General Discussion

villager

(26,001 posts) Wed Nov 5, 2014, 04:40 AM Nov 2014

The Nation: Republicans Just Took Over the Senate—Here's Why That Sucks

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3. Deregulating carbon emissions. If the GOP's biggest goal is repealing Obamacare, a close second is blocking the Environmental Protection Agency's proposed limits on carbon emissions. As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse pointed out on All In with Chris Hayes last night, the GOP House has actually passed more bills targeting the EPA than those repealing Obamacare. And unlike with the Affordable Care Act, Republicans have the full and enthusiastic backing of their corporate allies in blocking EPA carbon limits.

When noted climate denier Jim Inhofe takes the gavel of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee from Barbara Boxer in January, there are many ways he could pass legislation stopping the regulation. He could attach riders to any number of bills that deny funding for those regulations. Or he could simply decline to fund the entire EPA, and tell the White House no money would be forthcoming until the regulations are cancelled.

4. Deregulating everything else. The House provided a nice sneak preview of how a GOP Congress would try to deregulate just about anything—passing big bills like the REINS Act which would essentially stop or slow most government regulation, to a plethora of smaller exceptions, carve outs, and cancellations for chosen industries. We can expect the Senate to approve many of these moves and force a showdown with Obama.

Dodd-Frank will be one area to watch. While it's unlikely the GOP will get Obama to go along with a big-ticket deregulatory move like weakening the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—though it will surely try—it could go after, and win, some smaller battles. Proponents of the looming Volcker Rule, which the administration has dragged its feet on anyway, ought to be awful concerned.

5. Keystone XL. This one is easy to predict, since Republicans have said outright, several times, that one of their first orders of business will be a binding bill authorizing the pipeline. Now GOP Senate aides are telling The Hill that they may already have the Democratic votes necessary to pass a filibuster-proof bill approving the pipeline.

Obama would of course have to sign the bill, but if many Senate Democrats end up supporting approval, there is a growing fatalism in environmental circles that the president would go along.

6. Keeping Obamacare intact. You can bet your bottom dollar House Republicans will once pass a full Obamacare repeal, and the Senate will spend a lot of time trying. You can just as surely bet Obama won't sign it if it does pass.

But Republicans might be able to force other changes to the law, like repealing the Medical Device Tax and cancelling the Independent Payment Advisory Board, as Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress notes. Both are things that also might gather some Democratic votes. If the GOP is smart, it will pick winnable battles on Obamacare and succeed in at least partially weakening the law they hate so deeply.

7. Budgeting. Many of the GOP's desired goals will still be impossible, as they still need to overcome the sixty-vote threshold on legislation. But on budgeting and appropriations that's not true—only fifty-one votes are needed to pass those under reconciliation that isn't true.

This is going to create a super-tense showdown with Obama. Many progressives remember when the president was eager to adopt budgetary changes like cutting Social Security benefits through a change in the Chained-CPI formula—something Harry Reid thwarted by literally throwing the proposal in his fireplace.

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http://m.thenation.com/blog/188057-republicans-just-took-over-senate-heres-why-sucks