After months of finger pointing over who is to blame for billions of dollars in automatic budget cuts, Democrats in the House and Senate rolled out plans to avert cuts scheduled to hit on March 1, as House Republicans said they would not act on any budget measure until the Senate passes a sequester bill.
"For the last two years, the House has done its work, only to see our Senate colleagues do nothing," said House Speaker John Boehner, referring to two different bills passed by the House that would have avoided cuts in the military.
"Well, those days are over," Boehner told reporters at a news conference, making clear that if Democrats want to push ahead with the legislative agenda of President Obama, then those measures will need to start in the Senate, and not in the House.
As for the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday evening set in motion the parliamentary procedure to allow the Senate to consider a plan from each party on the sequester - not next week - but the final week of February.
Why wait ten days when you only have 14 days until the budget cuts kick in? That's because the House and Senate are on break next week.
Who says the Congress rushes into anything, eh?
As for the Democratic Party plan, they unveiled one in both the House and Senate on Thursday; here are the details of the Senate bill as provided by Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee:
The American Family Economic Protection Act includes the Buffett Rule, which reduces the deficit by $54 billion by making sure that taxpayers with a gross adjusted income above $1 million cannot pay tax at a lower effective tax rate than middle class families. Specifically, it would require these taxpayers to pay a 30 percent tax on all of their adjusted gross income (less charitable contributions), phased in between $1 million and $2 million. The proposal also eliminates a tax break that encourages companies to ship job overseas by denying tax deductions for costs associated with outsourcing, reducing the deficit by less than a billion dollars. And it eliminates a special tax loophole now enjoyed by the oil industry by including oil from tar sands among the petroleum products that are subject to taxes that support the oil spill liability trust fund, which would reduce the deficit by $2 billion.
Defense cuts: $27.5 billion:
The American Family Economic Protection Act includes modest reductions in the overall level of defense spending phased in responsibly to time with the troop drawdown in Afghanistan in 2015, and continuing through 2021. The reduction would be about $3 billion in Fiscal Years 2015 and 2016, and then would rise slowly to a high of about $5 billion in Fiscal Year 2021.
Domestic cuts: $27.5 billion:
The American Family Economic Protection Act saves $27.5 billion over 10 years by ending direct payments, which are currently provided regardless of yields, prices, or farm income.
One note about this explanation from Democrats is that it looks like the budget cuts don't happen immediately, that instead they are spread out over eight years for the Pentagon and over ten years for the cuts in farm subsidies.
The plan unveiled yesterday by House Democrats is almost identical to what Senate Democrats laid out above, except that it also strips several billion dollars in tax benefits for the oil and gas industry. That provision was not included in the Senate plan because of opposition from Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA).
"The fact is we want to avoid the sequester, period," said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who criticized GOP leaders for not keeping the House in session next week to deal with the sequester.
But Republicans say there's no reason for the House to do anything until the Senate demonstrates that it can pass a sequester bill, as GOP lawmakers quickly made clear that they didn't want to vote for any Democratic tax increases of any kind.
"2013 is forecast to be the largest revenue year in the history of this nation," said Rep. James Lankford (R-OK).
"Why are we doing another tax increase when we're getting the largest revenue we ever had?" Lankford said to reporters just off the House floor.
So, with two weeks left until yet another major budget deadline, lawmakers will leave town for ten days.
But maybe you should take a few days off next week as well.
After months of finger pointing over who is to blame for billions of dollars in automatic budget cuts, Democrats in the House and Senate rolled out plans to avert cuts scheduled to hit on March 1, as House Republicans said they would not act on any budget measure until the ...
About the Author
Featured