Debt ceiling compromise clears the US Senate 63-36, Republican Senators extract pledge from Chucky Schumer for more defense spending which amounts to a pig in a poke so 31 vote against it anyway

Hello, all spending bills must originate in the House.

Some Senate Republicans are pretending you don't know that.

What a joke.

 CNBC:

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spent much of the day Thursday hammering out an agreement with a group of Senate Republicans who demanded that he pledge to support a supplemental defense funding bill before they would agree to fast-track the debt ceiling bill.

The current House debt ceiling bill provided $886 billion in defense spending for fiscal year 2024, an increase of 3% year over year. That figure rose to $895 billion in 2025, an increase of 1%.

But GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine called this “woefully inadequate” Thursday, arguing that a 1% increase did not keep pace with inflation, so in practical terms, it was actually a decrease in military funding. The solution came in the form of a rare joint statement from Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., which was read on the floor.

“This debt ceiling deal does nothing to limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds to ensure our military capabilities are sufficient to deter China, Russia and our other adversaries and respond to ongoing and growing national security threats,” Schumer read. “Nor does this debt ceiling limit the Senate’s ability to appropriate emergency supplemental funds and respond to various national issues, such as disaster relief, combating the fentanyl crisis or other issues of national importance,” said Schumer.

The Hill:

The normally slow-moving chamber raced through a dozen votes in just over three hours. ...

A total of 31 Republicans voted against the measure ...

Just four Democrats voted against the measure: Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), along with Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). ...

The legislation would provide $886 billion for defense, which negotiators described as a 3 percent increase, and $637 billion for non-defense programs, according to a White House summary. ...

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said McCarthy didn’t sign off on the agreement between Senate leaders and defense-minded GOP senators. ...

Asked how confident he is about a defense supplemental spending bill passing later in the year, Thune said, “hard to say.” 

“It was important for some of our members have folks on the record acknowledging there clearly could be a need, will be a need for our national security interests,” he said.

The US House passed the debt ceiling compromise 314-117 this evening

 

Seventy-one Republicans and 46 Democrats voted against the bill in the House — mostly liberals and conservatives protesting specific provisions of the bill. Their numbers, however, were never a threat to the bill’s passage because of a hodgepodge of moderates and leadership allies who — despite some acknowledging the bill wasn’t exactly what they wanted — threw their support behind the measure. ...

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Tuesday estimated that the bipartisan debt limit deal could reduce projected deficits by about $1.5 trillion over the next decade, a meager assessment compared to the roughly $4.8 trillion the nonpartisan scorekeeper said the GOP bill would save. ...

While votes on rules, which govern debate over legislation, typically break along party lines, 29 Republicans broke from the GOP and opposed the rule on Wednesday as a way to boycott the debt limit bill. Shortly before the vote closed — as the bill was poised to be blocked — 52 Democrats threw their support behind the rule, bringing the final vote to 241-187 and allowing the debt limit bill to advance to the floor for a full vote.

More.

Thomas Massie of Kentucky voted for the rule advancing the debt ceiling compromise to the House floor because the compromise contains the Penny Plan and a return to regular order

 The Penny Plan would be triggered in the event 12 appropriations bills are not passed by Jan. 1 annually, automatically reducing spending 1% across the board.

Ending the present bad habit of omnibus spending bills is essential to a return to good governance and represents a good reason to vote for this bill despite its shortcomings.

 

Massie followed through with his statement during Tuesday evening’s vote when he supported the rule. He also told reporters that he plans to vote for the bill when it comes to the floor on Wednesday after announcing it in a closed-door GOP conference meeting minutes earlier.

“It’s because it cuts spending,” Massie told The Hill Tuesday night when discussing his intent to support the bill.

“Nothing I’ve ever voted on has ever cut spending that’s passed that’s become law; this will,” he added.

During Tuesday’s Rules Committee hearing, Massie highlighted a provision in the debt limit bill that incentivizes Congress to pass 12 appropriations bills rather than relying on omnibus measures to fund the government. The provision threatens to cut government spending by one percent across the board if the measures are not approved by Jan. 1.

“There is one way in which I think this bill got better, and it is this 1 percent cut that we’re all agreeing to if we vote for this bill, Republicans and Democrat, come Jan. 1. If we haven’t done our homework, and if the Senate hasn’t done their homework, and if the president hasn’t signed those bills — so everybody is gonna be in this, responsible for the outcome,” Massie said.

More.

The debt ceiling compromise freezes spending in the next fiscal year about $400 billion too high, and does nothing to pay for the $4.9 trillion added to the debt over and above "normal" deficit spending

The Washington Examiner, here:

In exchange for a two-year hike in the federal borrowing limit, the legislation roughly freezes next year's spending at fiscal 2023 levels, followed by a 1% increase in 2025. The legislation also imposes some changes to work requirements for food stamps and will speed the development of energy projects with permitting reform.

Fiscal outlays for 2023 are projected to hit $5.792 trillion. Adjusted for inflation since 2019 that should be more like $5.385 trillion.

 

 

 

Meanwhile, deficit spending since 2019 through fiscal 2023 has added, will add, $8.5 trillion to the debt, which has been the solution to, and the cause of, all our problems.

We are not governed by serious people.

We have the government we deserve.

LOL, National Review reports AOC expels protesters at her own townhall in Queens, characteristically buried on the Friday night of the summer's first big holiday weekend to minimize such things

 

‘American Citizens before Migrants’: Protesters Heckle AOC at NYC Town Hall

Brittany BernsteinMay 27, 2023 11:06 AM

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) speaks at a U.S. House Financial Services Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., December 13, 2022. (Sarah Silbiger/Reuters)none

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Protesters booed and heckled Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a town hall she held in Queens, N.Y., on Friday night.

A man holding small American flags approached the progressive “Squad” member and shouted, “American citizens before migrants.”

“Where are you on the migrant issue? You’re a piece of s***,” he added.

Ocasio-Cortez said, “OK,” as the man was escorted off.

New York governor Kathy Hochul (D.) declared a state of emergency in New York after the expiration of Title 42 earlier this month. The state has roughly 60,000 asylum seekers relying on social services. New York City has gotten so overwhelmed with the influx of migrants that the city has begun sending them to the suburbs. Hochul said she is “looking at all state assets to help ameliorate the problem that is at a crisis level here in the City of New York,” which could includes housing migrants at SUNY campuses, closed psychiatric centers, large parks and parking lots.

Protesters at the town hall held signs concerning a number of issues: “America First. Vetted legal migrants only,” “Stop funding Ukraine,” “AOC: An Obvious Criminal,” and “AOC: Stop pushing drag queen story hour,”

More protesters came forward throughout the evening, including a woman who was critical of Ocasio-Cortez’s support for U.S. funding in Ukraine. The New York Democrat voted to send $40 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine last year.

“Stop funding this war, there’s a lot of communities that need help and need that money,” another woman said as she was removed from the event.

Ocasio-Cortez was met with both boos and cheers from the crowd when she suggested the Biden administration should abolish the debt limit, as a June 5 debt default deadline looms.

“$100 billion for Ukraine that you voted for!” one man shouted in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s comments on the debt ceiling.

The progressive lawmaker said earlier this week that the “stakes of a default cannot be understated.”

“The chaos that would ensue and the impact on people’s everyday lives would likely be immediate and it is one of the reasons why we need to take default off the table,” she said.

Send a tip to the news team at NR.

 

 

The Dingbat meant overstated, not understated.

As usual the media and the Democrats, but I repeat myself, are portraying the House Republican bill which lifts the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion as a bill with "big spending cuts"

This is how NPR, who else?, frames the issue from the beginning:

The House of Representatives has narrowly approved a Republican bill to raise the debt limit. However, it ties the ability to raise that debt ceiling to big spending cuts. And this House bill rolls back several of President Biden's key policies.

The House Republican bill, now languishing in the Senate, rolls back spending levels to pre-COVID levels. That's not a spending cut. That's saying, as Biden himself says, the emergency is over.

If the emergency is over, the emergency spending should end, too.

Outlays in fiscal 2020 and 2021 ballooned because of the new pandemic spending. Deficits for just those two years soared to almost $6 trillion. Republicans seek to roll that spending back. Democrats want that spending to form the new baseline. If Democrats succeed, Katy bar the door. The national debt will absolutely explode.

NPR knows this. It just chooses to hide the facts about it all, how the pandemic spending created these massive deficits, and how that spending which flooded the economy with money contributed to the new inflation:

So it raises the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or through March of 2024, whichever comes first. It also sets spending levels for federal programs to those that were in place two years ago. It limits the growth of spending going forward to 1% annually. But as you said, it also targets a list of the president's policies. It repeals the president's student loan forgiveness program, which is tied up in the courts. It claws back unspent COVID relief money and rolls back key energy provisions that were in the Inflation Reduction Act. It also puts in place new work requirements for adults without children who receive federal assistance like food stamps or Medicaid.

Sleepy Joe Biden played chicken with the debt ceiling legislation, waited until today to sign the bill hastily passed in the middle of the night yesterday

 Story.

The US House passed the $2.5 trillion increase to the debt ceiling in the dead of night with just one, unneeded, Republican vote

The bill, which lawmakers passed 221-209, with one Republican voting yes, raises the federal debt ceiling by $2.5 trillion to increase the limit to close to $31 trillion.

More. 

Adam Kinzinger was the lone Republican vote in the House:

Representative Adam Kinzinger was the only Republican lawmaker who voted with Democrats in the House to raise the debt ceiling, staving off a potentially disastrous federal default.

Last week, Kinzinger was also the only Republican to back the Democrats over the plan struck by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) allowing Senate Democrats to lift the ceiling through a simple majority vote.

The Illinois congressman, one of 10 Republicans to vote for the second impeachment of ex-President Donald Trump after the Capitol insurrection and one of only two GOP lawmakers on the January 6 committee investigating the riots that day, will not be standing for re-election in the 2022 midterms.

US Senate Democrats passed a $2.5 trillion increase to the debt ceiling 50-49 this afternoon without a single Republican vote after 14 Republicans voted to allow a one time simple majority arrangement

Seems like there's not much wiggle room between a $2.5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling and a proposed Democrat reconciliation spending bill now coming in at $1.75 trillion.

 Story.

 

 

$2.2 trillion Build Back Butter bill Democrats insisted would cost nothing CBO estimates would cost $367 billion over ten years

 

 

 

 

 

 

So-called Democrat moderates in the House voted for it anyway, 220-213, undermining Republican claims their votes could be peeled away once the infrastructure bill had been passed separately.

Between the $250 billion cost of the infrastructure bill and the $367 billion cost of the Build Back Better bill, the optimistic CBO estimated combined ten year costs will dig a $617 billion hole in addition to the $6.8 TRILLION in fiscal year deficits for 2020 and 2021 spent since the onset of the pandemic to alleviate it.

The pandemic spending orgy, which was bipartisan, makes this all seem like a kerfuffle about relatively little.

Already pared back from $3.5 trillion or more in spending, the BBB faces an uncertain future in the Senate. The wild spending dreams of progressives may have been dashed, but anyone who pretends any of this makes any sense is crazy.

The country is currently holding at $28.9 TRILLION in debt, and is set to explode higher pending the raising of the debt ceiling. 

From the story: 

The final outcome wasn't much in doubt after centrist Democrats' deficit concerns largely melted away.

The vote came hours after the Congressional Budget Office issued its official cost estimate of the sweeping legislation, which moderate Democrats eagerly awaited to ease their concerns over the fiscal impact. The Biden administration and Democratic backers of the bill have insisted it would pay for itself and not add to federal deficits.

The nonpartisan CBO, the official scorekeeper, offered a cost estimate with a little wiggle room. It said the measure would increase deficits by $367 billion over 10 years — but that doesn't count additional revenue that could come from increased IRS tax enforcement.

How much new revenue that effort would yield has been hotly debated. The White House has said increased enforcement, aided by an additional $80 billion in IRS funding, would produce $480 billion in new revenue over a decade. The CBO took a more cautious view, saying the effort might produce $207 billion.

"two-year suspension of the debt ceiling expired at the end of July"

Pure gobbledygook.

The limit, a facet of American politics for over a century, prevents the Treasury from issuing new bonds to fund government activities once a certain debt level is reached. That level reached $22 trillion in August 2019 and was suspended until Saturday. 

The new debt limit will include Washington’s additional borrowing since summer 2019. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in July that the new cap will likely come in just north of $28.5 trillion.

More gobbledygook.

The government's bookkeeping shenanigans here are always amazing, but especially now given the orgy of spending during the pandemic, and the reporting is nearly as bad.

The debt ceiling was "set" at $22 trillion in August 2019, but it wasn't "reached" until April 2021.

Add in the ever present "intragovernmental" borrowings and the total debt is now $28.46 trillion at the end of July. Intragovernmental holdings is code for raiding the Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds. It's one of the weird things about how bureaucrats think that the extent to which they must raid those funds plus the "normal" public debt becomes the sum they'll use to set the new "public" portion, the debt ceiling, when Congress gets around to it.

They all should be in jail. Instead we are.

Debt ceiling follies: The total public debt hit $18.152 trillion in mid March, but somehow the Treasury Dept. kept paying the bills for eight months without defaulting

March 2015

November 2015

US Senate passes House sequester buster, budget and debt ceiling package this morning at 3:00 AM

They do nothing most "weeks", which run from Tuesday to Thursday, and then ram utter crap through in hours. Bunch of goose poopers.

From the story here:

"The bill cleared on a 64-35 vote, with just 18 Republicans joining all Democrats in backing the bill. ... The debt deal had already cleared the House on Wednesday, as part of a rush by Republican leaders to get it done as quickly as possible, leaving little time for scrutiny. The 144-page deal was written late Monday, and the final Senate vote came at 3 a.m. Friday, meaning it was sped through in less than 100 hours."

Just 79 Republicans voted for new budget, blowing sequestration caps, lifting the debt ceiling to March 2017, and attempting to decide all spending for two years, a complete rout of the conservatives

The Roll Call vote is here, taken at 5:21 PM yesterday, before today's activities electing Ryan.

Boehner voted for it after engineering it. So did Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan, Fred Upton, Steve Scalise, Peter King, and Kevin Brady among others.

I note Peter Roskam voted No.

The story is discussed here.

A complete travesty abdicating spending responsibility just like Cromnibus, but worse. 

Sean Trende spells out the achievements of John Boehner

Sean Trende notes that:

• federal expenditures on a quarterly basis flatlined beginning in early 2011, right when Republicans took control of the House under Boehner, largely because of sequestration won in the debt ceiling showdown that year despite controlling only one chamber of Congress, "no small feat";

• even "more impressive" was the fiscal cliff deal brokered by John Boehner in late 2012, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, again with control of only the House of Representatives;

• Boehner "managed to kill" the immigration bill that came out of Mitch McConnell's US Senate, despite "substantial internal pressures" all around to pass it.

Much more at the link.

Gretchen Morgenson smells a rat: Fannie/Freddie bailout cost us nearly $188 billion, but Treasury rakes in the profits

Gretchen Morgenson for The New York Times, here:

For decades, the companies had maintained that their mortgage operations posed no risk to taxpayers; their pals in Congress echoed this refrain. But then came the mortgage debacle, and taxpayers had to shore up the companies with $187.5 billion. Initially, Fannie and Freddie had to pay interest on the loan. But in August 2012, the Treasury and F.H.F.A. abruptly changed the agreement; under the so-called third amendment, the government began sweeping all the companies’ profits into the Treasury. Since then, Fannie and Freddie have been immensely profitable. As of last December, the Treasury had received a total of $225.4 billion from the companies. ... 

The initial $187.5 billion loan remains outstanding, however, because of the deal’s structure. ...

But recall what was going on in mid-2012. The presidential election was in full swing, and Democrats and Republicans were clashing over the debt ceiling. That May, in a shock to many, Fannie and Freddie reported profits from their operations for the first time since the mortgage crisis. The amount: $4.5 billion. And plenty more was to come. Certainly, giving the Treasury access to billions of dollars in the companies’ profits during this time provided financial flexibility to the executive branch that Congress might not otherwise have approved.

Total Public Debt Owed Jumps $328 Billion After Debt Ceiling Extended

click to enlarge

Ted Cruz And Mike Lee Aren't Heroes. They Hung John Boehner Out To Dry.

During his non-filibuster filibuster, Sen. Ted Cruz had called defunding ObamaCare a matter of life and death: 

“In a football game we all cheer for our respective teams. I cheer for the Houston Texans. It’s a good thing to cheer for your team…This isn’t a team sport. This is life and death. There is a fundamental divide between the government and the people."

Presumably a matter of life and death means you'd do anything to stop ObamaCare, including block the raising of the debt ceiling to accomplish that.

That's what could have happened yesterday afternoon if Cruz, or Lee, or Rand Paul or Marco Rubio or any of the other senators opposed to ObamaCare in the Senate had moved to delay, which any of them easily could have. Then the deadline set by the US Treasury would have come and gone, and all hell would have broken loose.

Yes, within a day or two the bill in the Senate still would have been passed and sent to Speaker Boehner, who, being perhaps another man by that time, might have refused to bring the bill up for a vote in the US House, throwing down the gauntlet once and for all.

We'll never know, but no Republican in the Senate gave Mr. Boehner any political cover to take such a courageous stand and desperate action to stop the single biggest assault by government against free enterprise in this country in its history.

Speaker Boehner for his part received a standing ovation from the Republicans for his leadership in this affair because he went to the mat for members with whose views he personally disagreed, views they shared with Cruz and Lee. Too bad Ted Cruz and Mike Lee didn't go to the mat for him.

The Far Left Also Realizes Boehner Won. Too Bad Republicans Don't.

The Nation, here:

Because the deal only includes minor concessions, the Beltway consensus is that it represents a resounding defeat for Republicans, who “surrendered” their original demands to defund or delay Obamacare. In the skirmish of opinion polls, that may be true, for now. But in the war of ideas, the Senate deal is but a stalemate, one made almost entirely on conservative terms. The GOP now goes into budget talks with sequestration as the new baseline, primed to demand longer-term cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And they still hold the gun of a US default to the nation’s head in the next debt ceiling showdown.

---------------------------

Boehner, last August, who got exactly this, despite having to try the so-called Tea Party gambit of defunding ObamaCare, which failed because of all the RINOs in the Senate, and was destined to fail from the beginning for that very reason, if only people like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee had bothered to check their voting records:

“When we return, our intent is to move quickly on a short-term continuing resolution that keeps the government running and maintains current sequester spending levels,” Boehner (R-Ohio) said on a conference call with GOP lawmakers, according to a person on the call.

“Our message will remain clear,” Boehner said. “Until the president agrees to better cuts and reforms that help grow the economy and put us on path to a balanced budget, his sequester — the sequester he himself proposed, insisted on and signed into law — stays in place.”

Boehner Knew The Political Danger Of A Shutdown. Republicans Should Have Listened To Him.

As always, Republican disunity becomes the Democrat opening, but Boehner deserves blame for not insisting on his preference and for letting someone else set the agenda, which unfortunately is his habit. The speaker of the House must assert the co-equality of it.

Politico, here:

Boehner allies strongly reject the idea that the speaker could be damaged by this latest debacle. After all, it was Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) who was setting the terms of this debate, not Boehner. The Ohio Republican wanted to pass a clean government-funding bill more than a month ago, while organizing a tidy negotiating process around the debt ceiling. Instead, everything became one big mess, where House Republicans were unsure what they were asking for, what they should be seeking, and for what price.