There are some basic notions that undergird the operation of a democracy. When there’s an election, the candidate who gets more votes is the one who takes office. When a bill is passed through Congress and signed by the president, it’s now the law. And when you lose, you don’t get to demand that your agenda be enacted, for no reason other than that you’d prefer it that way. If you want a bunch of policy changes, you have to win an election, then pass that agenda through the legislative process. That’s how it works. Baseball players who strike out don’t get to just demand that they be given a triple or else they’re going to set fire to the stadium.
—Paul Waldman, “Memo to Republicans: You Lost. Now Deal with It”
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Set This House on Fire
A continuing resolution funding the U.S. government expires Monday, Sept. 30, and without new funding legislation, federal agencies will be forced to shut down. The Treasury secretary has notified Congress that if the federal debt ceiling is not raised, then by Oct. 17 the United States will be unable to borrow to pay its bills. (For more detail, see “Shutdown vs. Default: The Relative Impact” [NYT 9/23/13].) For months, and still, at this late hour, Republicans in Congress have been threatening to refuse to vote for any debt ceiling increase unless all federal funding for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is stripped away. Republicans are divided over how hard to push the issue, but so far the hard-liners have refused to yield.
The White House and congressional Democrats say the Affordable Care Act, passed in March 2010 and upheld in a 2012 Supreme Court decision, is the law of the land and is nonnegotiable. “This is it. Time is gone,” warned Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Sept. 27. “Here’s a president who less than a year ago won election by five million votes. Obamacare has been the law for four years. Why don’t they get a life and talk about something else?”
20 Treats Now!
Now get this: In an effort to win agreement from hard-line House Republicans to vote to raise the debt limit, GOP leaders have put forward a tantalizing wish list of just about everything they (that is, their campaign contributors) have ever wanted. The Republican caucus is still some 15 members away from enough votes to support a debt limit measure. If the reluctant representatives were to agree, the Republicans would be sending to the Senate the following list of demands in exchange for votes on what used to be, in olden tymes—say, before January 2009—a fairly routine legislative procedure. (Congress raised the debt ceiling 7 times under George W. Bush, 18 times under Ronald Reagan.)
Roll Call reports, “According to a document obtained by CQ Roll Call, that ‘wish list’ contains 20 ‘additional options’ for the debt limit bill, on top of four principles in the ‘Core Package’—a one year debt limit increase for a one year delay of Obamacare, the agreement of tax reform instructions and the Keystone pipeline.
“The 20 additional options, according to the document, are:
Economic Growth
1. Offshore Energy Production
2. Energy Production on Federal Lands
3. Pipeline Permitting Reform
4. Coal Ash
5. Prohibit EPA from Regulating Greenhouse Gases
6. REINS Act
7. Regulatory Process Reforms (APA)
8. Consent Decree Reform
9. Regulatory Flexibility Improvements
10. Block Net Neutrality Regulations
Non-Health Care Reforms:
1. Federal Employee Retirement Reform, which Republicans estimate will save $20 to $84 billion.
2. Eliminate Dodd-Frank Bailout Fund, which they estimate will save $23 billion.
3. Eliminate Mandatory Funding for CFPB, with estimated savings of $5 billion.
4. Require SSN to Receive Child Tax Credit, with estimated savings of $7 billion.
5. Eliminate Social Service Block Grant, with estimated savings of $17 billion.
Health Care Reforms:
1. Increase Medicare Means Testing, which Republicans estimate will save $56 billion.
2. Reduce Medicaid Provider Tax Gimmick, which Republicans estimate will save $11 billion.
3. Medical Liability Reform, with estimated savings of $49 billion.
4. Disproportionate Share Hospitals, with estimated savings of $4 billion.
5. Eliminate Public Health Slush Fund
Well, that’s not asking much. Anything else we can get you?
Paul Waldman at The American Prospect comments, “I’m sure that if you asked them the logical question—Are you people insane?—they’d respond that this is an opening position for negotiations, and we can go from there. Sure, maybe we won’t get everything on the list, but maybe we could bargain it down to, say, delaying the ACA for a year, handcuffing the EPA, the Keystone XL pipeline, and cutting money for public health.”
Once There Was a Surplus
Remember, America, George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus when he succeeded Democratic president Bill Clinton in January 2001. Projections released by the Congressional Budget Office in January 2005 showed that “changes in law” enacted since January 2001 had increased the federal budget deficit—which, again, had not existed, when Bush took office—by $539 billion. By January 2005, tax cuts along with defense and homeland security expenditures accounted for 85% of that deficit. Only six months into Bush’s first term, after Congress (with help from Democrats) passed a $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut, the Associated Press reported that “the Treasury Department was tapping $51 billion of credit in order to pay for the budgetary cost of the first round of Bush tax cuts’ rebate checks.”
Think Progress observed in 2011, “The opponents of the tax cut turned out to be right. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts combined have blown a $2.5 trillion hole in America’s budget and created deficits stretching on for years.”
See “2001 Bush Tax Cuts: Where the Deficit Began” (LNW 7/20/11)
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