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.
I will predict the 2014 outcome. They will win every seat they need by 1% of the vote in the 11th hour.
They'll let the Republicans keep a few seats to make it look real.
Anyone who brings up the countless charges of inconsistencies and fraud will immediately be labelled a conspiracy theorist, sore loser. The Republicans will be the first ones up there claiming there is no evidence of "widespread fraud".
Barring popular uprising and massive landslides---and the Republicans are doing everything in their power to alienate their base to ensure that never happens--this will be how it rolls.
THe Republicans invented the exchanges...the subsidies were based off Medicare D, the medicaid expansion was modeled after schip...all Republican invention.
“The mandate is trying to make sure people pay into the health care system instead of taking a free ride. It’s anti-welfare.”
No It is making the healthy pay for the sick regardless of whether they want to. It is welfare and socialism.
Let’s not go off the rails here. How did the most conservative GOP Congress win in 2012? Remember Obama lost voters back in 09 when he pushed Obamacare through. If it were that easy to steal elections, then we wouldn’t win at all.
You’re correct that there are certain precincts in certain urban areas in certain counties in certain states where cheating occurs, but if it were that easy why sic the IRS on TEA Party groups?
They use multiple forms of fraud. Busing "voters" around, buying off votes, rigging machines where they can, recounting and finding votes over and over again-- a rather large undertaking. (though it really boiled down to a few states)
They also know they can rely on the Republicans to be too weak, that is why they grow bolder and bolder. Who is going to stop them? Boehner? Reince? Is McConnell going to hold a press conference and expose them? That's laughable.
These people are communists. They have, near, complete power. It's what leftists do. You actually think they are going to let elections take this away from them?
Hey, maybe I am off the rails. Let's hope. But, I will count on logging on here next year and seeing a ton of stunned posts and eeyores--wondering how it happened.
In my mind, the “mandate” would be like any emergency services tax, and the revenue would go solely to reimburse hospitals for unpaid medical bills. But you could deduct any medical costs you have 100% from it, so if you were buying insurance, you wouldn’t pay it. It’s not any more socialist than paying a tax to fund firefighters and police. Anyone could incur medical costs from an accident just like their home could catch fire, so it’s not unreasonable to expect people to pay a tax for the availability of free emergency medical care, which has been mandated since 1986 by EMTALA but never funded.
your mind is a socialist mind
Wrong. Either repeal EMTALA or fund it through something like an emergency services fee. Because there’s nothing worse than demanding the private sector give away its own money, have them pass the costs on to people who actually pay their medical bills by charging them more, but let the free riders with no insurance and who don’t pay their bills show up at the ER for “free” care. If you’re for that status quo, then you’re for socialism, i.e. money being redistributed from some people to pay other people’s bills for them.
The law as it stands now is EXACTLY the same as if the feds passed a law saying that any homeless person who shows up at a hotel needs to be given a room free of charge. That means the rates for all the paying customers have to go up to make up for that while the freeloader pays nothing. I would be fine with repealing the emergency room law, but if it isn’t, then the government needs to come up with a way to reimburse those businesses for following their orders, preferably one that collects money from the people who have no history of paying for health insurance or medical bills.
The evidence is there in so many of these cases (for the fraud you surmise). The Rats win the top of the ticket by squeaking by but down ballot they lose. The percentage of voters who split their vote down ticket isn’t that great and if it were truly random it would at least on occasion go the other way. It never does, though. Does it? Yet we are expected to sit by and watch as congress criminals betray our country and destroy our grandchildren’s future. Things are about to bust open. Like the Book says, there is a “quickening”.
Ryan gets rolled by a bag lady wearing tennis shoes.
It's always the same. It's always about the money. Clearly Zuckerberg has made big promises to Cantor, Ryan, Boehner, etc., to reward them richly for undermining their constituency.
What is particularly stinky is how these same whores won't lift a finger to help conservatives against the IRS.
We didn't need Billions and Billions to turn over the House in 2010.
We have the internet, we have the votes.
A toll for the ER? Not a bad idea...
Burn down the Capitol building. NOW!
Bit of an old thread,eh?
Hahaha... I think Infat fingered one of those word cloud things up top. every thread was about Ryan.... it was making my blood boil.
Well,the only reason I read it,was because Ryan(the great policy wonk/S)
has made my blood boil since day one.
So,no problem,other than you just made my blood boil,grrrr
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