Senate
Republicans scrubbing the Ryan-Murray budget deal have come across a
little-noticed provision that will limit the GOP’s ability to block tax
increases in future years.
The bill includes language from
the Senate Democrats’ budget that voids senators’ ability to raise a
budget “point of order” against replacing the sequester cuts with tax
increases.
The process is quite complicated, but in practice it
grants Harry Reid the authority to send tax increases to the House with a
bare majority, rather than the 60-vote threshold that would be required
under a point of order.
The provision has angered key Republican
senators. Reeling from Harry Reid’s unprecedented use of the “nuclear
option” to end the filibuster on executive-branch nominations, they are
dismayed that Paul Ryan would have backed another limit to their power.
“This
is an appalling power grab that should never have been allowed to be in
a final agreement. It’s essentially the ‘nuclear option’ part two,
eroding minority rights in the Senate even further. Harry Reid must be
very happy,” a Senate GOP aide says.
A House aide says Reid can
send tax bills to the House all he wants, since they will never fly in
the lower chamber. “House Republicans would never approve a tax
increase,” he says.
While that’s true, the change will likely give
Reid a potent political cudgel to hit Republicans, since passage of
one bill can put pressure on the other chamber to take it up.
In
the Ryan-Murray bill, the change is found on pages 17 to 18 in the
legislative text, where the bill sets up a “deficit neutral reserve
fund” and incorporates 57 individual sections of the Senate Democrats’
budget as having “force and effect.”
These provisions are a big
loophole for PAYGO rules that give senators the authority to raise a
point of order on spending and tax bills, creating a 60-vote threshold.
There is a detailed explanation
for the process in this 2009 document from then-senator Judd Gregg’s
staff when he was the ranking member on the Budget Committee.
Although
the (current) Senate rules generally require 60 votes for passage of a
bill, a bill can be amended after cloture has been achieved. In the case
of the fall shutdown fight, Republicans helped provide the 60 votes to
obtain cloture on the CR, after which Reid took out the defund-Obamacare
provision and passed the bill with a bare majority.
(Click link below to read more)
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Thursday, December 12, 2013
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