Debt

White House: We Thought We Were Down To The Details

Susan Crabtree | July 22, 2011, 7:47PM

President Obama and White House officials earnestly believed they were closing in on a deficit-reduction deal with only three remaining sticking points until Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) pulled the rug out from under them and walked away from the negotiating table late Friday afternoon, White House officials said Friday night.

As of Thursday, Obama and Boehner had been working on a grand bargain that would produce roughly $3 trillion in savings over 10 years, the officials confirmed. But talks broke down along three major differences: the two sides were $400 billion apart on taxes, Obama rejected a last minute demand from the GOP that the deal include a repeal of the individual mandate in healthcare reform, and the two sides were still haggling over a difference of $40 billion in cuts to Medicaid, according to the White House.

Read more »

Barack Obama

Obama To Boehner In Budget Talks: 'You Think We're Stupid?'

Benjy Sarlin | April 15, 2011, 10:49AM

President Obama speaks at a bipartisan White House gathering with Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) in the background.

As House Republican leaders struggle to sell their spending agreement, President Obama is privately crowing to supporters that he stood up the GOP on health care and won big time.

Republicans have made defunding Democrats' health care law a top priority, but at a closed-to-the-press fundraiser Obama candidly described to donors how he defeated their attempts. Perhaps not realizing his mic was on, Obama's private remarks were caught by CBS correspondent Mark Knoller, who was able to listen to through a live audio feed.

"I said, 'You want to repeal health care? Go at it. We'll have that debate," Obama said, describing his negotiations with Speaker John Boehner. "You're not going to be able to do that by nickel-and-diming me in the budget. You think we're stupid?'"

According to CBS, Obama quoted himself as telling Boehner to "Put it in a separate bill," adding that "if you think you can overturn my veto, try it. But don't try to sneak this through."

Watch the CBS report below.

Read more »

Republicans

GOP: Obama's Speech So Partisan We'll Never Reach Budget Agreement

Brian Beutler | April 13, 2011, 6:55PM

House Republicans recoiled Wednesday evening from President Obama's speech on America's budget woes. After spending most of the week pre-empting the address, and rejecting its expected calls for tax increases on wealthy Americans, Republicans endured a broad and severe critique of their vision for the country.

Their responses thus edged beyond substance into the realm of personal grievance. Indeed, they implied that the speech may have poisoned the well so much that working together where common ground exists might now be impossible.

"I missed lunch for this?" complained Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), chair of the House GOP conference, at a Capitol press conference shortly after the address.

Read more »

Paul Ryan

White House: Ryan Plan Doesn't Pass The Fairness Test

Susan Crabtree | April 5, 2011, 5:48PM

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

The White House rejected Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) "Path to Prosperity" budget blueprint for fiscal 2012 Tuesday, arguing that it unfairly guarantees the prosperity of wealthy millionaires while overburdening seniors and the poor.

While President Obama is committed to dramatically reducing the country's long-term deficit, White House spokesman Jay Carney said, Ryan's plan is exactly the wrong approach.

Read more »

Defunding health care

House GOP Policy Committee Chair: We're Gonna Tie Health Care To The Debt Ceiling

Evan McMorris-Santoro | March 23, 2011, 12:02PM

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA)

As Congress has battled its way through the short-term spending bills keeping the government open for the past couple months, a looming battle has faded from the spotlight. But this morning, on a conference call marking the first anniversary of the health care reform law, one prominent Republican reminded everyone that the debt ceiling fight is coming, and he suggested that it will be bitter.

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), chair of the House Republican Policy Committee and the fifth-ranking Republican in the House leadership, told reporters today that the fight to eliminate funding for implementation of the health care reform law will spill over into the debt ceiling fight.

"Our budget I think will once again define a strong support for non-funding of the legislation," Price said. "It is a work in progress, and my suspicion is the debt ceiling may include the same kind of legislation."

Read more »

Barack Obama

CBO: Defunding 'ObamaCare' Would Cost Billions

Brian Beutler | March 11, 2011, 10:17AM

President Obama speaks at a bipartisan White House gathering with Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) in the background.

If Congress prohibits the Obama administration from funding implementation of the new health care law, it will cost the government billions of dollars over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

You might think that declaring certain funds off limits would save the government money -- and indeed the measure in the House spending bill defunding the health care law would save $1.6 billion through the end of the year. But by forbidding the Department of Health and Human Services from developing programs expected to save money, such a prohibition would actually accrue about $6 billion in costs by the end of the decade.

Read more »

Medicare

Sebelius: House Effort To Defund Health Care Law Would Cripple Medicare

Brian Beutler | March 9, 2011, 3:26PM

Sec. of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius

File this under unintended consequences. If House Republicans get their way and prevent President Obama from using any discretionary appropriations to implement "Obamacare," it would cripple existing Medicare programs, many of which are operated under methodologies enacted in the health care law.

In response to a letter from Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius lists the ways the House spending bill would hamper existing entitlements.

"If H.R. 1 were enacted, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) would not be able to use CR funds to administer payments based on any rate calculated on the basis of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act -- which is to say virtually all rates," she writes.

Read more »

Government Shutdown

Can Republicans Stomach Funding The Obama Administration To Avoid A Government Shutdown?

Brian Beutler | March 2, 2011, 10:15AM

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

On Wednesday morning, the Senate will pass a short term spending bill to postpone a government shutdown until at least March 18. After that, it becomes a question of whether Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate respectively can come to a longer-term agreement, to keep the lights on through September.

What's already settled is that any such agreement will include spending cuts. What isn't known yet is whose priorities win the day -- which federal accounts get more money, and which get less. But more important than that may be whether rank and file Republicans in the House will be willing to vote for a spending bill that strips away their controversial policy priorities.

When the House passed a seven-month funding bill last month, it included scores of riders, which deny funding to the Obama administration to do -- well, many things: implement the health care law, implement environmental regulations, the list goes on. Neither President Obama, nor the Democratic Senate are likely to accept most of them as part of a longer-term "continuing resolution," and so the question now is whether those House Republicans will revolt.

Read more »

Health Care

Top Dem: GOP 'Dangerous To America's Health'

Brian Beutler | December 16, 2010, 11:14AM

Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA)

Here's a more political health care report, put together by the office of Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA).

This one's more of a playbook for Democrats, who in 2011 and 2012 will be batting back GOP efforts to repeal the health care reform law. For months now, Democrats have noted that full repeal of the health law will eliminate popular provisions like the ban on discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.

Stark's report goes into greater depth, bullet pointing for the law's supporters the key reforms that will be repealed if the Republicans get their way.

Among the less well-known consequences of repeal, according to Stark:

Read more »

Mitch McConnell

McConnell: Defeat Obama With Repeated Attacks On Health Care

Brian Beutler | November 4, 2010, 9:50AM

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

For the next two years, while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tries to make Barack Obama a one-term president, he and his counterparts in the House will force repeated votes on repealing and starving the White House's signature accomplishments.

At a Heritage Foundation speech later this morning, McConnell will reiterate his desire to see Obama unseated in 2012, and will pull back the veil on the next two years, which are poised to be mired in political theatrics and policy gridlock.

Read more »

Health Care

Health Care Judge Skeptical Of Obama's 'Unprecedented' Law

Brian Beutler | October 15, 2010, 9:15AM

President Barack Obama

Yesterday, a District Court judge in Florida ruled that a lawsuit filed by 20 states and other plaintiffs can proceed. The development represents decidedly mixed news for the Obama administration and supporters of the health care law. The good news is that the judge -- Reagan appointee Roger Vinson -- threw out four of the plaintiffs' six complaints. The bad news is that he will hear the weightiest of their contentions -- that the individual mandate exceeds Congress' power to regulate under the Commerce Clause. And according to one of the foremost experts on the health care lawsuits, the ruling indicates that the judge is sympathetic to the plaintiffs.

"On the Commerce Clause argument he suggested it was going to take a lot to convince him that the government is right," says Professor Timothy Jost of Washington and Lee University. "They're going to really have to come up with something because [at least in the judge's mind] the law is pretty clear on that."

Read more »

Health Care

Sebelius: Secretive Campaign Spending Distorting Health Care Reform Is 'Alarming'

Christina Bellantoni | September 30, 2010, 10:43AM

Sec. of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters today that unprecedented and "opaque" spending on television ads by shadowy groups is "dangerous," sounding a political note that could indicate she has a future within the administration or on the ballot down the line.

"I have never seen a situation like this at least in my lifetime. The amount of money being spent is just staggering. ... I think that's pretty dangerous," Sebelius said at a breakfast hosted this morning by the Christian Science Monitor.

Sebelius brought up campaign finance unprompted, and said she would prefer to see transparency since so many "millionaires and billionaires" are funding groups that pretend to be grassroots, especially to drive an anti-health care message. She twice called it "dangerous," adding that it's "pretty alarming."

Read more »

Health Care

Reformers Fight Senior Citizen's Front Group With Bush Ties Over Health Care Law (VIDEO)

Brian Beutler | September 29, 2010, 12:43PM

Tea party activists rally in Washington D.C.

As Democrats and Republicans gird themselves for a fight over President Obama's health care law, the leading health care reform coalition in the country is locked in a brawl with the 60-Plus Association -- a corporate-backed organization posing as a senior citizen's advocacy group. And heading the fight for 60-Plus is a former Bush attorney with a history of attempting to suppress voter turnout.

At the center of the tussle are dozens of ads 60-Plus is running in districts of vulnerable Democrats who voted for the law. At a distinct financial disadvantage, progressive groups -- including Health Care for America Now and MoveOn -- are asking TV stations around the country to drop the ad, citing factual inaccuracies.

Read more »

Paul Ryan

Kevin McCarthy: Paul Ryan Will Outsmart President Obama Every Time (VIDEO)

Brian Beutler | September 24, 2010, 4:26PM

Republicans have an extremely high opinion of Paul Ryan.

In an appearance on Fox News last night, Kevin McCarthy -- one of the co-authors of Young Guns -- once again raised the possibility of Republicans defunding the health care bill if the GOP retakes the House in November.

In doing so, McCarthy imagined a standoff between Congress and the White House over the federal budget, with Republican budget maestro Paul Ryan staring down and outsmarting President Barack Obama.

Read more »

Government Shutdown

Choke It, Starve It, Shrink It: What That Government Shutdown Talk Is Really About

Christina Bellantoni | September 3, 2010, 11:29AM

Alex Cortes of DeFundIt.org

Now that we know the Republicans have settled on a campaign strategy pledging to "defund" health care reform if they win back Congressional power, it's time to take a look at what that actually means. Could it be a precursor to a Republican showdown with President Obama repeating the 1995 and 1996 government shutdowns?

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said he thinks the Republicans are hinting at shutdown with their promises to defund everything.

"They want to shrink it to where it doesn't work, and then when it doesn't work, they go, 'Look! It doesn't work, get rid of it.' And that's been their strategy all along," Trumka told TPM Thursday after speaking to reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "They don't talk about how to make things effective; they talk about how to get rid of them."

Read more »