Republicans vote against own plan.

[bobalot]

Pandemonium! Dems Jam Republicans With Even More Conservative Budget

What was supposed to be a routine vote in the House -- to knock down an amendment authored by conservative Republicans -- turned into pandemonium on the House floor Friday, as Democrats tried to jam the plan through, and hang it around the GOP's necks.

The vote was on the Republican Study Committee's alternative budget -- a radical plan that annihilates the social contract in America by putting the GOP budget on steroids. Deeper tax cuts for the wealthy, more severe entitlement rollbacks.

Normally something like that would fail by a large bipartisan margin in either the House or the Senate. Conservative Republicans would vote for it, but it would be defeated by a coalition of Democrats and more moderate Republicans. But today that formula didn't hold. In an attempt to highlight deep divides in the Republican caucus. Dems switched their votes -- from "no" to "present."

Panic ensued. In the House, legislation passes by a simple majority of members voting. The Dems took themselves out of the equation, leaving Republicans to decide whether the House should adopt the more-conservative RSC budget instead of the one authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. As Dems flipped to present, Republicans realized that a majority of their members had indeed gone on the record in support of the RSC plan -- and if the vote closed, it would pass. That would be a slap in the face to Ryan, and a politically toxic outcome for the Republican party.

So they started flipping their votes from "yes" to "no."

In the end, the plan went down by a small margin, 119-136. A full 172 Democrats voted "present."

Moments after it failed, RSC Chairman Jim Jordan took to Facebook.

"Our Republican Study Committee (RSC) balanced budget came within 18 votes of passing on the House Floor today," he wrote. "I am disappointed we did not win, but this is the closest we have ever been to passing our balanced budget. I am motivated to keep fighting to balance the budget and begin paying down our national debt."

We'll have video of the chaos soon.

Source

That's hilarious. It appears in recent days the Democrats and even the president have grown a pair. They called the Republicans bluff. They should have been doing this from day one.

They can throw this back in the face of Republicans every time they claim they "tried to cut down BIG GOVERNMENT".

[Thanas]

Meh. Honestly there is little to celebrate considering Obama's own proposal reads worse like one of Raegan....

[Eframepilot]

Meh. Honestly there is little to celebrate considering Obama's own proposal reads worse like one of Raegan....

Obama's proposal was fine. Even Paul Krugman was mostly happy with it.

The scary thing is that the Republicans now seem to be committed to slashing the social safety net, and the nature of American politics practically guarantees that they will have full power sometime in the future. Hopefully by then they'll be back to Bush-style "compassionate conservatism", i.e. not eager to kill popular entitlements.

[Patrick Degan]

Meh. Honestly there is little to celebrate considering Obama's own proposal reads worse like one of Raegan....

Any Reagan plan is practically socialist compared to the standards of today's GOP. American politics having been pushed so far rightward, it would take laying down Reaganesque plans just to start moving the debate back toward the centre.

[Thanas]

Meh. Honestly there is little to celebrate considering Obama's own proposal reads worse like one of Raegan....

Obama's proposal was fine. Even Paul Krugman was mostly happy with it.

He also described it as center-right, which means that once more the debate begins on the right side, and just validates my point considering Reagan would most likely be derided as a liberal nowadays.

[Connor MacLeod]

that should just be an indicator of how fucked up American politics is Thanas. When we're happy that it's "merely" center right as opposed to far off batshit insane extreme right, well.. you get the idea.

You can bitch about Obama, democrats, etc. all you like and how little they do and how they've failed, but in the end they operate within the very system that elected them, and there's not a whole lot one can do when the system works like the American one has done for the past decades.

[Crossroads Inc.]

OK, something is screwy here, virtually EVERY news report on this I see says the measure PASSED in congress with the democrats voting NO, not simply "present"
this is fromYahoo News:

WASHINGTON – In a prelude to a summer showdown with President Barack Obama, Republicans controlling the House pushed to passage on Friday a bold but politically dangerous budget blueprint to slash social safety net programs like food stamps and Medicaid and fundamentally restructure Medicare health care for the elderly.

The nonbinding plan lays out a fiscal vision cutting $6.2 trillion from yearly federal deficits over the coming decade and calls for transforming Medicare from a program in which the government directly pays medical bills into a voucher-like system that subsidizes purchases of private insurance plans
The GOP budget passed 235-193 with every Democrat voting "no." Obama said in an Associated Press interview that it would "make Medicare into a voucher program. That's something that we strongly object to."

The vote sets up the Republicans' next round of confrontation with Obama and Democrats over must-pass legislation to allow the government to borrow more money to finance its operations and obligations to holders of U.S. bonds. For the first time, Obama acknowledged that raising the debt limit is "not going to happen without some spending cuts" insisted upon by Republicans and some Democrats.

The vote came on the same day Obama signed a hard-fought six-month spending bill that averted a government shutdown while cutting $38 billion from the government. Struck last week, the compromise was the first between the White House and the emboldened Republican majority in the House.
Under the House Republican plan approved Friday, deficits requiring the federal government to borrow more than 40 cents for every dollar it spends would be cut by the end of the decade to 8 cents of borrowing for every dollar spent.

"If the president won't lead, we will," Boehner said as he closed debate. "No more kicking the can down the road, no more whistling past the graveyard. Now is the time to address the serious challenges that face the American people and we will."

Obama saw the situation differently. In the AP interview, he said the Republicans' "pessimistic vision ... says that America can no longer do some of the big things that made us great, that made us the envy of the world."

The plan by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., exposes Republicans to political risk. Its Medicare proposal would give people presently 54 or younger health insurance subsidies that would steadily lose value over time — even as current beneficiaries and people 55 and older would stay in the current system.
The budget measure is nonbinding but lays out a vision to fundamentally reshape government benefit programs for the poor and elderly, programs whose spiraling costs threaten to crowd out other spending and produce a crippling debt burden that could put a major drag on the economy in the future.

"Which future do you want your children to have? One where the debt gets so large it crushes the economy and gives them a diminished future?" Ryan asked. "Or this budget ... that literally not only gets us on the way to balancing the budget but pays off our debt?"

The GOP's solution to unsustainable deficits is to relentlessly attack the spending side of the ledger while leaving Bush-era tax cuts intact. It calls for tax changes that would lower the top income tax rates for corporations and individuals by cleaning out a tax code cluttered with tax breaks and preferences, but it parts company with Obama and the findings of a bipartisan deficit commission, which proposed devoting about $100 billion a year in new revenue to easing the deficit.
Democrats and many budget experts say this spending-cuts-only approach is fundamentally unbalanced, targeting social safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps while leaving in place a tax system they say bestows too many benefits on the wealthy. The GOP blueprint would cut almost $800 million from the federal-state Medicaid program — which provides health care to the poor and disabled and pays for nursing home care for millions of indigent senior citizens — into a block grant program run by the states.

Republicans counter that low taxes and spending cuts would unleash capital into the economy and put it on firm footing — and avoid a European-style debt crisis that could force far harsher steps.

"The Republican plan is not bold. It's just the same old tired formula we've seen before of providing big tax breaks to the very wealthy and powerful special interests at the expense of the rest of America," said top Budget panel Democrat Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. "Except this time it's dressed up with a lot of sweet-smelling talk of reform."

In their budget, Republicans shied away from tackling Social Security shortfalls, steering clear of what pundits sometimes call the "third rail of American politics."
Virtually every budget expert in Washington agrees that projected Medicare cost increases are unsustainable, but the GOP initiative has brought heated disagreement.
"We hear a lot about Medicare as we know it," said Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark. "Well, unfortunately Medicare as we know it is going bankrupt. If you are for the status quo with regard to Medicare, you are on the side of the elimination of Medicare as we know it."

Democrats countered with official estimates showing the GOP plan would provide vouchers whose value would steadily erode.

"The Republican proposal breaks the promise that our country has made to our seniors — that after a lifetime of work they will be able to depend on Medicare to protect them in retirement," said Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California. "The Republicans' plan forces seniors to buy their insurance from health insurance companies where the average senior will be forced to pay twice as much for half the benefit."

Also Friday, the House easily defeated two liberal budget alternatives. A plan offered by the conservative Republican Policy Committee failed as well, while a Democratic alternative that called for higher taxes on the wealthy and special interests fell on a 259-166 vote.

The GOP plan isn't actual legislation. Instead, under the arcane congressional budget process, the measure sketches out a nonbinding blueprint each year for running the government. The resolution doesn't require the president's signature, but it does set the framework for changes to spending or tax policy in follow-up legislation.

The most immediate impact of the GOP plan would be to cut the $1 trillion-plus budget for appropriated programs next year by $30 billion, following on the $38 billion in cuts just adopted. That would return domestic agency accounts below levels when George W. Bush left office.
Food stamps would also be cut sharply and turned into a block grant program.

For the long term, Ryan's 10-year plan still can't claim a balanced budget by the end of the decade because of promises to not increase taxes or change Medicare and Social Security benefits for people 55 and over.

But eventually annual deficits are projected to fall to the $400 billion range, enough to stabilize the nation's finances.
The Democratic-controlled Senate has yet to produce its alternative plan. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and other members of Obama's independent fiscal commission are pursuing a bipartisan "grand bargain" blending big spending curbs with new revenues flowing from a simplified tax code.
The budget deficit is projected at an enormous $1.6 trillion this year, and, more ominously, current projections show an even worse mismatch in coming decades as the baby boom generation retires and Medicare costs consume an ever-growing share of the budget.

Am I missing something here?

[Dominus Atheos]

That article is about a different bill then the OP.

The Dems took themselves out of the equation, leaving Republicans to decide whether the House should adopt the more-conservative RSC budget instead of the one authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.

Your article is about Ryan's budget.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ah forgive me then, I thought the OP was about Ryan's plan...Which is a bit un-nerving because it IS widely and idiotically far right, I did not even know about the one put out by the RSC. To think there is something even WORSE then Ryan's plan makes my skin crawl.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

That's hilarious. It appears in recent days the Democrats and even the president have grown a pair. They called the Republicans bluff. They should have been doing this from day one.

They can throw this back in the face of Republicans every time they claim they "tried to cut down BIG GOVERNMENT".

I see nothing hilarious about this whatsoever. If anything, this ought to be seen as a frightening expose of the current ideological makeup of the House GOP; since even with panicked flipping among the less-right-wing Republicans, the RSC budget came within eighteen votes of passing. Assuming (and this is a big assumption) that the Tea Party doesn't shoot itself in the foot; it is conceivable that they could flip that many GOP House primaries and possibly go on to win that many seats in 2012.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm still wondering if Republican party discipline (normally very solid) can hold up indefinitely under this near-50/50 split. How many Republicans are there who really would rather broker a compromise with the Dems than pass a Tea Party budget? What happens in a House that, rather than being split 44/56 D/R, is split 44/30/26 Democrat/Republican/Tea?

[Phantasee]

Either you have a coalition government, which I hear is undemocratic, or you let the Dems run a minority government. Is there any allowance for that in your constitution?

This kind of shit is what I enjoy the most about politics.

[Johonebesus]

Either you have a coalition government, which I hear is undemocratic, or you let the Dems run a minority government. Is there any allowance for that in your constitution?

This kind of shit is what I enjoy the most about politics.

The Constitution doesn't mention parties at all, and the legislature doesn't form the government. Technically there is no need to have one party controlling a majority of seats. Such a split would just make running the chamber a nightmare. How bad it would get would depend on whether the sane republicans decide to vote with Democrats or teabaggers on procedural matters and committee memberships.

[Prannon]

Phantasee. The thing about the US is that the "government" as you would understand it is completely independent of the US legislature, at least insomuch that the composition of the House or Senate determines which party has power in government. The Presidential election typically determines which party is "in government." Unified party control of the houses of Congress just make things easier for the government (sometimes) to do the things they want.

Now, turning to the House of Representatives specifically, each party in the House has an internal election to determine its leadership when the House convenes for the very first time in a session. This internal election determines who each party wants as their Speaker (Prime Minister parallel, just without all those executive privileges and powers). Then, each party votes down party lines (every single time without fail, no matter what the factions are) for their Speaker. The guy who loses becomes the Minority Leader.

So, even if there is a big split among the Republicans it doesn't really matter. Coalition "governments" would not occur, because it's kind of an unspoken rule that if you're in the Republican/Democratic Party, you vote for their chosen leadership. If you don't, well...kiss your Party sponsored campaign funding and endorsements goodbye. The moment the Tea Party-ists decided that they didn't want to vote for Boehner as their Speaker, they would no longer be Republicans.

[Simon_Jester]

What you're sort of missing, Prannon, is the question of how the House votes. If the Tea Party faction within the Republicans become strong enough to set the agenda for the Republican caucus, it creates a problem for the Republicans- of which this scramble we just saw is an example.

The problem is that the Tea Party is so far to the right that in a real sense they cannot be allowed "out in public" on the American political stage. Given the opportunity to promote the policies they desire, they will make a hash of it in short order. This is why the Republicans had to spin around and vote against a Tea Party budget proposal.

So it's not enough for the Republicans to be able to elect a Speaker of the House; their Speaker also needs to be able to set an agenda reliably, and it's unclear how reliably the Tea Party representatives will toe the party line on issues like this.

[Prannon]

I was addressing Phantasee's idea of a "coalition government" in the House, which doesn't happen under current US party structures. As far as how the House votes, though, you're absolutely right. The Tea Party could represent an unpleasant faction for the Republicans much as the Blue Dogs represent one for the Democrats. As such, this move was a very intelligent play by the Democrats because it's somewhat embarrassing and highlights what they were saying all along. It makes for excellent campaign material, if they're intelligent enough to communicate it.

[Simon_Jester]

I was addressing Phantasee's idea of a "coalition government" in the House, which doesn't happen under current US party structures.

If the US had three or four political parties, a tacit agreement between two or more of them to elect a member of one party as Speaker of the House might very well happen- which would, in effect, be coalition government.

The Speaker has very little power aside from that of parliamentary procedure. If he can't secure control of his own party, it doesn't matter that they elected him Speaker; conversely, if he can reliably organize votes from both of two parties, it doesn't matter that he isn't a member of both of them.

[FaxModem1]

Okay, explain this to me in dummy talk, what is going on with the Republicans and the Tea Party? Is there some sort of conservative civil war going on or something?

[Crossroads Inc.]

Okay, explain this to me in dummy talk, what is going on with the Republicans and the Tea Party? Is there some sort of conservative civil war going on or something?

Me and Simion went over a lot of it in THIS THREAD, but the long and short of it is that the Tea Part WANT there to be a civil war, but theres never really going to be one because they hold no real power,.

[Bakustra]

Okay, explain this to me in dummy talk, what is going on with the Republicans and the Tea Party? Is there some sort of conservative civil war going on or something?

The Tea Party has an agenda, or rather several agendas based around anti-immigration sentiments, panic about healthcare reform, no taxes absolutely ever, massive cuts, et cetera. The mainstream of the Republican party also has an agenda. Their agenda is to try and get rid of the things that they like least, make a few token cuts to programs that'll get shot down anyhow, essentially try and be obstructionist enough to force the Democrats to work with them to get anything done and ensure that they retain power.

These agendas are colliding, because the Tea Party is based on Republican rhetoric, while the Republicans don't really believe their rhetoric. They think that they can play a close game where they play the Tea Party and Democrats off against another, but as this shows, the Democrats won't play along forever and neither will the Tea Party, I suspect.

Overall, most Republican rhetoric is not all that serious. But people have taken it seriously, and so the result is the Tea Party once there was enough support to start a popular movement. I would say that this is scaring Republican leadership, but probably not enough for them to cool down the rhetoric. I, meanwhile, am laughing at the circus American politics have become.