Republicans Vote to End Medicare, and Other DC Follies

What a disgrace these House Republicans are! This afternoon, 235 of them voted to destroy Medicare and Medicaid when they voted for Representative Paul Ryan’s budget bill. The bill passed the House with all Democrats and only four Republicans voting against it.

The bill will most likely die in the Senate, but Democrats should make sure those House Republicans’ constituents know what they voted for. Of course Democrats will do no such thing, because, first they are wimps with no idea how to win, and second, their President is already signaling that he will compromise with Ryan in the bargaining over raising the debt ceiling.

Obama said that it is critical for the world economy that Congress vote to increase the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, but said that he would have to reach an accord with Republicans, who have called for a vote to be conditional on passage of fiscal reform.

“I think it’s absolutely right that it’s not going to happen without some spending cuts,” Obama said during an interview with The Associated Press.

Before the vote on the Ryan bill, there was a vote on an even more draconian bill proposed by far right Republicans. It turned into a bit of a free-for-all on the House floor. From Brian Beutler at TPM:

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….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.”

It’s nice to see a little bit of partisan spirit from the Democrats anyway. Too bad they had to use Obama’s old standby–voting “present,” but still maybe a good sign. It’s pretty clear that many in the House are unhappy with Obama and his kowtowing to Republicans. Maybe they will stand up to Obama next. Where there’s life, there’s hope.

Of the Ryan Budget bill, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said

“This Republican plan ends Medicare as we know it and dramatically reduces benefits for seniors,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the House minority leader, said in a floor speech. She said it would force the average senior citizen to pay twice as much for half the benefits while giving “tens of billions of dollars” in tax breaks to big oil companies.

The GOP plan “reduces Medicaid to our seniors and nursing homes . . . while it gives tax breaks to companies that send jobs overseas,” Pelosi said. “That’s just not fair.”

Pelosi was also very unhappy with President Obama’s “compromise” budget for 2011. Besides being angry about the cuts to programs that help the most vulnerable Americans, Pelosi was extremely unhappy that she and her Democratic House colleagues were completely cut out of the negotiations on the 2011 budget. In fact, Patricia Murphy at The Daily Beast says that many Democrats are “disgusted” with Obama. She writes that

…a number of Democrats are past protesting the president, discussing among themselves ways to recruit a primary challenger in 2012.

“I have been very disappointed in the administration to the point where I’m embarrassed that I endorsed him,” one senior Democratic lawmaker said. “It’s so bad that some of us are thinking, is there some way we can replace him? How do you get rid of this guy?” The member, who would discuss the strategy only on the condition of anonymity, called the discontent with Obama among the caucus “widespread,” adding: “Nobody is saying [they want him out] publicly, but a lot of people wish it could be so. Never say never.”

House Republicans, who got much of what they wanted in their negotiations with the White House, are whining because Obama said some mean things about them in his deficit speech on Tuesday. They were shocked that the president’s speech was “partisan.” Give me a break! Why do we have political parties if they aren’t supposed to be “partisan?”

The three Republican congressmen saw it as a rare ray of sunshine in Washington’s stormy budget battle: an invitation from the White House to hear President Obama lay out his ideas for taming the national debt.

They expected a peace offering, a gesture of goodwill aimed at smoothing a path toward compromise. But soon after taking their seats at George Washington University on Wednesday, they found themselves under fire for plotting “a fundamentally different America” from the one most Americans know and love.

“What came to my mind was: Why did he invite us?” Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said in an interview Thursday. “It’s just a wasted opportunity.”

The situation was all the more perplexing because Obama has to work with these guys: Camp is chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, responsible for trade, taxes and urgent legislation to raise the legal limit on government borrowing. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Tex.) chairs the House Republican Conference. And Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is House Budget Committee chairman and the author of the spending blueprint Obama lacerated as “deeply pessimistic” during his 44-minute address.

Give me a break! Why do we have political parties if they aren’t supposed to be “partisan?” I’d like to see a hell of a lot more partisanship on the Democratic side. Of course Republicans are never accused of “partisanship,” but it is simply assumed that they will be rabidly “partisan” and the press eats it up when they are. But don’t worry guys, Obama is just mouthing the appropriate words before he surrenders and gives you most of what you want again.

Whatever Obama thinks he’s doing, it doesn’t seem to be working for the majority of Americans. Today Gallup reported that the president’s job approval rating is only 41%. The biggest drop in support for Obama is among Independents, only 35% of whom approve of his performance.

The latest buzzword in DC is “serious.” Republicans and columnists rave about how “serious” Ryan’s budget bill is. Democrats claim Obama’s plan is the truly “serious” one. But as Dakinikat keeps explaining, neither of these plans is going to do much to pull the country out of the doldrums, because neither has even a nodding acquaintance with economic reality. For anyone to call any of these politicians and pundits “serious” is nothing but a sick joke.

Today was just another pointless day in the lives of the least serious people in the least serious city on earth.