New GOP House Rules Pave The Way For More Tax Cuts, Deficits

[cal04]

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/gop-house-rules-pave-the-way-for-more-bush-tax-cuts.php?ref=fpblg

In 2007, just weeks after Republicans lost control of the House and Senate and six years after the first passel of Bush tax cuts were signed into law, Democrats made a key change to the budget rules to prevent that episode from repeating itself.

Republicans had used the budget reconciliation process -- immune from a filibuster -- to pass the cuts and explode the deficit: two things the reconciliation process was never meant to allow. To get away with it, Republicans were forced to include a 10-year sunset in package -- planting the seeds for the tax cut fight we just saw on Capitol Hill. After Dems wrested control of Congress, they banned the reconciliation loopholes used by the GOP altogether.

But as they return to power in the House of Representatives, Republicans are taking steps to unravel those changes.

(snip)
The new rules would stand the reconciliation process on its head, by allowing the House to use reconciliation to push through bills that greatly increase deficits as long as the deficit increases result from tax cuts, while barring the use of reconciliation in the House for legislation that reduces the deficit if that legislation contains a net increase in spending (no matter how small) that is more than offset by revenue-raising provisions.

[AC_Mem]

1. We still have majority in the Senate

So this can be stopped, correct? Can someone explain?

Thanks, Annette

[somone]

4. They're changing rules for the House

and the Senate has nothing to do with it and can't do anything about it... The Senate cannot change the rules of the House.

[Statistical]

6. Yeah but using reconciliation only in the House isn't that useful.

Without similar provision in the Senate it would require a full vote, and cloture.

So they can take the easy route for the House (which only requires 50% vote) but they need to take the hard route in the Senate where the vote in harder (60%).

I expect we will see the House pass a lot of bills and they die in the Senate.

[Bandit]

7. Someone needs to clue me in here, I thought reconcilliation was only used in the Senate

And used so a bill could not be filibustered. The only other reconcilliation process is to combine a Senate Bill with a House Bill.

[cal04]

5. here's Brian Beutler's answer to that

The practical implications for now are nil. The Democrats still control the Senate, and, even if they didn't, the Senate's rules are more arcane and harder to change. But Democrats are currently weighing a few modest changes to other Senate rules, and you could imagine Republicans in a future Congress taking steps to make tax cuts even easier to pass.

[kentuck]

2. Once we realize their goal is to destroy government...

it all makes sense.

[atreides1]

9. It's not just the Government

The Republicans want to destroy this country, they are the traitors from within.

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself.”



“For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC), philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist


So, while we look for a 6ft tall bearded man hiding in a cave....the Tea Party has given power to the real enemy of Democracy and Freedom.

I guess Cicero had it right, always look within your walls first!

[kentuck]

10. Cicero was correct.

Once they destroy our "government", our country is destroyed.

[SpiralHawk]

3. "More more more tax cuts for rich republicons." - Rush DraftDodger Limbaugh (R)

"Rich Republicons need more more more more more more. Smirk."

- Rush DraftDodger Limbaugh (R)

[msongs]

8. gee Obama says the same thing nt

[Hawkeye-X]

11. Fine, it'll be stopped and shredded in Reid's desk

Any and ALL Republican-leaning bills that does not benefit the American people (if they claim to do so, call bullshit, and have them provide evidence) should be immediately shredded and 100% ignored. Also, remove the dual-tracking system, and make sure that every Republicans who oppose or filibuster the bill has to be present, and their fellow Republicans remain in the chamber until they give up.

I don't need any more "pocket filibusters" in the future Sessions. If they want to filibuster, then they have to stand up and whine about it until they lose their voice, permanently.