The impending Government Shutdown

Tomorrow is a big day - voting day on the deal Obama put together.

Over the course of the week it's become clear that while there are some meaningful cuts in the bill, most of the '38 billion' that the deal involved had turned out to be not that relevant to actual spending this year. This sort of changes the narrative from earlier - what initially seemed like a pretty solid move by Boehner and the Republicans (forcing big cuts from the opposition, though much smaller than they would have liked) has been revealed to be, well. Not quite so much. Obama and Reid negotiated far better than I initially gave them credit for.

This had led to a lot of discontent in the House Republican caucus, which doesn't have a lot of people to spare if they want to pass the bill without relying on the Democrats - something that will be embarrassing for Boehner, who is having a tough enough week already; every Republican blog is calling for his head.

Tomorrow's vote on the limit in the House ought to be interesting. It would be pretty funny if the Dems have to pull Boehner's fat out of the fire, and the Dems will be sure to rub his nose in it.

This is all just a prelude, however, to big battles coming later this year. Obama's speech today was a strong opening salvo in the next election and candidates for the Republicans are going to have to deal with his vision, which is going to be tough, because both elements of his fiscal plan - protecting medicare and SS and raising taxes for the wealthy - are pretty popular in this country.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

I'm not so ready to believe Obama until it comes to pass. He's already lied too many times. I want to see what he says meets the actions - or inactions.
"We'll only be involved in logistical support, and search and rescue assistance..." until we use our bombs.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

I'm not so ready to believe Obama until it comes to pass. He's already lied too many times. I want to see what he says meets the actions - or inactions.
"We'll only be involved in logistical support, and search and rescue assistance..." until we use our bombs.

I report, you decide...

I'm going to start a new thread on the upcoming budget struggle here in a minute.

Cycloptichorn

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C-Span reports that voting should begin just after 2:30 ET.

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@realjohnboy,

260-167 in favor of approving the 2011 budget "with $40Bn in spending cuts."
Still to come, after a vote to take a two week Spring Break, concurrent resolution votes on killing the healthcare bill and ending funding to Planned Parenthood.

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@realjohnboy,

Total For 2011 Budget Bill: 260 Total Against: 167
Republicans For: 179 Republicans Against: 59
Democrats For: 81 Democrats Against: 108

Those are the numbers as I have them. I kind of had to cobble them together from several sources. It looks like the Dems saved Boehner from an embarrassing defeat.

1 Reply

@realjohnboy,

rjb, What I've been hearing is that the $39 billion in savings really isn't; the actual savings is less than $1 billion (+/- $600 million?). Governments love to play with numbers that are not realistic; the wars alone will add billions to the deficit.

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@cicerone imposter,

I put the $40Bn in quotes because as Cyclo & I noted it was smoke and mirrors. Once that was realized, the criticism that was aimed at Obama for seemingly caving in largely went away.

1 Reply

@realjohnboy,

realjohnboy wrote:

Total For 2011 Budget Bill: 260 Total Against: 167
Republicans For: 179 Republicans Against: 59
Democrats For: 81 Democrats Against: 108

Those are the numbers as I have them. I kind of had to cobble them together from several sources. It looks like the Dems saved Boehner from an embarrassing defeat.

Not just an embarrassing defeat - the bill failing today would have in fact shut the gov't down. That would have been disastrous for Boehner and for the whole country really.

This whole thing has turned out about as badly as it possibly could have for the Republican leadership in the House. I saw this posted by a commenter at Talking Points Memo:

Quote:

So, let me see if I have this straight. In the period of less than 7 days:

- It looked almost certain that the Federal government was going to be shutdown.

- At the 11th hour, Boehner, Reid, and Obama "made a deal."

- For the next few days, everyone was crowning Boehner as the master politician -finally a Speaker of the House who was an effective leader of his entire coalition and could use that clout to muscle the political opposition.

- At the same time, Dems were in great despair. Obama gave up too much. Our economy was now going to be in free-fall. Obama was now about to sell out Medicare and the Middle Class too!

- Then, come yesterday, it seems pretty clear that the budget deal was, in fiscal terms, pretty minor. The amount of money that was negotiated, let alone the punch-the-hippies policy riders, was all small potatoes.

- And, yesterday, Obama came out hard, at least rhetorically, against the GOP.

- And today, Boehner looks less powerful than Hastert. Eric Cantor must be struggling to suppress a permanent grim. And the most prominent GOP figure right now in the news is Donald Trump.

On top of this, the media and economists haven't been holding back much when it comes to pointing out that Ryan's proposed budget is a joke. It has been revealed that the Heritage foundation analysis upon which his estimates are based was completely and totally faulty in a variety of ways, but Ryan refuses to repudiate it despite the problems.

Tomorrow, the House is supposed to vote on Ryan's budget. I have a very hard time believing that they will get enough Republicans to sign on to destroying Medicare and cutting taxes for the rich, in an election year. The Democrats are literally praying that they do pass this bill, because we will use this to eat them alive in the next campaign.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn

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@realjohnboy,

realjohnboy wrote:

I put the $40Bn in quotes because as Cyclo & I noted it was smoke and mirrors. Once that was realized, the criticism that was aimed at Obama for seemingly caving in largely went away.

Yup, it has become perfectly clear that Obama played Boehner like a fiddle in these negotiations.

Cycloptichorn

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Closing out, perhaps, the discussion on today's votes in the House: by a vote of something like 240-185, a resolution to defund the Obama health care bill passed. The vote was almost exclusively along party lines but has no chance of passage in the Senate. Repubs seem intent on bringing up nearly identical legislation periodically. Similar wording back on 1/19 yielded the same result.
Next up was ending federal funding of Planned Parenthood. 241-185, nearly the same as on 2/18, again along partisan lines.

(Housekeeping note, Cyclo. Are you going to start a new thread re the 2012 budget and debt ceiling thing? Or are we just going to carry on here?)

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Thanks for your patience with this, Cycloptichorn. I've actually been getting really pissed off at how people have been reacting to this whole thing, to the point that I've started a few posts that I just gave up as pointless. So I appreciate seeing that you've explained some of the things I was thinking in a more calm way than I would've.

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@realjohnboy,

That voting on de-funding Planned Parenthood shows how dumb our congress members really are! They say it's about abortions which is an outright lie. Less than 3% goes for abortions at PP, but that is funded by private donations, not government funds.

Are republicans really that stupid? How about the majority of republicans?

The public expects to negotiate in good faith with these GOP yokels who doesn't even know what's funded and not funded?

1 Reply

@realjohnboy,

realjohnboy wrote:

(Housekeeping note, Cyclo. Are you going to start a new thread re the 2012 budget and debt ceiling thing? Or are we just going to carry on here?)

The debt ceiling is going to be another shutdown situation, so I'll probably leave it here. For the budget, I will start another thread, because the situation has suddenly become extremely interesting in the last few days; there are three competing budget proposals out there now - 4 if you count the Republican Study Committee's - and they offer vastly different approaches for the future of our country. Comparing them and discussing the salient points of each one, as well as the day-to-day politics of the situation, should make for some compelling conversation.

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

What I've heard thus far is that the republicans want to change Medicare as we know it that'll end up costing seniors about $6k/year to give bigger tax breaks to the rich.

That's an interesting concept that seems to escape most republican seniors on fixed incomes.

I sincerely hope the republicans wins this battle, and get their wish to change Medicare from the current individual financing to grants to hospitals and doctors.

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@cicerone imposter,

Here's the new thread for discussing the upcoming budget battle:

http://able2know.org/topic/170736-1

Quote:

I sincerely hope the republicans wins this battle, and get their wish to change Medicare from the current individual financing to grants to hospitals and doctors.

nah, you don't wish that. It only sounds like a good idea. In reality it's a terrible idea.

Cycloptichorn

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@Cycloptichorn,

Erm...so is the US going to keep going?

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@cicerone imposter,

The PP funding by the federal government goes not to performing abortions but for other services or for things like utilities. The argument is that that frees up money for abortions. A similar claim was made in the case of NPR, where Repubs (for the most part) wanted to de-fund the production of shows while continuing support for other operations.

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@Cycloptichorn,

I think this is the only way strong-headed republicans who only believe in supporting their party will start listening and learning about what the GOP is doing to destroy the middle class.

When it starts to hurt their pocket books, it'll get their attention like nothing else.

GOP control of congress will be healthy for the future of our country; as it is now, people don't know why they're voting conservative.

If they truly believe the GOP is to cut the federal deficit, they're still living in la-la land.

They all need a sharp kick to the shins.

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@realjohnboy,

rjb, You must've missed my earlier post where I stated that federal funds cannot be used for abortions.

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The impending Government Shutdown

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