(10 am – promoted by ek hornbeck)
Even before they were sworn in as the new overlords of the House of Representatives, the Republicans have already broken their own rules
Just hours after taking control of the House, Republicans passed a sweeping set of rules promising transparency and reform.
But the new majority is already showing these promises aren’t exactly set in stone.
After calling for bills to go through a regular committee process, the bill that would repeal the health care law will not go through a single committee. Despite promising a more open amendment process for bills, amendments for the health care repeal will be all but shut down. After calling for a strict committee attendance list to be posted online, Republicans backpedaled and ditched that from the rules. They promised constitutional citations for every bill but have yet to add that language to early bills.
Quel surprise!
I’m not a big supporter of the is law because of the lack of a public option or early buy in to Medicare and the gigantic give away to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. I do recognize that repealing it would be a big mistake for the reason that it would add over $230 billion to the deficit that the Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats are screaming to cut on the backs of those who can least afford it.
Republicans kicked off the first day of congressional proceedings to overturn health reform with unwelcome news: a Congressional Budget Office estimate that repeal would increase the deficit by $230 billion by 2021.
The nonpartisan CBO’s preliminary analysis of the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act, released Thursday morning, bolstered Democrats’ claims that overturning the health law would wreak havoc on the deficit. The CBO score on the Affordable Care Act has it decreasing the deficit by $143 billion over 10 years. But that figure is disputed by Republicans.
“CBO and JCT estimated that the March 2010 health care legislation would reduce budget deficits over the 2010-2019 period and in subsequent years; consequently, we expect that repealing that legislation would increase the budget deficit,” CBO Director Doug Elmendorf wrote in his analysis.
One of the Republican “New Rulz” prohibits passing any bill that adds to the deficit.
And remember the rule that the Democrats passed in 2007 that prohibited the passage of tax cuts by reconciliation? You know those deficit busting tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 that were just renewed for another 2 years. The only way Bush could get those cuts passed was to do it under reconciliation and in 2003, passed in the Senate by Dick Cheney’s tie breaking vote.
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.
That rule was rescinded in the House on Wednesday.
As Waldman at Daily Kos politely puts it
Rules, to Republicans, are largely pointless when they get in their way. And should Republicans in the Senate succeed in regaining the majority, they’ll surely attempt to make the same kind of change they’re setting their sights on in the House. In fact, there’s little reason to expect them to wait to win the majority before they try this one, though the odds of prevailing would surely be somewhat higher if they do.
Rulz for you but not for me.
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