily tax collections to the nation’s creditors and Social Security recipients” after they refuse, on purpose, to raise the debt ceiling.
And why would GOP lawmakers prioritize the nation’s creditors and Social Security recipients? On the former, because so much of the global economy rests on U.S. Treasury bonds, a deliberate default risks crashing financial systems across the planet. That would be … catastrophically bad.
On the latter, congressional Republicans don’t want to be responsible for cutting off Social Security checks for millions of American seniors, right in time for the holidays.
The “Default Prevention Act” is, by this measure, misnamed. It would prevent the nation from defaulting on some debts, while encouraging the nation to default on others.
Making matters just a little worse, Slate’s Jordan Weissmann explained that the GOP plan appears to be illegal and literally impossible to implement.
[E]ven if the government could borrow to pay bondholders and seniors, crossing the debt limit would still be plenty apocalyptic. Treasury’s computers still might not be capable of prioritizing its obligations, in which case we’d still end up failing to pay some bondholders despite Congress’s intentions.
The mere threat of such an accidental default could cause markets to seize. If the Treasury did successfully keep money flowing to its lenders, meanwhile, the government still wouldn’t be able to cover all of its other costs, and thus would be forced to implement massive, immediate spending cuts to other programs, likely dragging the U.S. and probably the rest of the world into a recession.
He’s referring, of course, to a recession that could easily be avoided by simply raising the debt ceiling – a simple, procedural vote that costs nothing.
Tick, tock.
After the mutiny of Tea-Publicans that we have witnessed in Congress over the past month, I have absolutely no confidence in the ability of the Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight to be able to do what is necessary. We are hurtling towards economic disaster and the media is not sounding the alarm — yet.
Tick, tock.