Tweet
In a mostly party-line vote, the House passed the budget proposal from Paul Ryan today, which would privatize Medicare and block grant Medicaid, by a count of 235-193. Not a single Democrat – not Heath Shuler, not Dan Boren, not Jim Cooper, not one Blue Dog – voted for the Ryan budget. By contrast, only four Republicans – Walter Jones, Ron Paul, 2012 Montana Senate candidate Denny Rehberg and freshman David McKinley (R-WV) – voted against the budget.
Harry Reid blasted out a press release after the vote saying, essentially, that the Ryan budget was DOA in the Senate:
“The Republican plan to end Medicare and immediately raise prescription drug costs for seniors in order to pay for millionaire tax breaks will never pass the Senate. The fact that it passed the House shows just how far to the right the Tea Party has dragged the Republican Party.
“In addition to ending Medicare and doubling seniors’ health care costs down the road, the Republican plan would also destroy nearly two million American jobs and undermine our economic growth. Republicans’ plan would only benefit the wealthiest Americans, who would get another round of tax breaks they don’t need and that our economy can’t afford.
“In contrast to Republicans’ plan to end Medicare, Democrats support a responsible approach to reducing the deficit that doesn’t simply shift the burden onto seniors and the middle class, who did nothing to put us in the fiscal hole we are in today. As the President outlined this week, we can reduce the deficit by as much as $4 trillion by making targeted cuts in federal spending that protect seniors’ hard-earned benefits, and by asking millionaires and billionaires to contribute their fair share.”
But inside that release, you can see the policy victory inherent in passing the Ryan budget. Ryan forced the Democrats to respond, and now they’ve put on the table $4 trillion in cuts over 10 years, at least half of them and as much as 100%-PLUS from spending cuts (it’s complicated). So the solidarity among Democrats is nice, and the DCCC plan to turn this into a referendum on Republicans expected. The GOP will lose some number of seats in the House because of what happened today. But conservative policies, like a shark, will move forward.
In case you were wondering, the People’s Budget from the Congressional Progressive Caucus got 77 votes today, all from Democrats.
48 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
It’s courageous…
How can you not admire a man that can completely dismiss 100 years of verifiable economic history in favor of a work of fiction.
The health care bill passed the house with no republicans. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
Hahaha…I guess Captain Courageous fell off his Trojan horse.
And given the evidence from the past (how almost ALL of the House Dems folded on health care when pushed), I have to wonder how many of those 77 would’ve voted for it if there were any actual chance it could pass. Pretty easy to vote for something you know has no chance in hell of passing.
The health care bill passed both chambers with no Republicans, didn’t it?
This Eddie Munster cretin will one day be a presidential candidate. Imagine this trog as president?
By the way, you mentioned Ron Paul voted against it.
That’s not because it was too conservative. He voted against it because he believes ZERO government dollars should be spent on Medicare. He votes against lots of stuff, in fact most stuff, I’d bet.
All the Dems together in Unison? WOW! Has somebody scared them or do they see a way to campaign on this?
I’m glad, yes proud they stood together. Just wish they would do it more often and not be railroaded by the likes of Paul Ryan and his newbie crew of teahadists.
The people’s budget. What a lame title. And Grijalva was equally lame & hangdog on democracynow earlier this week.
Those are the ‘progressives’ in congress.
Gah.
Lets have some fun the Red states can get their budget but only if they pay for it. We can get our budget but only if we pay for it.
Any bets anyone with kids will go to states that fund healthcare and education?
Go ahead and seize on the “People’s Budget” and forget what just happened.
While slim, there is a party difference. Probably totally political. EG Obama taking credit for DADT which isn’t policy yet, and was forced upon him.
Nonetheless, I’ll take the “brakes on the car” versus “stepping on the gas” as far as the cliff rushing is concerned.
Would we even have an education problem in America without the Red States bringing down the average? If you want to cut education funding well you get what you pay for. Pay teachers a good salary and more smarter people will take the job.
Many teachers are great but class sizes are to big hire more teachers make class sizes smaller test scores will rise.
Cutting government spending on education on anything past a certain amount is like saving money by not changing the oil in your car.
The GOP loves to be for the people but they hate Commies? I never could figure that out.:)
If Democratic Party leaders, starting with Mr. Obama, believed they were still Democrats, they would hang this albatross around the GOP’s neck daily between now and November 2012. Opposing the GOP’s killing of Medicare, their sending the unassisted elderly into the loving arms of private health insurers – and painting the GOP’ers collective backs with that “Kick Me” sign – would be the surest way to win victory with overwhelming bipartisan voter support.
Our Mr. Obama portrays himself and our politics as post-partisan, however, and pretends he is above conflict – or at least above the responsible job of conflict resolution, which he reduces to the absurdity of always giving in to whatever is asked of him. Only his wife and John Boehner could appreciate that style.
No doubt, Mr. Obama will forgive and forget yet another GOP overreach. His former Senate colleagues will fall in line and follow him. Instead of stepping back from the ledge, it will mean blithely leaping from it.
NPR continues to offend in the most Rupert Murdochian ways. It calls the GOP’s sham budget proposal “fiscal reform”.
Meanwhile, the GOP hope that they’ve hoisted the president on his own petard, limiting his self-limited ability to criticize them. His own health insurance reforms are themselves built on the premise of legislating the not yet elderly into the welcoming, loving arms of private health insurers. The GOP is right: there’s no logical defense – or criticism – of one that can’t be applied to the other.
I still think a free video game like “budget hero ” on the net but only with current budget numbers would be a great way to inform people about the budget.
We need to get more normal people interested not just news junkies. We got plenty of computer and economic people here. Plus an educational game could get FDL a bunch of traffic from highschool kids who’s teachers suggest the game to students.
Budget hero its fun but it could be a bit more complex.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/budget_hero/
American Public Media journalists altered the baseline CBO budget in a couple of cases to ensure the game reflects the current political debate. For example, the game assumes that President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts continue beyond 2010 even though they are set to expire. The reason is that the current political debate assumes the cuts will continue and frames the issue as whether to end or partially roll them back. The game gives players the choice to end or roll back the cuts, along with many other tax and fee options.
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/budget_hero/
My bold I want people to choose what they will cut and look at the numbers the Tea Baggers seem to assume Dark People get all these government handouts and if the Government just stopped that then the budget would be fine.
I want the Baggers to find the cuts. I want them to see how farm supports and ethanol support them.
I want to see the bank bailout money spent on creating jobs and what happens to the economy and the banks.
The people’s budget is the progressive one, not the R one.
not the one from the CPC…. i’ve only started reading it and it is neoliberal to the core.
there is no progressive budget as far as i can see…
my apologies to echan. i missed the snark tag…. my bad.
What a bunch of bullshite. If OIlbummer wanted to make a statement, he’d have, at the beginning of his reign, declared he was going to ram through massive tax hikes on the rich & end our wars–and then use all that money for a public works program.
That’s a fucking “adult conversation.” These Republicrats are little children.
I so appreciate your work. But there’s a thing you don’t understand. SELLING.
It’s not enough to be correct, Selise.
The MMT has to be sold, not defended. Spocko has shown the way on a lot of this.
For instance on the deficit, one should counter arguments with “For every billion in cuts we lose 5,000 jobs.”
i’m not selling anything. and i won’t say something like “For every billion in cuts we lose 5,000 jobs” because it’s not that simple and i’m not going to knowingly bullshit anyone.
i was making a comment on the cpc’s budget proposal. it was my mistake to make it ecahn, but i stand by my comment.
By definition, anything the Dems come up with is going to be right wing. Just a little less right wing than the Repubs. The race to the bottom will padded with Styrofoam so our asses, when they are violated, won’t hurt as much. But make no mistake, the Dems will rape us too.
Here’s what I don’t get: Why is that juvenile Randian Ryan taken seriously at all? he clearly has no understanding of how things work. He should be treated seriously: Mr. Ryan, you are just silly! We’ve had ten years of tax cuts for the rich and job growth has plummeted. Voodoo is voodoo. Grow up. Or words to that effect. Treating him as if he has a box to stand on just gives him more hot air to puff himself up with.
Because Oilbummer believes in trickle on economics–and so do most of the Dems. 30 years of failure…stagnant wages, high unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, wretched inner city poverty, etc. This is the legacy of Raygunonmics and yet these moral midgets are still advocating more deregulation and tax cuts. It’s like they are in a parallel universe.
Neoliberal economics and obsessing about deficit spending being dangerous and destructive are pro-slavery ideas. Neoliberalism is counter-revolutionary, anti-affirmative (my code), and antisocial.
still worth it, i hope, to do the analysis….?
I need drugs now.
This IS what we’ll get when the corporations steal the next election for US.
Gods, after what they did in Portugal which didn’t even HAVE a debt!
They are in a parallel universe….and occasionally peek out to see if we the lesser people are still dumb enough to campaign & vote for ‘em.
Kassandra…it’s a done deal.The Corporations have it played exactly how they wanted it to…..We are already hearing the clamoring from the Obama sock-puppets,”if you don’t vote for Obama you are going to get a crazy GOP”.
The truth is deficit reduction needed to be on the table and was on the table well before Ryan spat out his venom. Barack was right to address it and the republicans rushed in to stake out their position…a position that is political and policy suicide.
Thr right wing echo chambers only response has been Obamas lying…people know better or I hope so. Lots of us have private insurance and we know what has happened…skyrocketing premiums and less coverage…when the Repugs look to privatize Medicare everyone knows exactly what will happen to our parents and grandparents. Yea, Republicans are saving Medicare..sort of how Fox saves you from having to reason.
I’d like Barack to breathe more fire…not likely..but truth be told he doesnt look too scared to me and he has forgotten more than the deep thinkers in the Tea Party know…
Keep the Faith
I know, John Alter said on Cenk that we’d “just have to raise the retirement age for Social Security”.
“We must destroy the village in order to save it, men!”
Fuck that. I’m not working till I’m 70. Let Alter do it, stupid Obamabot right winger.
And deficit reduction is just another way to empty our wallets so the banksters can use it in their Wall Street casino. The only deficit reduction I wanna see is Eisenhower-era tax rates–you know, when the rich paid their fair share. The rest is bullshite.
why?
The people’s budget. What a lame title.
Yeah, terrible title. And their cover photo was unfortunate. :o)
http://faculty.uml.edu/sgallagher/sgallagher/hearst.jpg
The 70s were cool. SLA, ha! We live in a mediocre, boring time. The boomers were cool once upon a time. What happened?
Alter is whom the WH uses to spread it’s policy objectives….Remember Health Care,He usually started with look,”I am for a Public Option but we progressives must take whatever then improve upon it.”
So if he (Alter)is saying that on Cink you can be almost 95 % sure this is what the WH will come up with.
Alter is a limousine liberal same as all the others in the media ,they have no idea what it’s like for ordinary Americans.
Well said veganrevolution.
Because Bush destroyed the surplus with tax cuts designed to turn us into a third world nation…also health care costs and defense spending are off the charts…they guy who seems to make the most sense on this is Paul Krugman….deficit just needs to be handled in a way thats consistent with democratic values that support the middle class
Look, it’s simple. Not even Krugman will come and say it, because he’s essentially a neoliberal himself. I say this because he never advocates huge tax increases on the rich, heavy-duty regulation, massive public works projects, single payer health plan, etc, etc. He may hint that he maybe wants these things–but it’s always in toned-down language that’s appropriate for the cretinous DC cocktail crowd who despise us, the urine-soaked peasants. Krugman won’t be blunt or shrill because he’d be out of job. That’s why you know the Villagers read our fulminations to see what the angry Left is really thinking and so they can have a plan on how to neutralize our message. The fact that I am writing this and many lurkers are reading it probably scares the lackeys in the White House. Because it’s the goddamned truth and they fucking know it but they are compromised by their ties with the rich elite.
Sure, these rants may be spitting in the wind–but they are reaching people and Oilbummer and the White House hates us and what we represent because it doesn’t fit into their view of their bubble world.
The bottom fell out, the walls caved in, and the roof collapsed when Charles Reich published “The Greening Of America” in The New Yorker in 1969 and as the best-seller The Greening Of America in 1970.
The work announced and described ‘the Movement’ led by its young citizens that would transform America.
Never tell anyone outside the family what you’re thinking?
Was Reich trying to foster the vision and the dream? Was he a mole, and ‘explaining’ Dylan and the rest to “Mr. Jones” and J. Edgar?
nope. that’s the neoliberal myth the dems sell. nothing to do with reality, sorry to say.
USG deficits: The Economics, the Politics, the Banksters and You
I saw that progressive caucus budget proposal vote – and noted that the proposal got zero space in the media – guess it was not “serious” enough for a Gergen discussion.
Indeed I was surprise it was allowed a vote – guess the GOP wanted to point out how weak the left in the Democratic Party really is.
That is a formulation of the problem that I buy, but Selise has other – MMT type – ideas.
Norquist and Reagan have followed that approach – spend so much on other things and then say the money has run out so social programs must go – plus we need tax cuts to get the economy moving despite the deficit.
Of course one – more than one actually -GOPER has stated that Reagan proved deficits don’t matter – a point selise I believe would agree with :-)
You can confiscate all of the money of every person who makes over $100,000
per year and confiscate all of the earnings of the fortune 500 companies, and run the govt until July. Yea, WOW, lets just tax the rich..that’s the real answer here..WE SPEND TOO MUCH MONEY..ON TOO MUCH NONSENSE
Don’t be down Mr Ryan that you didn’t get the Dems to back your plan as I am sure Mr Obama really does think it is just super! If your plan does not become law and Obama’s plan does I am sure the President will share the money he got from Pete Peterson for screwing (and making PP even more money) regular Americans with you…so just buck up!
So very true.