They’re voting on amendments to the stimulus bill in the U.S. Senate today. You call see the roll calls here. So far, the Republicans have objected to two Democratic efforts to add new spending. Sens. Murray and Feinstein tried to add billions more in transportation spending only to be confronted with a point of order that required 60 votes to overcome. They received only 58 votes, as Kennedy and Gregg did not vote and Franken isn’t yet seated (if he ever will be). Sen. Mikulski’s amendment to introduce tax cuts to incentivize new car purchases faced the same point of order roadblock, but she overcame it with a bipartisan 71 votes. Tom Coburn’s amendment to strip out money for the struggling Hollywood studios passed with a mere 52 votes. It wasn’t subject to a point of order because it did not create a larger budget deficit.
At first, I was concerned that Harry Reid had gamed the votes against himself, as he did during the FISA/Telecom Immunity fiasco. But all the amendments are equal in the sense that they will pass with a bare majority. The problem arises for amendments that increase federal obligations without matching offsets. Using the point of order, the Republicans can force a 60 vote threshold on any vote that has more spending than spending cuts. Anything that reduces the budget is passable with a mere 50 votes. If there is blame to be assigned, it should go to Democrats that introduce new spending without finding a way to pay for it in other areas of the enormous federal budget.
Transportation spending amendments should be funded by either a gas tax increase or a gas guzzler tax increase.
Or they could eliminate some of those tax breaks for Big Oil that we always hear about.
But this does show the importance of writing the bill. It becomes much harder to add new spending after the bill is introduced. Better to have just introduced a 100% spending bill and allowed some amendments to chip away at it. Let the GOP justify their tax cuts with spending cuts to offset them.
Not sure what I think of Mikulski’s auto rebate proposal. I’d much rather see it limited to vehicles getting over 20mpg, but of course that might hurt American cars, right?
Honda had a devastating month also. I heard the total auto industry has capacity to build 16 million cars and the actual sales rate is 10 million. The last man standing may be China’s Buick operation spun off as an independent company.
And where are the amendments to save money by eliminating the trickle-down tax cuts? Haven’t we had enough of Bushonomics?
I’m with you repeal Bush’s taxcuts early. It is driving me insane that taxcuts are part of the stimulus package too. We need targeted federal spending not more giant sucking sounds.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again:
Harry Reid is a bad democrat. He sucks. He has no idea how politics work and has to be removed.
I swear to God, you’d think the dude was fucking senile or something.
I disagree with your last statement. When FDR first started, he tried hard to balance the budget with his spending – cutting here, spending there. But that didn’t end the financial crisis. Only massive deficit spending eventually helped us turn the corner. I don’t recommend it as a way to live all the time, but there are times when it is justified. This is one of those times.
And the Republicans are whiners on this. If they hadn’t irresponsibly cut taxes while starting a war, we wouldn’t have nearly the problem we have now. It only makes sense that those who profited most in the last eight years should have to pay more taxes now than those who suffered during that period.
you misunderstand my point.
This bill represents massive deficit spending. But in order to pass an amendment that introduces even further deficit spending you need 60 votes. Amendments for increased spending that have offsets can pass with 51 votes. Therefore, the fault for failing to get 15 billion in additional transportation funding lies with Feinstein and Murray, who didn’t find offsets.