Mitch McConnell does not want to shut the government down again and he appears to have no faith that Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will be able to come to some kind of budget agreement by mid-December, so he is convening talks among (almost exclusively) non-Confederate members of his caucus in the hope that they can come up with a plan. From what I can see, they can’t.
Lawmakers who participated in the meeting say the No. 1 goal of the group is to coalesce around the demand that any budget deal reached by next January maintain the spending cuts established by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
The group’s second priority is to give federal agencies and Congress more flexibility to manage spending levels established under sequestration.
A third priority is to achieve savings in mandatory spending programs such as Social Security and Medicare. This last goal is seen as a reach, given that Democrats have demanded pairing tax increases to any reforms of the major entitlement programs.
Most lawmakers in the group have ruled out raising taxes as part of any medium-sized deal to fund government through 2014 and turn off sequestration.
The Democrats will be interested in that second priority that would give them more flexibility to set priorities within a ludicrously austere budget, but the rest of it won’t interest them in the slightest.
There isn’t even the slightest hint that the Republicans have figured out a way to fix the problem they have created for themselves. How are they going to pass a farm bill or a transportation bill or restore funding to the Pentagon’s budget without making a single concession to the Democrats? They still have no idea.
Why is the discussion still revolving around cutting the deficit? Because Democrats have bought into the Republican economic theories? It would seem so. We need an expansion of the deficit, not a reduction. Real people are hurt by the high level of joblessness in this country, and also many with jobs that don’t pay a living wage even if they are living in poverty.
It’s time to turn our backs on the corrupt frauds that infest our government. Don’t give them a single dime or a single vote.
You grow your way out of deficits and cutting public spending year after year is not a path to healthy growth. They are killing us with budget cuts.
We need infrastructure and science investments and yes with tax money. That’s how it works. Republicans need to wake up. Hopefully 2014 we hammer these clowns and get back to work.
This particular discussion is revolving around reducing the deficit because it’s Republicans talking to themselves, and it’s all they’re programmed to talk about. It’s got nothing to do with the Democrats.
Reflexively yelling “sell outs!” is kind of silly in this case.
Strange. If these GOP senators are trying to come up with “budget alternatives in case the bicameral conference committee fails to reach a deal,” you’d think they’d be talking about things the Democrats might conceivably agree to. If McConnell thinks Murray and Ryan are wasting their time trying to make a deal, it’s hard to see how he’s going to improve the situation by wasting his time as well.
This is where the split is in their party. McConnell is giving Paul Ryan a no confidence vote too. Maybe with McConnell there is a chance of getting some tax money out of the oligarchy. No Republican is sane on budget matters but Ryan is their standard bearer. He will not compromise.
That’s the sad upside anyway. Today’s Republican party is dysfunctional. We have to publicize their budget stands. Then hammer the fuckers in 2014.
Item no. 1 doesn’t mean what you think it means.
The 10-year levels of the BCA can be preserved while allowing the initial implementation to be curbed and redirected to the outyears. The GOP would be loathe to repeal its one successful lock on the Obama WH/Democrats’ ambitions.
Cut less now, more later. Which really means, cut less now and less later, but it allows the GOP to save face and not yield on taxes. Republicans are admitting that their spending plans are impossible, but they also aren’t gonna just let Democrats appropriate like they still run the joint.
Why should they make any concessions to the Democrats at all? They won the election, America overwhelmingly supported the shutdown, and they’re the majority party. Fox News told them so.
Tragedy, farce, Marx.
Is it just me or does it seem that the Republicans have dug themselves a big hole, and the solution is “we need a bigger shovel?”