The Republicans are struggling right now to pass legislation in the Senate at the 50-vote threshold required under special budget reconciliation rules. They’ve tried to arrange things so they can do tax and health care reforms at this lower filibuster-free threshold even though it limits what they can include in their bills to things that have a discernible impact on the budget. I don’t know whether their plan will succeed or not, but they’ll have to reach the more traditional 60-vote mark to enact their appropriations bills into law and fund the government.
Of course, the Republicans have not yet attempted to do anything at the 60-vote threshold, including (for the first time) confirming Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. Everything the Republicans have been doing so far has been based on getting unanimity in their own ranks and nothing they’ve done has anticipated this need to win the support of at least eight members of the Senate’s Democratic caucus.
The cost of taking this approach is that it will be much harder to convince eight Democrats to work with them than it might have been if they had sought a more bipartisan approach from the start. If they can’t overcome Democratic resistance to their appropriations, they’ll have no choice but to fund the government with a massive Continuing Resolution that maintains the Obama administration’s basic spending framework.
Per usual, the conservative members of the GOP are frustrating the reality-based members by their insistence on using magical thinking.
Republicans are divided over whether to work with Democrats on spending measures for the 2018 fiscal year, which begins in October.
Conservatives say Republicans should go their own way and pass a budget and spending bills that make deeper cuts to spending and reflect GOP values.
Centrist members say that strategy is unrealistic and will increase the chances of a shutdown or, worse, a continuing resolution that would simply maintain existing funding levels. The only way to avoid that outcome, they say, is to work with Democrats.
“If we don’t have a bipartisan budget agreement, there’s a very good chance we’ll end up with a continuing resolution,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a House moderate.
The debt ceiling vote won’t have the filibuster problem because the Democrats wouldn’t prevent a vote on avoiding a default of the United States’ debts. But it will be similar because there are so many Republicans who won’t vote for a clean debt ceiling bill that they’ll need Democrats in both houses of Congress in our order to pass it.
Dent said he hopes that Republicans will seek Democratic support not only on spending, but also on increasing the debt ceiling. Failure to address the debt ceiling would result in a U.S. debt default and could be a body blow to financial markets and the economy.
“Of course this will happen, because the alternative is unthinkable,” said Dent. “The question is how much drama will we endure between now and the time that happens.”
I think Charlie Dent is too optimistic. It’s very thinkable to me that the Republicans will cause a debt default through their ideologically-fueled incompetence and refusal to compromise.
On the appropriations bills, the conservatives are more concerned at the moment about getting jammed up by their own leadership than they are with the necessity of winning some Democratic support in the Senate.
But for all the moderates pushing to cut to the chase and deal with Democrats, a larger group is pushing to go it alone.
The House Budget Committee, for example, has been negotiating with the House Freedom Caucus over balancing top-line spending numbers with cuts to welfare programs. That approach would yield few, if any, Democratic votes.
Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.) has promoted a plan to pass the 12 separate appropriations bills through subcommittees as usual, but then combine them into one omnibus bill before the August recess.
“I would say there is certainly consensus on passing all 12 appropriations bills as soon as possible, but there are questions on the mechanics and timing,” Graves said.
That process, Graves said, would allow conservatives to take control of the budget conversation and ensure that a last-minute, bipartisan deal wouldn’t be negotiated by leadership to avert a government shutdown.
The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes a majority of House Republicans, has backed the idea.
An “omnibus bill” is a bill that combines a lot of different bills into one. This would allow the Republicans to speed up the process so they aren’t forced to pass a continuing resolution simply because they’ve run out of time. But it doesn’t take away the possibility of passing a continuing resolution if they can’t get the votes for their omnibus bill. The Democrats would force them to do that and they’d be back at square one. The only thing this strategy might do is prevent Paul Ryan from crafting some kind of deal with the Democrats, but a deal is precisely what is needed to avoid the continuing resolution. And, in any case, there is currently no sign that Ryan is negotiating with the leadership of the Democratic Party. The conservatives are looking to solve a problem that doesn’t currently exist by crafting a solution that won’t work.
If Congress winds up with a Continuing Resolution, it won’t be the end of the world. From the Republicans’ point of view it would be a defeat because it would mean that even with a majority in both chambers of Congress and a Republican in the White House they still can’t craft a budget in their own image. Yet, that’s precisely how the conservatives feel about the need to compromise with the Democrats. They want their agenda enacted without watering it down, but that’s not an option. The Democrats would be relieved to see the government funded at present levels because it wouldn’t require them to make any painful concessions and it would stymie much of Trump’s agenda, like his desire for a border wall with Mexico.
The debt ceiling is a different matter. If the Republicans can’t figure out how to get that done, we’re all going to pay a big price.
I’ve been saying for months that this crack-up was coming because it was very easy to foresee. One possible way out is for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to eliminate the filibuster entirely so that the Republicans can pass anything at the 50-vote threshold. It could come to that because the Republicans have become so allergic to compromise that they may not be able to govern if any is required. Before that happens, though, we’re first going to see what happens when their current plans crack up on the shoals.
I wonder if this ultimate need to work with the Democrats is fueling this obsession with tearing down Pelosi. They hate her effectiveness at keeping the Dems in line. they want someone more pliable, less female, to work with in the event they ever have to.
We’re far from out of the woods on health care, but Sen. Heller (R-Nev) has come out against the Senate’s Trumpcare bill. I’m still prepping for the worst and hoping for the best, including making sure that we’re getting those phone calls in no matter how meaningless in my state. That the GOP will own the consequences of their health care monstrosity is at best cold comfort, given that lives and livelihoods are at stake. So yeah, I’m seeking a silver lining and hoping it’s not merely thin veneer over thick dark storm clouds.
There is no reason for Democrats to cooperate with the GOP on anything that is part of their agenda under the circumstances. Ryan and McConnell have made it clear that they don’t want any input from their Democratic counterparts, so they’re truly on their own. Good luck with that.
I am pessimistic about this. Except for Heller I suspect the others will all fall in line. Maybe Collins will fall over, but the pressure to support the vote will be extreme and nobody wants to be the third vote.
There is nothing harder than HCR – and if they get that through I have little doubt they will get the debt ceiling through too.
Predictions of GOP disaster have been repeated for 2 years now. Trump will lose like McGovern. Trump will not get anything done – he should just give up.
And yet they are on the verge of overturning a piece of the great society.
Denial. Pure and simple.
Will there be backlash on that Hallelujah [black] Clintonism Repealed (HCR)day?
That is, should we be chanting for Republicans to “Jump, lemmings, jump!” anticipating capitalizing on the anger of the suddenly uninsured and the folks suddenly having to arrange Mom’s or Dad’s home health care or nursing home payments?
I don’t think it is about abstractions like “overturning a piece of the Great Society”. Who knows what that refers to any more?
The GOP is betting:
I do not believe in any way shape or form we should be cheering for the GOP to accomplish anything.
We just lost an election to the most unpopular candidate in history.
I would not count on the Democratic Party, which is at best grossly incompetent, to take advantage of any political advantage.
I’m not sure that the GOP understands the practical implications of passing a bill now.
I’m not sure that the GOP has the ability to pass a bill now.
I’m not sure that there will be a Democratic Party around in 2020. Thank Anthony Rendon.
TarheelDem, this dramatic proposal that this week’s announcement by the Speaker of the California Assembly is a harbinger of the end of the Democratic Party is in rank ignorance of a number of facts:
You and I agree that a well-run single payer health insurance system would save expenditures for the overall health system. This has not been shown to convince voters. Single payer is not popular when the rubber hits the road. That this is extremely irritating makes it no less true.
You should educate yourself on why exactly the single-payer bill failed in California before saying more on the topic.
BooMan, you predicted Boehner’s crack-up and why (aside from the nostalgia for Dad’s old bar).
How does Mitch McConnell come out of this? Does he finally crack as well?
And Ryan? Does he have to do anything at all to keep his job?
Yes, a clean Continuing Resolution that sets the government for FY 2018 would be a defeat for the GOP. I hope they paint themselves into that corner. I hope the Democrats don’t deal with military separate from domestic. If the GOP needs to piecemeal it to get it through their caucus, that’s a different matter.
The price for the debt ceiling IMHO is still to do away with the silly political exercise. Make the executive and Congress deal with it with revenue and spending, not handwaving. And no, it doesn’t make good politics for Democrats using it as a scourge either. The main victory Democrats have to insist on is GOP sacrificing their 1% base.
In order for Republicans to pass anything at the 50-vote threshold, they must gather 50 of 52 votes. That seems to be a problem with the ideological hardnosers in their caucus.
The problem the Democrats face is that there is no one in the Republican caucus that Democrats should welcome as a party-switcher. All of the “moderates” have been double-dealers for over a decade on a whole host of issues.
In other news, Manchin still has daughter problems. It seems that the gargantuan profits from Epi pens were invested in coal companies. Not doing too well. And in no way helping actual coal miners. And 25 years later, Jerry Brown has cold feet about single-payer. What a moonbeam!
It still seems that TINA is active in the Democratic Party. Why a certain amount of GOP self-gridlock seems helpful at the moment.
You really think single payer is a state issue? The Feds have far better funding abilities than states. But why not, and then we all move to California.
Also there are three republican lights among the democrats, no?
I think the cost-benefits of single payer (or single provider) are clear enough that it would make sense as a part of municipal infrastructure.
The payment issue is a taxation issue, but from the point of view of the taxpayer, every dollar in taxes returns up to 50 cents in savings over the current system. That’s how awful the US health care system is.
And when you cover everyone, it is much easier to deal with epidemics and pandemics should they occur.
I don’t understand why Democratic states like California and New York have such trouble passing progressive policies like statewide single payer.
IIRC, Hawaii has had single-payer coverage of everyone for some time. Unless they have back-pedaled.
I would very much like single payer. But on a state level I have some misgivings due to the cost. I think California has dropped its efforts. It would be good to understand why.
But it is true that cost is the reason given for not having it on a national level. It could save half of the health care bill in the country and free up those resources for other use, likely more beneficial.
One very big impediment to single-payer at the state level has to do with how it is funded: there are significant obstacles that do not exist if it is done at the federal level. Here is one example:
One of the more obvious ways to provide a big chunk of the funds for single payer is to tax businesses and individuals the amount that they are already paying for health care insurance.
But in many states the federal government is a significant employer (in 2016 there were more than 200,000 federal employees working in California (including postal workers)). Since states cannot tax the federal government, California is looking at a big hole if they go single payer (probably well over $1 billion).
>>I don’t understand why Democratic states like California and New York have such trouble passing progressive policies
because there’s an enormous difference between “Democrat” and liberal. We’re plagued with “Business Democrats” who are social liberals and economic Republicans. People outside California think Jerry Brown is some kind of liberal icon; that image falls apart if you get closer.
Two points:
A) Supermajorities (in any form, for any purpose) are undemocratic. They create perverse incentives and perverse outcomes. But the Senate filibuster is likely to survive for a while longer, because in the present environment, perversity is not a showstopper.
B) We have three parties:
As the Tertium Quid are larger in each house than the difference between the two major parties, they are able to prevent anything that they choose to prevent. This is the ultimate nightmare scenario from a parliamentary standpoint.
Can you tell us how default works? The treasury collects tax money. So on the day some bonds come due they use their tax money and buy the bonds coming due. And the the next day they sell an equivalent amount. The only way this results in default is if Treasury is prevented from buying the bonds with their available funds and that sounds different than maintaining a debt limit. Should it be called a stop payment ? That doesn’t sound right since they will still spend on budget items until the appropriations runout. I mean why not wake up any Monday morning and vote to stop payment on the debt? That will get you a default.
If we truly hit the debt limit the government can’t pay all its bills. There’s no system for picking and choosing what to pay. Given that the bills and revenue both vary wildly from day to day you probably can’t even have a system. It would certainly require a complex bureaucracy that doesn’t exist. Governmental checks will be bouncing all over the place and eventually (perhaps rather soon) one of them will be for a debt payment and we’re off a cliff in the banking system.
The government is still open. People and contractors will be paid. The Treasury simply cannot pay all the bills congress has permitted since that would produce a deficit and exceed the debt limit. So, of necessity the Treasury or Trump will need to pick and choose who or what to pay, like the military, or defense contractors. They can keep doing that with a one day delay, buy the bonds and sell an equivalent amount the next day. So I am still not following the logic here, so long as the debt limit is not exceeded and all bills are paid (up to the limit) why not? There may be some reason and I am asking what is it and do you have a link.
I should say that paying the debt depends on taxes. If there is a time when there is not enough money in the treasury account, then you will get a default. I agree at that point. We are running around a $600 B deficit that would have to be covered by taxes. But since that deficit is not funded it is likely the economy will slow down and so would tax revenue.
First, Trump isn’t allowed to pick and choose what to pay. The President most emphatically can not choose not to pay somebody. It’s not legal. There are legal rules for what to pay in the event of a shutdown. Changing those requires acts of Congress, which is what Obama had to get to keep parks open during shutdowns.
Second, who’s going to look at literally millions of payments per day? There’s no system to sum it up and say “this is how much to pay this day.” They can’t actually know in advance because they have to pay when the checks are deposited, not when they are mailed. So it will actually require bouncing checks.
Third, what happens if a big bond comes due on a day with almost no income? (They happen.) They default anyway, and no amount of picking and choosing can save them.
This is not a shut down.
Two and three can be handled with some planning. They have to do that today. They know what is coming due and the revenue coming in.
Obama handled it by planning several times. Extended it out until the Republicans partially folded.
I no longer expect that competence from either party since Anthony Rendon just knifed the Democratic Party in the back. California Democrats don’t have the guts to do single payer. What exactly does the Democratic Party offer as an alternative any more? More rhetoric and less opposition to Republicans?
>>What exactly does the Democratic Party offer as an alternative any more?
social liberalism. That’s been the case for 10+ years,
don’t talk like it’s a new problem.
And don’t blame Anthony Rendon. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton drew the map.
>>California Democrats don’t have the guts to do single payer.
I don’t come here and tell you how things are in North Carolina. Please show me the same respect.
This bill was not going anywhere, and Jerry would have vetoed it if it had. It did not have nearly the necessary level of public support for something involving an almost insane amount of money.
California’s total budget for 2016-2017 was around 170 billion — single-payer, just for California, has a price tag of 400 billion.
What are total health care expenses in California? That is the key figure.
A good single-payer program saves people money overall if the total health care expenses are more than $750 billion, which is a point that those promoting single payer have failed to get across.
Are you going to pay your health care expenses in taxes instead of to insurers and save up to 50% or are you going to continue to pay twice what the people in the country with the best single payer systems pay?
When Democrats lose this thread, there is no hope of having a vigorous argument against Trumpcare.
The fact that California Democrats have now lost this thread means that the mess that North Carolina Democrats are in is unlikely to be reversed. If the most “liberal” Democrats are not willing to stake the future on single-payer healthcare, it becomes dead as an issue. And people continue to be left of out health care (not insurance, actual health care) and those that can get health care pay more than anyone else in the world pays for worse results overall and a high information cost in sorting out who is good and who is bad.
The insane amount of money is the amount of money going into healthcare right now in the US will less that stellar results. And the number of needless deaths that continue to occur because of unaffordability.
Quite frankly, when the self-described most progressive state in the nation cannot deliver the public on the single best answer to Trumpcare, the rest of us are saddled with that failure in arguing locally for single-payer.
I have no pretenses or illusions that the Democrats have done more than stopping freefall in the election of Roy Cooper and Josh Stein.
Republicans here have forced through legislation that is unpopular and have used the inertia to keep it in place. Democrats have not been able to leverage the unpopularity because they’re “Democrats” “so it’s all just partisan carping.”
Democrats seem not to be able to force through legislation that will become popular as it brings benefits to people.
Either people in California don’t understand the value proposition in this bill or the Democrats who authored were intent on looking good failing.
No matter what, it completely takes single payer out of the discussion, which means that Democrats really have not proposals for making Obamacare better and no simple alternative to Trumpcare. That is a hell of a position to place the entire national party into at this moment, even given the disarray in the national party.
We have gone from “we have the popular support, but we don’t have the votes” excuse to “we have the votes, but we are afraid of success with popular support”.
Given the size of California’s population and economy, just what would the state budget size be if it had a best-in-class infrastructure like it did in the early 1960s?
And I do have some sympathy for Californians, who in general are taxed by housing inflation without any of that money compensating or maintaining the infrastructure that justifies the higher prices. In my little part of NC, we still get the public services for our 1% property taxes even as overpriced new homes for incoming relocation are being built nearby. What we don’t get anymore are the state tax support for our local infrastructure that at one point had good roads and rapidly improving schools. And health care is the same inflated micromanaged fee-for-service, MBA-dominated, large medical system model, financed by rapidly declining employer-based programs, Obamacare, Medicaid, and Medicare. A clever state could break open this expensive system with single-payer. Most of us onlookers thought that California could do that. Alas, the lack of vision and will in the US is absolutely astounding even to the progressive ranks.
It seems it will be high prices, deductibles, co-pays, and restrictions forever in US health care hell.
‘Other sides do it, but Democrats are worse because neoliberalism’.
.
When you hit the debt limit, the government can’t borrow to pay its bills. Actually defaulting on those bills (disclaiming them, saying they will never be paid) is something that the President and/or Congress does.
The shell game going on is using default to screw seniors out of the Social Security and Medicare taxes they paid in by raiding the assets in the Social Security Trust Fund. That’s not default; that’s Congressional-sponsored theft.
So that deficit of 600 billion or so results in something having to be cut. In efffect you have to balance the budget. Congress can use that to cut whatever they like I suppose, to stay within the budget. If they stop paying Medicare and Social Security that is theft as you say, since that was money paid in for that purpose. But they need not default on the government treasury bonds since they can resell the bonds they paid off the next day up to the limit. What we have is a forced balanced budget that will lead to recession.
A recession that snowballs into a depression as the dollar will tank in value. The GOP will sit back and watch the world nationalize any US corporate assets to make up for our useless bonds. The question now becomes who here will survive that?
Well, duh! That scenario of a forced balanced budget was exactly what those who forced through the debt limit bill promised as a scenario.
Before they realized the implications for national security spending.
The debt limit was originally created under a gold standard, where it really was possible for a government to go bust and actually happened fairly often at the time. At the time the concern was that the US not fall into a very real trap. The trap disappeared with the gold standard, but even now most voters don’t understand that the US can’t really go broke that way any more. Mostly I think the representative have been catering to that popular misunderstanding.
I agree some have voted for it in the hopes of forcing a balanced budget, I just don’t think it’s most of them.
The Republicans solution is right on your post – McConnell will go full nuclear – no filibusters at all.
If something can’t keep going the way it is, eventually it won’t.
Also, the market can stay irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
The Republicans can’t maintain the filibuster and remain irrational at the same time. So, based on our experiences with impeachment, Gore/Bush selection, the Iraq War, the initial reaction to the economic meltdown in 2008, the Scalia seat theft, birtherism, Trumpism, etc. the idea that the Republicans will become rational before they try EVERY other single thing first is just not a fit with their preferred and actual behavioral pattern. Any discipline will need to be imposed upon them, which won’t happen under present circumstances.
They’ll sacrifice anything and everything before they would come to terms with reality. Peak wingnut is just not a lie, it’s an impossibility.
Can McConnell get 50 votes from his caucus?
That is the current unknown factor.
Failure to get a vote is a major defeat for Mr. Obstruction. That’s why he’s whipping so hard for this vote. The delays mean that he’s in enough trouble not to rush.
Yes, it’s an old new message, recycled from Truman (whom Undercover Blue/Sullivan quotes at some length, including):
(I found this post so good and well-thought-out throughout that it was hard to resist the temptation to just copy and paste the whole thing here . . . but then “I am aware of all internet traditions and also of literary conventions . . . “. Including the one that says you really should just go read the whole thing.)
Sullivan takes off from Foer’s description of Dems’ vastly superior policy proposals contrasted with our failure (relative to GOP assholes) at principles/values messaging:
Much of this meshes well imo with booman’s themes of late. E.g.,
With all due respect to booman’s well-thought-out (from a policy perspective) anti-trust initiative: though it’s perfectly aligned with an overarching “fairness” message, I just have never seen a likelihood of it resonating with the voters Dems need to win (or win back) without being couched in a message that does so resonate.
Seems to me that Sullivan puts his finger on what’s lacking from it.
4 – excellent!