Tweet
Kent Conrad has decided to shelve his budget while high-level talks continue on a long-term deficit reduction solution tied to the debt limit. Conrad’s plan got mixed reviews initially from within the caucus, but he altered it to capture the votes of Democrats on the Budget Committee, including Bernie Sanders (I-VT). The latest reports claimed that the budget included a millionaire’s surtax, and was balanced equally between spending cuts and tax increases. Conrad didn’t see any point in a “partisan markup” at this point. “If you go through a partisan markup, it hardens people’s positions and makes it more difficult to get a bipartisan agreement,” he said. This was definitely on the mind of Paul Ryan, I take it.
But the news here is buried late in the story.
In addition to the political reasons for waiting to see whether the Biden talks produce an agreement, Conrad said there are procedural reasons as well. Budget deals in 1990 and 1997 relied on a special fast-track process known as reconciliation to push debt-reduction plans through Congress, he said.
Reconciliation bills, which cannot be filibustered in the Senate, are authorized through a budget resolution. Approving a budget resolution now, Conrad said, could make it more difficult to use reconciliation and, therefore, to implement any bipartisan deal.
There’s your real reason for the delay. A reconciliation bill would only need 50 votes. There’s nothing untoward about this; in fact, reconciliation was built for deficit reduction. Of course, the House would have to comply with this as well, but seeing that this makes any deal much easier to implement, I assume they’d go along with a reconciliation strategy. So this makes any bill harder for liberal Democrats to stop. Harder for Tea Party Republicans as well, but in the Senate that’s not big enough a faction.
Meanwhile, Harry Reid drew a line in the sand on taxes yesterday.
Battle lines in federal debt talks sharpened markedly Thursday when the Senate’s top Democrat rejected a proposal for $2 trillion in budget cuts as demanded by House Speaker John A. Boehner, saying any cuts must be accompanied by action on closing tax loopholes.
“You can’t do $2 trillion just in cuts,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in an interview in his Capitol office. “There has to be a mix of spending cuts, including defense. There has to be a more fair apportionment of tax policy in this country.”
Boehner and Mitch McConnell want the kind of “grand bargain” where they get all spending cuts in exchange for the government being allowed to pay its past debts. And they think that’s totally reasonable.
In public, that’s their stance, anyway. After the dust settles, we could see some deal with token cuts to tax expenditures coupled with some really nasty reconfiguring of Medicaid. And it would only need 50 votes in the Senate.
14 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
Terrific, accessible update. Thanks.
Compromise? Yes we compromise American values and law everyday. Like privacy rights obliterated by scumbag corporations. Slavery was enabled by compromise. Compromise is a two way street. In America, compromise is code for “exceptions,” carved out, born out of economic considerations where “vested monied interests” are protected at the expense of life and liberty. History shows America’s civil war was about energy. The exploitation of a slave’s energy. Today Americans are exploited by energy corporations, and the corresponding loss of wealth and declining standard of living is a function of energy, its cost and inefficient use. Compromise or servitude?
I haven’t compromised a damn thing with the repugs. In fact, Obama has just let the DEMS know they are on their own for campaigning. If I were them, I’d tell the repugs to take a hike and no deal on their social net claw back. Of course, we know they will not do that because the banks may send campaign money to the other side.
Here is a little good news, but of course we know all the green energy jobs are being performed in China.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-19/siemens-to-return-927-million-to-areva-in-nuclear-exit-dispute.html
Yesterday Harry Reid and Agent Orange agreed to a deal extending the Orwellian Patriot Act and undermining our civil liberties in the name of the War on … Something. Which makes it more clear than ever that any “deal” reached between this GOP and these Democrats will be inimical to the interests of the American People. The plain truth is that today’s GOP is floridly insane and today’s Democrats are invertebrates which means that whatever they agree to will be horrible. I mention this in specific regard to the Grand Budget Compromise that is currently in double-secret negotiations between VP Biden and the Congressional GOP. Any deal the GOP will agree to will be devastating to the Middle Class and the Poor; that’s just how they roll. And the jellyfish Dems will let the GOP roll right over them bc that’s how they roll. But there is no need for any deal at all bc the best way of addressing the deficit is to do nothing and simply let the Bush Tax Cuts expire. It is surely sad that we have descended from a time where a bold Democratic Administration ushered in the American social safety net with the New Deal to today where the best we can hope for is No Deal. But that is the reality. No deal. Let the Bush Tax Cuts expire. End the secret negotiations now.
P.S., I am not optimistic.
Yes America first to the moon. Liberators in WWII now playing second fiddle to China in energy innovation. What is the last thing an oil man wants? Competition from a corporation which develops the ability to effectively harvest the sun’s energy. Abundance undercuts scarcity. China does get it? Boy do oilmen love scarcity + increased demand= increased profit. For the rest in us in USA decreased opportunity, higher costs of living and a lowered standard of living. BTW was that not what the Egyptian people where all pissed off about? A government unresponsive to the legitimate concerns of the governed, after how many years of dictatorship, decreased opportunity, higher costs of living and a lowered standard of living?
A lack of “political testicular fortitude” as rethugs along with demorats form the “asselelphants.” A hybrid party beholding to corporate money, not the rule of law or any sense of decency. Just pure unadulterated greed and cannibalistic tendencies? In America we eat our own. Now corporations can obliterate rights, usurp law and protect their bottom line with campaign contributions. Legalized bribery just as slavery was once legal? Compromise Americans can believe in?
Why, yes! I believe that is so. ;-)
I was taught growing up that those type of actions were considered–TREASON!
That’s so 20 Century. Don’t you know we are looking forward, not backward?
Looks like it will be really hard to cut Medicare against the AARP voting block. Although Conrad, Durbin et al are doing their best. But why don’t they just cut Medicaid twice as much? The Adm could give states waivers to cut Medicaid eligibility, or Congress could just block-grant the program and let the states make up their own rules:
“Adults in a family of three that makes as little as $103 a week would earn too much to qualify for health care provided by Medicaid under a sharply curtailed program Gov. Chris Christie wants the federal government to approve this year, according to state officials and advocates briefed on the proposal.”
Either way, poor and disabled people get thrown under the bus, so Jamie Dimon can “do God’s work,” assisting hedge fund speculator types to drive up food prices world-wide for fun and profit.
Nothing to see here, just move along.
Harry Reid blows smoke up yer butts:
Yeah: LOLzers, Harry. Talk’s really really CHEAP, ain’t it so, Harry?
Means nothing. Harry’ll fold like a cheap tent & demand more tax cuts for insanely greedy gahzillionaires, whilst “secretly” encouraging more cuts for the middle & working classes, via Medicare & Soc Sec – which WE, the people, paid into.
Caveat emptor! Greedheads at work & play. Out to drive the nation even further into the ground. The only “compromises” that we’ll see are the pols sticking out their palms to be “compromised” by all that sweet sweet payola from the upper 1%.
When did we get this influx of weasels in the Democratic Party ? Could Progressives be The Democratic party conscious? I don’t think weasels have a conscious. They Democratic Party should change its name to the Weasel Party.We have a Capitulator-In-chief who is head of The Weasel Party. All the Progressives can do is sit back and enjoy this comedy of errors with their popcorn and sodas water. You Love the part where they gives away the store because the Republicans made them do it. I have seen this movie before. I think it a repeat. I think its called “The Same Soup With Different Spoons” starting the same cast of characters from the first sequel.
“You can’t do $2 trillion just in cuts,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in an interview in his Capitol office.
Sure you can, CBO projects $5 trillion in net interest payments on national debt this decade (implying a 5.0% average interest rate). Cut the interest rate in half, $2.5 trillion in savings, Cut by 90% (in the 1940s, Tsy and Fed locked short-term interest rates at 0.375%) and you save $4.5 trillion.
New article by Jamie Galbraith explains that by adjusting the govt’s cost of funds (which as we saw in the 40s, Uncle Sam can do at anytime), the long term deficits, which are largely accrued interest, fade away.
http://pragcap.com/is-the-federal-debt-unsustainable
The reason Spineless likes to draw lines in the sand is that sands shift, get blown away or washed away by the tide.
Bring on the KY; here comes the fucking.