[Owen]

I know your name from years of posts on FR.

Senate rules are pretty powerful things. They don’t typically change without overwhelming votes. I suggest time spent with the filibuster wiki. All the tweaks and modifications to it over decades show what a major effort it is to do major things to the rules.

It’s important to have some sort of memory of the intricate maneuvers that went on 2009/10. There was talk by the far left of ignoring the Parliamentarian then, too. Reid generally didn’t do it. Before the Parliamentarian even entered the discussion, it was clear the left wing firebrands in the House demanding single payer NHS style bill were not going to get support from Dem moderates in the Senate. Losing even a single one and they would drop under 60. So they downshifted to Obamacare and struggled to get it through, too.

There’s really nothing particularly different going on today. The same issues and constraints are in play. The only difference really is Ryan is saving time by having seen Pelosi’s flailing around. He knows the final product has to get through the Senate, so his product doesn’t look very right wing.

As for not thinking there are 50 votes in the Senate, I was talking about killing the Filibuster rule. I don’t think the GOP wants to do that, and maybe rightly.

For the final bill, assuming emergence from the House today, Reconciliation needs 50 votes and that’s just barely on the edge of doable. The Dems had a much bigger pad in 2010. We will maybe lose Collins and McCain (we will CERTAINLY lose McCain if we try to kill the Filibuster), but I suspect that’s all. Collins could be bought with some big projects for Maine.

Interesting point about the Sequester. It is in its out years now, but I think you were actually referring to the reality that the internal scoring of Ryan’s original plan was going to show $300+ billion in deficit reduction, which could be spent elsewhere (infrastructure) and also fund tax cuts. “Fund tax cuts” is never a popular conservative phrase, but the meaning is clear. To achieve neutrality deficit-wise, the Ryan numbers were going to offset other plans.

I’m sure the Wall Street types want a tax cut and infrastructure stimulus regardless of deficit, but a House caucus about to be required to approve a debt ceiling increase is not going to be happy with that.

[WVMnteer]

If this fails, I’m not sure what the next move for Ryan and Trump is.

The House caucus is going to be pretty testy regardless of this. I guess it could be fractured.

I don’t completely understand the rules here, but my understanding is that you had do Obamacare reform first in order for future tax cuts to be “revenue neutral,” based on whatever Chinese algebra they do to figure that out.

And you aren’t going to be able to do much of anything - particularly infrastructure without raising the debt ceiling.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this led to the end of Ryan’s speakership. But they had to beg him to take the job 18 months ago.

I have no earthly idea where the next one would come from. Trump certainly won’t back anyone from the Freedom Caucus. That means a moderate (who the Freedom Caucus will knife) or careerist (who Trump’s base will hate).

I’m fairly certain that under a Parliamentary system, we would be at the no confidence point right now.

[nathanbedford]

Thank you for your reply to my inquiry.

When I consult wiki I learn that Harry Reid got his modification of the filibuster rule to include judges done with 52 votes. So I am not at all convinced that Mitch McConnell should not be able to get the same result for justices with 50+ one vote.

As to the reconciliation process, I see nothing that prevents the solution offered by Ted Cruz to the president in their conference of the White House or by Senator Lee publicly to the effect that the Senate parliamentarian is friendlier to a broader bill than we have been led to believe by the Rinos and I see nothing to prevent the matter being entirely solved by the vice president. Although much of this has now been mooted by the withdrawal of the bill, the solution nevertheless is presumably still available to a Republican coalition determined to undo this disaster.

That, I think, is the root of the problem. Yes, Paul Ryan deserves heaps of blame and he is getting all he deserves, but the problem is structural not personal. The Republicans simply do not want to be seen taking away an entitlement. They fear the votes of those who did not vote for them in the elections since 2010 more than they fear losing the votes of those who did vote for them.

Donald Trump is not entirely blameless in this affair either, one can make a very good argument that the Ryan plan is necessarily distorted in order to accommodate the campaign trail promises and instructions of Donald Trump to retain the parts of Obama care which doomed it to failure in the first place.

I have argued since the nomination that the Republicans should not have gone near this tar baby because the problem was insoluble so long as Republicans found cutting benefits to be radioactive unless they utterly plundered the treasury to pass the costs of the retained features of Obama care onto the next generation. Now we see Donald Trump making overtures to the Democrats which raises a specter which I have warned against for some time, that the president might well make a deal with the Democrats just to get the matter behind him. His fidelity to our conservative principles concerning fiscal sanity and health care liberty might give way to his impulse to cut deals. All this remains to be seen, of course. The fact the Trump did not initially sign on with conservatives but with Ryan, that Trump threatened the conservative faction with primary opposition, that Trump has shown no enthusiasm or even acknowledged the reconciliation solution of Cruz/Lee, leads one to suspect that he will not be steadfast in support of conservative coalition values in cutting such a deal.

Applying these motives to a tax cut should play out in favor of cooperation all around because the Republicans who are loathe to be seen cutting goodies have shown themselves to be quite willing to bankrupt the next generation to award goodies. Likewise infrastructure spending-an examination of much of that which has been proposed looks like pork.

In sum, we are in the same lockbox with a Republican President (whether a Bush or Trump) with a Republican Congress as we are with a Democrat President and a Republican Congress, a government willing to spend OPM but unwilling to tax or otherwise pay up. That is because most Republicans and President Trump have calculated that it is political suicide to cut entitlements.

As to Trump's state of mind, if I am correct he has calculated that the country is rushing headlong toward a fiscal and/or an economic disaster which cannot be halted politically by breaking rice bowls or cutting entitlements but which must be averted by energizing the economy so that income approaches spending in time to restore confidence in world markets. I see this as a foot race between his plans to stimulate the economy with tax cuts, regulatory reform, trade reform and capital repatriation, and the looming reckoning. The failure to get the costs of Obama care under control, including its drag-weight on hiring and the economy overall, means that we are running the foot race carrying a heavy burden, one which Trump probably expected to offload and which makes winning the race less likely.

I am interested in your thoughts.