Tag Archives: reconciliation

A $3.8 Trillion Republican Tax Hike

29 Thursday Jul 2010

Posted by in budget, Congress, Conservatives, economy, Politics, Republicans

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Before House Republicans left Washington for their August recess yesterday, Rep. Mike Pence handed out his 22-page plan for how Republicans can disseminate their propaganda get their message out to voters over the break.

“The recess document…lays out key topics to address in the dog days of August and early September: “Week One: Jobs. Week Two: Government Reform. Week Three: Spending. Week Four: National Security. Week Five: Healthcare. Week Six: JOBS.”

[…]

Under the heading “Job Creation,” Republicans call the expiring tax cuts, set to lapse at the end of this year, a Democratic plan “on increasing taxes by $3.8 trillion.”

Job creation? If I were a Democratic strategerist, I would have every candidate carry a copy of this chart, and every time a Republican parroted how tax cuts create jobs, throw it in their face and say, ‘Really? What happened here?’.


About the alleged Democratic plan to increase taxes–wrong again. If President Obama and the Democrats did nothing, if they extended none of the tax cuts (which isn’t going to happen, but for the sake of argument say it did) the tax increase would be a Republican tax hike, not a Democratic one. Republicans wrote the tax cut legislation, and a Republican president signed it into law—with an expiration date. Why? Because they had to pass the cuts through budget reconciliation and that required a little sleight of hand trickeration. Ezra Klein explains:

“In order to maximize the size of the cuts, Republicans had to minimize the influence of minority Democrats on the package. So they chose to run the bill through the reconciliation process.

But that posed some challenges. Budget reconciliation had never been used to increase the deficit. In fact, it specifically existed to decrease the deficit. That’s why one of its rules was that you couldn’t use it to increase the deficit outside the budget window. Republicans realized they could take that very literally: The budget window was 10 years. So if the tax cuts expired after 10 years, they wouldn’t increase the deficit outside the budget window. They’d also have the added benefit of appearing less costly in the Congressional Budget Office’s estimates, as the CBO duly scored them as expiring after 10 years, which kept the long-range budget picture from exploding.

But the plan was never to have the tax cuts expire. Instead, the idea was that people would get used to the new tax rates, and no future Congress would want to allow a big tax increase, so when the time came, either Republicans in office would extend the cuts or Republicans in the minority would hammer Democrats until they extended them.”

Which is exactly what they’re doing now.

And when Republicans get to their faux concern about the national debt, present them with this. Two economic scenarios–one with the cuts expired and one with the cuts extended:


Oh, but I forgot. Tax cuts don’t count against the debt, just unemployment benefits. Never mind.

Rahm Goes to the Capitol to Get Pelosi’s Mind Right

27 Saturday Feb 2010

Posted by in Congress, Democrats, health care, Obama, Politics, Progressives

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Don’t do it, Nancy. Don’t do it:

“Rahm Emanuel ventured to the Capitol Friday evening to hash out health care strategy with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a White House aide confirmed.

Senior Hill aides speculated to HuffPost that Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, would bring the message that the House must move first, with a pledge from Senate Democrats that they would follow.”

The meeting comes as Democrats are searching for a way to get to the health care finish line, though neither chamber wants to move first. Senate leaders want the House to pass the Senate bill first, after which the Senate would use reconciliation to fix the legislation to the liking of the Senate. House leaders contend that the votes aren’t there for the Senate bill if the upper chamber doesn’t move. The House, after two centuries of watching the Senate lag behind, doesn’t trust that it’ll act.

Dear Speaker Pelosi,

You’re being conned. The Senate wants the Senate bill without the modifications. President Obama wants the Senate bill without the modifications. He only proposed them as bait, next come the switch. And trust me, President Obama is the master of the bait and switch. Just ask those who voted for him in November of ‘08. Ask me, I fell for it. If you go first and pass the Senate bill the promised reconciliation fixes will NEVER happen. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Sincerely,
A victim of OBSS (Obama Bait and Switch Syndrome)

“Villain Rotation” in the Senate

24 Wednesday Feb 2010

Posted by in Congress, Democrats, health care, Obama, Politics, special interests

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I hesitate to even comment on the health care reform charade any more because that’s exactly what it is and has been from the get-go, a charade. But Glenn Greenwald had a piece in Salon yesterday which nailed the situation perfectly. The bottom line is this–there will be no real reform for one reason–those in power don’t want it. Sure they, meaning the president and Democrats in the Senate, want to give the appearance of being for substantial reform, but the fact is they all benefit too much from the status quo. They aren’t about to kill the corporate goose that lays the golden campaign contribution eggs, and especially now that the Supreme Court has allowed corporations, like the insurance industry, to spend unlimited amounts on advertising for and against candidates.

Greenwald cites Sen. Jay Rockefeller as the latest example of what he calls “Villain Rotation.”

“They always have a handful of Democratic Senators announce that they will be the ones to deviate this time from the ostensible party position and impede success, but the designated Villain constantly shifts, so the Party itself can claim it supports these measures while an always-changing handful of their members invariably prevent it.”

From Politics Daily on October 4, 2009:

“Jay Rockefeller has waited a long time for this moment. . . . He’s a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor — and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.

“I will not relent on that. That’s the only way to go,” Rockefeller told me in an interview. “There’s got to be a safe harbor.”

Jay Rockefeller Monday:

“Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) threw a wrench into Democratic efforts to get a public option passed through reconciliation, saying that he thought the maneuver was overly partisan and that he was inclined to oppose it. . .

“I don’t think the timing of it is very good,” the West Virginia Democrat said on Monday. “I’m probably not going to vote for that.”

Greenwald:

“In other words, Rockefeller was willing to be a righteous champion for the public option as long as it had no chance of passing (sadly, we just can’t do it, because although it has 50 votes in favor it doesn’t have 60) But now that Democrats are strongly considering the reconciliation process — which will allow passage with only 50 rather than 60 votes and thus enable them to enact a public option — Rockefeller is suddenly “inclined to oppose it” because he doesn’t “think the timing of it is very good” and it’s “too partisan.”  What strange excuses for someone to make with regard to a provision that he claimed, a mere five months ago (when he knew it couldn’t pass), was such a moral and policy imperative that he “would not relent” in ensuring its enactment.

The Obama White House did the same thing…[B]ack in August the evidence was clear that while the President was publicly claiming that he supported the public option, the White House, in private, was doing everything possible to ensure its exclusion from the final bill (in order not to alienate the health insurance industry by providing competition for it).  Yesterday, Obama — while having his aides signal that they would use reconciliation if necessary–finally unveiled his first-ever health care plan as President, and guess what it did not include?  The public option, which he spent all year insisting that he favored oh-so-much but sadly could not get enacted:  Gosh, I really want the public option, but we just don’t have 60 votes for it; what can I do?.”

The problem was, and is, that the president and the Democrats in Congress are getting exactly what they wanted to start with. The backroom deal with PhRMA is intact. The individual mandate remains, forcing people to buy from private insurance companies. The president’s plan also raises the subsidies, which shovels taxpayers dollars to the same private companies, which in turn keeps the corporate contributions flowing and away from the Republicans.

If this plan passes, I would suggest buying stock in Aetna, WellPoint, United Health Care, et al. Maybe the dividends will help cover the cost of the premiums.