Budget

How The GOP Budget Pulverizes Most Government Services (CHART)

Brian Beutler | March 22, 2012, 10:06AM

House Republicans' latest budget is a slightly new twist on a familiar theme: low taxes, particularly on the wealthiest, financed by extreme cuts to government spending programs. Knowing the GOP's -- and, frankly many Democrats' -- penchant for high levels of military spending, this mostly means unfathomably deep cuts to domestic health care, education, science and other programs.

Here's the twist. Last year, Republicans took a lot of guff for their plan to turn Medicare in to a subsidized private insurance system. That wasn't just because they proposed to privatize the program, but because the subsidies they proposed were extremely meager -- that's how it saved so much money.

This year, the budget calls for more generous subsidies. Which means that to hit the same long-term deficit targets, Ryan has to cut even deeper into other programs.

Here's how it looks graphically.

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Payroll Tax Cut

How The Payroll Tax Fight Descended Into Chaos

Brian Beutler | December 21, 2011, 5:45AM

John Boehner

The fight over renewing the payroll tax cut into next year has escalated into a multi-front political war, both between Republicans and Democrats, and within the Republican party itself.

But lost in the gamesmanship and the arguments about process, hypocrisy, and leadership are the issues at stake.

So let's review.

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Super Committee

Why All Of Washington Is Screaming "Go Big!" Into The Wind -- At Least For Now

Brian Beutler | September 16, 2011, 6:20AM

The new mantra in Washington is "Go Big!"

It started with Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles -- the co-chairs of President Obama's fiscal commission -- and is now on the lips of scores of members of Congress in both parties.

Joining about two dozen other senators Thursday, Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) urged the new deficit Super Committee "We're with you! Be brave! Be bold! Go Big!"

Even President Obama wants them to "Go Big!" -- he'll be sending Super Committee members a list of deficit reduction proposals that go way beyond the $1.5 trillion they're aiming for, and hopes to use those extra savings to finance his jobs bill.

But this isn't realistic if you listen to the members themselves, particularly Republicans.

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Super Committee

Super Committee GOP Unconvinced By CBO Chief On Jobs, Austerity

Brian Beutler | September 15, 2011, 6:10AM

Rep Dave Camp (R-MI) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

So did CBO Director Doug Elmendorf make any headway convincing Super Committee Republicans that a). the economy needs a short term boost of near term spending and tax cuts, and b). that the country shouldn't dive headlong, and unnecessarily, into austerity?

If Dave Camp is any indication, the answer is no.

The Michigan Republican, and chair of the House Ways and Means Committee said he disagreed with Elmendorf's cautionary testimony.

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Super Committee

GOP Leaders Pick Conservative Members To Serve On Deficit Super Committee

Brian Beutler | August 10, 2011, 12:19PM

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have announced their selections to serve on the new so-called Super Committee -- the panel called for in the debt limit bill that's been tasked with reducing deficits by at least $1.2 trillion.

McConnell's picked his Whip, Jon Kyl (R-AZ), as well as conservative freshman Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), and arch-conservative Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA).

Boehner tapped Reps. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), chair of the GOP conference, and the caucus' top message man; Dave Camp (R-MI) chair of the Ways and Means Committee, which controls tax revenue; and Fred Upton (R-MI), whose powerful Energy and Commerce Committee has broad jurisdiction over just about everything other than taxes, but particularly health care.

As head of the majority party in the House of Representatives, Boehner was asked to name the committee's GOP co-chair, and for that he chose Hensarling -- an extremely conservative member who in recent weeks falsely characterized the debt limit fight as a consequence of spending policies enacted by President Obama and past Democratic congresses. By quite a ways, most existing debt is the result of GOP policies, or bipartisan initiatives like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hensarling served on President Obama's fiscal commission, headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, but ultimately opposed their recommendations, because they included higher revenues.

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Debt Ceiling

Republicans Rally Behind Short-Term Debt Limit Deal...After Opposing The Idea For Weeks

Brian Beutler | July 25, 2011, 11:47AM

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

Dems are happily noting the irony that Republicans have united behind a short-term debt limit increase, after publicly opposing the idea for months. Two weeks ago, top Republicans began reconsidering that view, and now House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is preparing to unveil a two-step debt limit bill to his caucus. The idea is to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the budget in current legislation, raise the debt limit by a similar, modest, amount, but make raising the debt limit through the 2012 elections contingent on the swift adoption of entitlement and tax reform.

This is good flip-flop fodder for politicos, but it's also a pretty dramatic substantive shift. Republicans have a significant public record of supporting a long-term solution -- some have even gone so far as to rule out temporary steps.

Circumstances change, but now that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is putting forward a plan that meets Republicans' original criteria for raising the debt limit into 2013, it's worth taking a look back at the GOP's record on this score.

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Affordable Care Act

GOP Rep. Dave Camp: Obamacare Repeal Is Also Dead

Benjy Sarlin | May 6, 2011, 12:28PM

Rep Dave Camp (R-MI) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

Not only is the House GOP's Medicare plan in jeopardy, a key Republican committee chair says that repealing President Obama's health care plan is also a dead end for now.

"Is the repeal dead? I don't think the Senate is going to do it, so I guess yes," Dave Camp (R-MI), chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, said yesterday at a policy breakfast in Washington.

Camp made a splash at the same event yesterday when he said that he would not advance the House Republican's proposal to privatize and cut Medicare in his committee based on its lack of support in the Senate.

Medicare

Boehner: 'Political Realities' Make Medicare Privatization Difficult

Brian Beutler | May 5, 2011, 12:48PM

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is the latest GOP leader to acknowledge that his party's plan to privatize Medicare -- which passed the House as part of the Republican budget -- will hit a wall in the White House and Senate.

Responding Thursday to the news that one of his most powerful chairmen, Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) of the House Ways and Means Committee, will not push ahead with the Medicare plan, Boehner told reporters, "My interpretation of what Mr. Camp [said] was a recognition of the political realities that we face. While Republicans control the House, the Democrats control the Senate and they control the White House."

Boehner insisted the GOP hasn't abandoned the plan, and isn't prepared to take anything other than tax increases off the table. But with multiple top Republicans now acknowledging that budget negotiations will focus on other areas of potential agreement, it seems understood that the plan is basically dead.

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Medicare

Crucial GOP Chair Delivers Blow To Paul Ryan's Medicare Plan

Benjy Sarlin | May 5, 2011, 11:26AM

Rep Dave Camp (R-MI) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

Already flagging in the polls and generating heat at town halls, the GOP's Medicare plan may already be kaput after a key lawmaker indicated he won't bring it up in his committee.

Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), who chairs the powerful Ways and Means Committee, told an audience at a Health Affairs policy breakfast Thursday morning that since the bill is already DOA in the Senate, he wouldn't waste more time on it in the House.

"I'm not really interested in laying down more markers," Camp said, according to The Hill. "I'd rather have the committee working with the Senate and with the president to focus on savings and reforms that can be signed into law."

The dwindling prospects for the GOP's Medicare plan were already in the spotlight Thursday morning after the Washington Post ran a story suggesting Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) had dropped the proposal from budget negotiations. Cantor's office quickly pushed back, saying that he still stood by the Republican budget as the starting point for talks.

Health Care

How The Health Care Repeal Push Marks The End Of The Universal Health Care Consensus

Brian Beutler | January 18, 2011, 8:51AM

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA)

Here's one case for the individual mandate in the health care law boiled down to two sentences -- both fairly elegant considering they were spoken extemporaneously.

"There isn't anything wrong with it, except some people look at it as an infringement upon individual freedom. But when it comes to states requiring it for automobile insurance, the principle then ought to lie the same way for health insurance, because everybody has some health insurance costs, and if you aren't insured, there's no free lunch. Somebody else is paying for it." -- June 14, 2009

A corollary to that argument is that you can't have a functioning private health care system that treats the sick unless it also draws money from the healthy. In this regard, the individual mandate actually marries two distinctly American priorities -- an obsession with private markets, and the core belief that nobody should go without health care.

Considering just how cacophonous the health care debate has become, it might surprise you to learn that the mystery reformer quoted above is Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the Republicans' health care point man in the Senate who, during the same interview, with great authority, claimed "I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates."

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Fiscal Commission

FAIL: Fiscal Commission Adjourns Without Holding Official Vote

Brian Beutler | December 3, 2010, 11:12AM

The 18-Member Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, Sept. 29th, 2010

After weeks of tumultuous negotiations, the White House's fiscal commission adjourned today without agreement on a controversial plan to reduce deficits by slashing spending and lowering income tax rates.

Recognizing that they'd fail to meet the 14-vote threshold for passage, the 18-member commission ultimately did not take a final vote. However, members announced their positions ahead of today's final meeting, and in the end a majority -- according to Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), 11 in total -- claimed to support the proposal.

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Bush Tax Cuts

Tax Cut Negotiators Meeting This Morning

Eric Kleefeld | December 1, 2010, 10:19AM

Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner

The bipartisan group set to negotiate the issues surrounding the expiration of the Bush tax cuts is set to meet at 10:15 a.m. ET, in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

The roster:

• Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner

• Director of the Office of Management and Budget Jacob Lew

• Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee

• Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ)

• Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), the incoming ranking member of the House Budget Committee

• Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), the likely next Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Dave Camp

GOP's Top Tax Guy: Republicans Will Block Permanent Middle-Class Tax Cut

Brian Beutler | November 16, 2010, 4:51PM

Rep Dave Camp (R-MI) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

The Republicans' top tax guy in the House threatened in the clearest possible terms today that he and the rest of the GOP would vote to block any tax cut for the middle class during the lame duck session unless tax cuts for the wealthy are extended for the same period of time.

In a policy speech at the business-friendly Tax Council today, incoming Ways and Means Committee chairman David Camp called the Democratic plan for tax cuts -- a permanent tax cut extension for all income up to $200,000, and a temporary extension for income above that level -- "a terrible idea and a total nonstarter."

"We would be foolish to fall for it," Camp said.

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