The House passed a yearlong suspension of the Treasury’s debt limit Tuesday in a vote that left Republicans once again ceding control to Democrats, following a collapse in support for an earlier proposal advanced by GOP leaders.
In a narrow vote, 221-201, 28 Republicans voted with 193 Democrats to approve a “clean” extension of the federal government’s borrowing authority — one without strings attached — sending the legislation to the Senate for a posssible final vote later this week. Two Democrats and 199 Republicans voted no.
The vote came two weeks before the Feb. 27 debt-limit deadline set by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and once again underscored the House leadership’s inability to corral Republicans behind a debt-ceiling plan. “The natural reluctance is obvious,” said Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), the chief deputy whip.
Conservative advocacy groups reacted negatively to Boehner’s plan to bring the clean bill to a vote, with spokesmen for Heritage Action for America and the Club for Growth urging members to vote “no” and including the vote on their scorecards, which serve as guides for their supporters. “When we heard that House leadership was scheduling a clean debt-ceiling increase, we thought it was a joke,” said Barney Keller, a Club for Growth adviser. “But it’s not. Something is very wrong with House leadership, or with the Republican Party.”
The Senate Conservatives Fund, an outspoken tea-party group, blasted Boehner for his eleventh-hour decision in an e-mail, saying “Boehner must be replaced.” They also launched a petition seeking to encourage at least 15 House Republicans to refuse to support Boehner for speaker — a move that would deprive him of a majority of the House.
All afternoon, as members fretted about their travel plans because of an impending snowstorm, Republican whips scrambled to “get to 18,” as one leadership aide described the push to get enough House Republicans behind a clean extension so that the proposed legislation could pass with mostly Democratic support. House leaders struggled mightily to get Republicans to back a bill disliked by conservatives, with many members saying in whip meetings that they didn’t want to endure the political pain associated with supporting a clean extension.
Boehner said the votes weren’t there to do anything but a clean bill. “When you don’t have 218 votes, you have nothing,” he said. “We’ve seen that before, and we’ve seen it again.”
Boehner has apparently stepped up to the plate and shown the leadership needed to get a clean bill passed. This country can’t deal with any more brinkmanship. The debt ceiling has been raised 42 times since 1980. It is a formality.
Time to send the Tea Party packing for good on this issue. As it is, the Republican naysayers can chest thump and make whoop whoop war noises and get on the record for voting no and everyone is happy.
We just can’t seem to control spending.
I actually didn’t care if they fought this or not. The spineless Republicans would have demanded, blustered, negotiated, and then caved. And the only thing that they would have achieved is allowing the press once again to lie about them.
Lie? I must have missed the lie also.
When you run out of creepy pinko democrats and spineless republicans, where do you go? Life must be frustrating for you.
I am sitting over here bitching because its so difficult to do blog posts these days. I guess this time will be my brief respite.
Cargo: I didn’t catch the lie last time. What was it???
@BSinVA
That the House shut down the government when it was the Senate’s refusal to pass a budget funding every department.
“Boehner has apparently stepped up to the plate and shown the leadership needed to get a clean bill passed.”
Moon, I’m not so sure I agree with this statement. I believe Boehner is looking down the road to November with a view toward maintaining the Republican control of the House and aiding the Republicans in an effort to gain control of the Senate. To shut down the government again would be an election disaster.
I might also add: Beware of Republican bearing gifts. The e will be an a tempt to extract a pound of flesh somewhere along the way; i.e., multiple attempts at killing the ACA.
If Republicans had wanted to start playing conservative with our and future generations’ money, the time to make a stand was in 2008. Which is where we the people really took one on the chin.
Not some phony argument about whether to turn the America switch to “off” all of a sudden in 2013.
This is what I really resent about the GOP – they are entirely phony. They excite the conservatives in America endlessly, over complete nonsense, and never even try to do anything real.
It’s not the end of the world … We spend more than we have, and the dollar devalues. Our savings and 401Ks get chipped away. Such is life. At this point we can only move forward. (Which the GOP is incapable of doing).
The calculus for our debt-ridden future is simple.
Your property – a home, land – is going to appreciate in value.
Everything else that you own is not.
Your savings are going to be worth less in the future than you are hoping. Same for any pension money.
The stock market is hit and miss. Generally, stocks will appreciate in value because you buy in at today’s dollar value, and tomorrow’s dollar value includes the artidicial inflation that is caused by our government every so often borrowing trillions of dollars to pump the stock market up artificially.
These things seem inarguable to me. If anyone thinks that whether we pay for a woman’s birth control or not is really going to affect their quality of life, they’re really thinking small.
Another man telling women what to think?
You have missed the big picture Rick. The big picture is about women controlling their own reproduction and having access to contraception.
I frankly don’t care as much about free contraception as I care about affordable, accessible contraception.
The only way women will ever be economically empowered is if they have the means and tools to control their own reproduction. It wasn’t all that long ago, for example, that women had to quit working when they started to ‘show’ which was usually at about 4 months. If you can’t work if you are pregnant, then you have had the economic rug pulled out from under you. If you can’t get a good job because you might get pregnant, you have no chance at all at economic independence.
Women get it. Men obviously don’t.
ps Some women without health care might find $50 a month too expensive. Others who want permanent solutions might find a tubal ligation far too expensive out of pocket.
What guarantees do I have that my home will appreciate? How did that work out for everyone in 2008?
Stocks are hit or miss. You are right. Over a long period of time, they are a hit.
Diamonds are a pretty good hedge against inflation. How often does a good diamond go down in value? Maybe they do. I just don’t recall them doing that.
I see one political party that more or less, in fits and starts, tries to deal with the world as it is – i.e. what is real – and work with it. I frequently don’t agree with what they’re trying to do. But I think the people in the party are capable over time of arriving at real solutions to real issues.
And another party that is increasingly out of touch with anything real. Their parade of endless specious arguments is available to me every day on their own News Channel. It’s astonishing how much they fear the world they are actually living in, and loath it.
So I will generally be pulling the lever to the left each November for a while.
When I said “If anyone thinks that whether we pay for a woman’s birth control or not is really going to affect their quality of life, ”
What I meant to say was “If anyone thinks that whether we pay for a woman’s birth control or not is really going to affect the nation’s budget or financial direction in any real way, ”
The homes generally appreciate long term. Until the point at which we start emigrating to new planets or underground bunkers, that will be the case.
OK, I understand what you are trying to say now. As long as we agree that on a personal level, access to contraception is a great equalizer.
I’m all in favor of contraception and easy access to it.
High*five*
We agree. I couldn'[t imagine why you had gone all religious right on me.
I don’t want to give too much away here, but I have actually had sex in my life. With – cue the Eric Idle voice from the Monty Python “Nudge Nudge” sketch – with women.
And, though Biblical scholars may consider this a sin against nature, most of the time we did not want to cause pregnancy.
I want other people also to enjoy this wild, decadent level of freedom and perversion. I hope this isn’t too controversial a stand.
Glad they agreed to maintain military pension cuts
Did federal pensioners get cut at all?
If pensions EARNED by the military can be cut, that opens up a host of potential future cuts for many other expensive items in the federal budget. Might social security be next?
Kelly, I agree with you. I am opposed to any cuts in pensions. Ever.
“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
“Might social security be next?”
It has always seemed to me that when they raised the age from 65 to higher ages for collecting benefits, it was a bteak in the social contract.
I am also extremely distressed every time Congress and the President change tax rates for a year that is already in progress. There are no rules in this game. Whatever solution is politically exspedient will happen.
Good points, Rick.
That SS age will continue to grow higher until people start dropping dead at their job.
I’d like to replace SS with disability. Work as long as you can (or need to) and when you can’t work and don’t have enough of your own money we’d have the disability safety net to help out.
Retirement is such an old concept. We have very few physically challenging jobs anymore. Most people could and should work until 75 to 80. We need businesses to start generating new job descriptions that require fewer hours and less stressful work conditions that are suited for elderly people. Work is good for the mind and health so this is win-win. They should also eliminate the minimum wage for people over 65. The job should keep paying less money as the senior citizen slows down instead of firing them and hiring someone who can produce at the prevailing wage.
Being old is not sufficient reason to keep people from working.
Why should people work until they are disabled? I think that is awful.
@Rick Bentley
The nascent Tea Party was becoming upset with the spending under Bush.
I love the word nascent and I always forget to use it.
Cargo, the nascent Tea Party almost all go out to the polls every 2 or 4 years and vote GOP down the line. Their fear of Democrats trumps their desire to change their party. So, nothing will really change. If there were another Wall Street bailout “needed” today, both parties would work together to make it happen.
@ Ed: who defines “disabled”? Your broad brush that, ” Most people could and should work until 75 to 80″ is pure male bovine merde. And pay older employees less as they get older? What planet did you come from? And what about the stay at home spouse who draws SS based on the SS of the spouse who worked? For some, this is all they have.
The safety net should be for people who can’t work. SSA already has disability definitions. I’m not proposing we reinvent that. I want to end the moral hazard of paying people not to work. Work is healthy and wholesome. It is not a disease to be eradicated.
People should be able to retire because they saved enough to do so. But if one didn’t save enough there is no harm in working until one can’t anymore. It sure beats sitting around with too little fixed income. And as people get older they want easier jobs. Easier jobs will pay less. What is wrong with that? You need less income anyway as you age.
The stay-at-home spouse that has no income history of their own will all be dead very soon. That’s a model from the 1950s not the 1980s or later.
“The stay-at-home spouse that has no income history of their own will all be dead very soon. ”
That’s true. And IMO failure to adjust to this reality is a major reason the world doesn’t make sense to angry white males, a major force contributing to the irrational anger that drives the GOP these days.
I think the frustration that men feel in trying to be a provider for other people – a spouse who earns less but overspends money, and children who are by their nature ungrateful – causes a lot of anger and frustration in men who are bearing a burden. They place this anger outwards at the world. Rather than facing the fact that their fundamental view of the world, man as provider, doesn’t fit and is becoming archaic.
I’ve faced up to it. I’ve stared this heart of darkness in the eyes. The friction in many a man’s life comes from the difference between what marriage is and what we want it to be. And what we can reasonably do for our children, and what we want to be able to do for them.
See life for what it really is, and there’s plenty of money to go around and a bright future for us all. It’s just not the one we grew up aspiring to.
@ Ed–where did you come up with this. Some of the greatest expenses come in the last few years of life.
@Rick–“I think the frustration that men feel in trying to be a provider for other people – a spouse who earns less but overspends money, and children who are by their nature ungrateful – causes a lot of anger and frustration in men who are bearing a burden.”
I hope your wife and kids didn’t read this bull shit. Or maybe your wife did and trashed you.
@ Ed–“SSA already has disability definitions.” Obviously, you know nothing about SSDI or you wouldn’t make such a ridiculous system. As for me and my wife–benn there, done that, have the Tee shirt and the CD.
Again Rick–Has your wife read this crap: “The friction in many a man’s life comes from the difference between what marriage is and what we want it to be.”
Oh Ed–you must live under a stone: “And as people get older they want easier jobs.” there have been many studies that show older people are much more reliable and miss fewer work days than the younger set.” Want easier jobs”? More bullshit. Unless, of course, that applies to the planet you come from.
@Moon-howler
Not a “CUT” but maybe had to continue 1.5% more toward their retirement.
Moon–have you been seining in the shallow end of the gene pool?
I don’t understand the shallow end of the gene pool remark but probably. Why do you ask?
People all over are being asked (told) to contribute more towards their retirement. State employees, teachers, and others who are part of VRS have been hit particularly hard by this phenomena.
I was lucky. Mine was paid for since 1983. I remember it making a big difference in my pay check when I no longer had to contribute it. I smile every time I get my ‘paycheck’ also.
“I hope your wife and kids didn’t read this bull shit. Or maybe your wife did and trashed you.”
Wow you are an angry person! You may well be an exhibit of my theory.
Seriously George, I know you’re a bit older than me, so maybe you should cool down on thinking that you know how the world works anymore and how other people should live.
I’m sticking with my theory, and I believe that it’s a major contributing factor to the boiling discontent and inability to deal that is being exhbited by many an angry white male.
The evidence does correlate to my theory : 2012 Election exit polls :
51% of Americans are married, and 60% of voters
Married voters – voted Romney by 14 percentage points
Married Men – voted Romney by 22 pp
Married Women – voted Romney by 7 pp
Unmarried Men – voted Obama by 16 pp
Unmarried Women – voted Obama by 36 pp
I guess I am an anomaly.