Gang of 12: "This Committee is Empowered Beyond Previous Bipartisan Attempts at Deficit Reduction:

Certainly the 6 Republicans on this empowered Gang of 12 will be committed to destroying Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They will need ONLY ONE vote from a DLC, Blue Dog, or wavering Democrat to be assured an up or down vote under the duress of automatic cuts.

Will Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi send a delegation of 6 Democrats with the integrity and values of Sanders and Kucinich, with nary a single DINO?

We have our work cut out for us.





:kick:

Maybe one more moderate Dem just for show. What do you think?

They're dead anyway on December 31, 2012.

If they do, the cuts could conceivably live; if they don't, there's really no chance for them, since they'll have been ruled out by the GOP's own rhetoric.

It's not gonna happen.

But I would imagine the GOP will lose Brown in any vote (since he would like to keep his job -- though God help them if they're idiotic enough to primary him like they're talking about; with enemies like that who needs friends?) So, yeah, your point is taken

Under threat of across-the-board cuts?

How's that?

So, for this to be really really bad, you'd need

1) A Democrat on the committee, chosen by Reid and Pelosi (according to you), siding with GOPers on massive cuts to Social Security
2) Such a measure passing an up-or-down vote in the Democratic controlled Senate

Yeah, I'll take my chances with that rather than default. What's the duress here?

....agreed to by Democratic Senators Baucus, Bingaman, & Conrad in the Gang of 6 proposal. In both cases "Democrats" agreed to changes that would (among other things) fraudulently re-rig the CPI/COLA calculation methods to substitute chained CPI and slash SS benefits for both present and future retirees (who have already seen zero COLA for at least 2 years thanks to the "no inflation" rigging of CPI after the Boskin Commission in the 90's.


The duress is that without rubber-stamping the Gang of 12 recommendations that automatic cuts will take place, including cuts to Medicare, which will result in reduced access to providers.

Oh, that's right.

As for the duress, you're saying that the Senators would opt for massive cuts to Social Security rather than risk provider-side haircuts in Medicare? You understand that that makes no sense, right. It's like saying that somebody would cut off their own head rather than spend a year in jail. The deal includes an absolute ban on enforcement mechanisms touching Social Security, and that was included so that they touch Social Security on the front end in the recommendations? That doesn't make much sense either. Why fight to prevent it on the back (enforcement) end if you're OK with cutting it on the front (recommendation) end?

As it stands, it's actually the GOP who are under duress on the across-the-board enforcement mechanisms. They have to either take a massive cut to defense projects and other projects in their districts, or vote on a tax increase through the reform recommendations. While a naive understanding says that they will opt for the cuts, since they always seem to want cuts rather than revenues, the triggers are actually set up to show that they really DON'T want cuts in these specific places, which, of course, we've know3n all along. It's actually the GOP that ends up hosed on the enforcement mechanisms, which is why they're already out there screaming bloody murder about it.

It did not "make sense" for the "Democrats" on either Simpson/Bowles or in the Gang of 6 to support the fraudulent re-rigging of CPI?COLA calculations, but they did.

Nor did it "make sense" for the President to abandon the public option, for the Democratic Senate to cave to Lieberman on the Medicare-buy-in option, for the President to renew the Bush tax cuts, reverse himself on Gitmo, support the renewal of the PATRIOT Act, or appoint the people he did to the Simpson/Bowles Commission.

automatic cuts will take place, including cuts to Medicare, which will result in reduced access to providers.

There will be no cuts whatsoever to Medicare recipients. If the plan does not go through, the "doctor fix", which allows health care costs from providers to rise faster than inflation, will not happen. This is not a cut. And we absolutely must rein in health care costs and pretending otherwise is putting our heads in the sand.

in Medicare payments to providers). Access to primary providers is a real (and growing) problem.


You are most correct that we must reign in health care costs.


One aspect of the problem is that cognitive services are significantly undervalued, and often superfluous, unnecessary, and/or dangerous high-tech diagnostic tests and procedures are overvalued, resulting in more expensive, poorly quality care.


Across the board cuts to providers does not address this discrepancy, but results in diminished access to cheaper, more efficacious, more cognitive, primary care. And it actually exacerbates the overuse of unnecessary (and in many cases harmful), overpriced procedure-based modalities.






:hi:

accidental dupe

Please tell me you do actually know that the Constitution explicitly gives Congress the powers to set its rules. And that they have done this all the damn time to suspend debate on the results of joint select committees including last year for health care reform.

Paul Ryan, Orrin Hatch, Louise Slaughter, Kent Conrad are my early picks

my reply was something like get real ... but we should try.

I'm not familiar with adding new branches of government with super powers.

This kind of rules suspension happens a lot, it's just never been used specifically about deficit reduction. Do you guys have shares in nitroglycerin companies or something? I've never seen so many people freaking out about something so silly.

and agreeing to suspend particular Congressional-created rules (that do not appear in the Constitution, by the way) for the various purposes. Because that's what this is. All the Constitution says is that the houses get to determine their own rules (apart from the various 2/3 requirements). The difference between this joint committee and the regular order of business is that it modifies those rules for the purpose of this legislation. Essentially, when the House and Senate vote on this (tomorrow) they will be voting to amend the rules for a one-time shot in order to deal with the Committee's recommendations. There's nothing unconstitutional about amending rules at all.

The problem, rather, is procedural. Senate rules do state that a 2/3 majority is required to change a rule (that's why the filibuster/cloture rules are still in effect). So, why isn't an agreement to suspend the cloture rule subject to the same 2/3 majority vote?

Hmmm.

to do its dirty work.

The President of the Senate can move to make a future motion that has never been tabled non-debatable and carry the motion with a majority. A Senator may later raise a point of order to rescind that rules change but carrying that point requires a 2/3rds majority of the body -- it's essentially a pre-emptive counter-filibuster against a proposed filibuster. IIRC the last person to do that was Stennis; the reconciliation process is the more usual route to cram something through the Senate (though in this case the point seems to be to cram something through the House).

...and I wonder if it is what the right wanted most of all. Is it constitutional?

...to get this supercongress as a precedent?

This isn't something new or unprecedented. It was how we passed health care reform and it's how we close military bases.

They're whispering "mistrust" in my ear.