I watched Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) chairing the Rules Committee as he reluctantly created a rule to allow a vote on Boehner’s latest plan. He said he was unhappy about having to introduce the crappy bill, but he doesn’t want to take a chance of Social Security checks not getting to his constituents or the country losing it’s AAA credit rating. You had to be able to read between the lines a little bit, but Dreier acknowledged that the bill would be totally unacceptable to the Senate but, he explained, the House had to create some kind of “work product” to give to the Senate so that a compromise could be worked out. He further explained that they had to put Balanced Budget Amendment in to pass anything. They’re basically humoring the Tea Partiers just so they can create a “work product.”
Now, I’m a little unclear about whether lifting the debt limit technically counts as a spending bill. Under the Constitution, all spending bills must originate in the House. But the debt limit doesn’t spend any money, it only authorizes the spending of money. So, perhaps Dreier is being disingenuous. I’m pretty sure Harry Reid can get around that requirement anyway by hollowing out a bill that has passed the House and replacing the text with his own bill. I guess I should ask David Waldman about this stuff.
In any case, the Republican leadership is using a scandalous amount of posturing and disingenuousness. They do seem to be fooling the Tea Baggers, though.
I think there is actually some spending in the bill. Money was taken from some places and given to other places in some cases. FOr example, I read about them taking money from student loans and giving a smaller amount to Pell grants.
I sure hope it’s not a lengthy bill. Those Tea Partiers can’t read anything longer than 3 pages. Just imagine the shit our side could give them if it were 1,000 pages.
It’s now a money bill.
There were similar exercises on ‘is-isn’t an appropriation’ and ‘is-isn’t an authorization to spend’ in the fine-tuning of what eventually became PPACA.
There you had to thread the needle to justify the use of the budget-reconciliation mechanism to circumvent a filibuster in the Senate.
That’s not exactly a high bar.
Didn’t the House pass “Slash, Burn and Posture” already and send it to the Senate? Couldn’t Reid use THAT as a “work product”? Or does the way it was quickly shot down prevent Reid from picking it back up again and using it?
Hm. I can see how you can make that argument for a clean debt ceiling increase bill, but none of the proposals so far are clean ones and they all have some spending aspect to them. So perhaps Dreier has a point.
That said – I’m fairly certain the precedent says that the Senate could actually take something else that the House has already passed, strip out the text of the bill, shove in their language that includes new spending, and the requirement that it “originate in the House” is technically fulfilled.
The reason why kabuki is the entertainment of choice in D.C. is because it’s kind of baked into the system. Following the rituals to achieve technical compliance is very important. The spirit not so much.
I thought that was the object of this exercise.
BTW, I just joined. I started lurking here recently. My compliments to BooMan and his commenters!
I’d hardly even call it exercise! (thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all night, and don’t forget to tip your wait staff)
Welcome to the pond RT!
Welcome to the Pond
Welcome RT. Stick around. Booman’s a very wise old man.
Work product = HR number for the Reid bill.
Hoyer is floating a unilateral Presidential raising of the debt ceiling, invoking the 14th amendment, to avoid default. If that is a real contingency plan, instead of raising the debt ceiling do away with it with the argument that Congress determines the size of the deficit and the size of the debt.
So, in the worst case, the President is not having to pick who to pay and who not to pay.
And the penny-pinchers in the “bloated bureaucracy” have now been able to buy until August 10 before the ceiling is hit. Or maybe there were some unexpected increases in the revenue stream.