Senate Passes $3.7 Trillion Budget, Setting Up Contentious Negotiations

The 50-to-49 vote in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats, sets up contentious — and potentially fruitless — negotiations with the Republican-controlled House in April to reconcile two vastly different plans for dealing with the nation’s economic and budgetary problems. No Republicans voted for the Senate plan, and four Democrats opposed it: Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Mark Begich of Alaska and Max Baucus of Montana. All four are from red states and are up for re-election in 2014.

“The Senate has passed a budget,” Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the Senate Budget Committee chairwoman, declared at 4:56 a.m.

The House plan ostensibly brings the government’s taxes and spending into balance by 2023 with cuts to domestic spending even below the levels of automatic across-the-board cuts roiling federal programs now, and it orders up dramatic and controversial changes to Medicare and the tax code.

The Senate plan, by contrast, includes $100 billion in upfront infrastructure spending to bolster the economy and calls for special fast-track rules to overhaul the tax code and raise $975 billion over 10 years in legislation that could not be filibustered. Even with that tax increase and prescribed spending cuts, the Senate plan would leave the government with a $566 billion annual deficit in 10 years, and $5.2 trillion in additional debt over that window.

“The first priority of the Senate budget is creating jobs and economic growth from the middle out, not the top down,” Ms. Murray said. “With an unemployment rate that remains stubbornly high, and a middle class that has seen their wages stagnate for far too long, we simply cannot afford any threats to our fragile recovery.”

Republicans were harshly dismissive of the Democrats’ priorities. “Honest people can disagree on policy, but where there can be no honest disagreement is the need to change our nation’s debt course,” said Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the committee’s ranking Republican. “The singular truth that no one can escape is that the House budget changes our debt course while the Senate budget does not.”

Passage of the competing spending plans does advance a more orderly budget process after nearly three years of crises and brinkmanship. If House and Senate negotiators can agree on a framework for overhauling the tax code and entitlement programs like Medicare, Congress’s committees could go to work on detailed legislation, possibly under special rules that protect the bills from a Senate filibuster.

If the negotiations prove fruitless, the next budget crisis looms this summer when Congress must again raise the government’s statutory borrowing limit or risk defaulting on the federal debt. On Thursday, House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio revived a rule — breached in January — that any increase in the debt ceiling must be accompanied by equivalent spending cuts.

Final passage of the Senate budget was upstaged by the process that got the senators to it, a marathon session known since 1977 as the budget “vote-a-rama.” More than 500 amendments were filed, and 70 were voted on. Those numbers dwarf previous marathon voting sessions, reflecting pent-up Republican demand for votes and a new, uncompromising view of procedure on the part of Tea Party-backed senators.

The amendments were advisory only, but they put the Senate on record on a dizzying variety of subjects, including limiting the regulation of sage grouse, preventing the United Nations from infringing on Americans’ right to bear arms, repealing a tax on medical devices that helps finance the president’s health care law and building the Keystone XL pipeline.

By 4 a.m., the senators were sitting quietly in their seats, plowing through amendments like sleepy schoolchildren, breaking only to give the Senate pages a standing ovation and to grumble when a senator demanded a roll-call vote if a voice vote would suffice. As the senators recorded their final votes, they hastily left for a two-week spring recess.

But the sleepy bonhomie did not bridge the divide between the parties. Senate Republicans and Democrats could not even agree on what was in the Democratic budget. Ms. Murray said the plan matched its $975 billion in revenue increases with cuts and interest savings of equal size. But Republicans said it did not, since it reversed $1 trillion in across-the-board cuts but did not count that against their spending cuts.

Those differences did not lend themselves to much optimism about the coming budget negotiations. “The only good news is that the fiscal path the Democrats laid out in their budget resolution won’t become law,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader.

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Senate Passes Its First Portion of Obama's Jobs Plan (The Atlantic Wire)

A bill giving businesses tax credits for hiring military veterans became the first part of President Barack Obama's sweeping American Jobs Act to pass the Senate on Thursday. It's also the first bit of jobs-bill cooperation for the Senate in a while, Politico notes. After Republicans blocked the American Jobs Act as a whole back in October, Democrats tried to introduce it piece by piece, but the two bills they've brought to the Senate floor have both failed. Earlier on Thursday, Democrats scored some retribution on the Republicans by defeating its alternative jobs plan. But later, in an especially rare bit of bipartisanship, the vote to approve the veteran-hiring bill (on the eve of Veterans' Day, no less) was 94-to-1, with only Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, saying the government shouldn't "privilege one American over another when it comes to work." DeMint's counterpart, Lindsey Graham, had the quote of the day, however, with this pep talk: "There is more potential [for bipartisanship] than people realize. You just got to want it."

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House passes measure to avoid government shutdown, but Senate won’t (The Ticket)

Reid (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

The House of Representatives early Friday morning passed a continuing resolution to fund the government and avoid a looming shutdown after the first attempt to pass a resolution failed. But Senate Democrats are strongly opposed to the new measure.

"The bill the House will vote on tonight is not an honest effort at compromise. It fails to provide the relief that our fellow Americans need as they struggle to rebuild their lives in the wake of floods, wildfires and hurricanes, and it will be rejected by the Senate," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement prior to the vote, which resulted in passage 219-203.

Democrats argue the new resolution includes inadequate disaster funds for FEMA, and they oppose spending cuts to programs they say are necessary to stimulate the economy.

"Wake up! Wake up! You can't kill these programs. This is the solution you are killing," Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said on the House floor, referring to cuts to environmental programs he argues are going to help Americans against natural disasters.

But Republicans who support the measure say that the proposed spending cuts are key to rescuing the economy.

"I'm not one of those people who believe that we have to offset every emergency," Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said on the House floor. " . . . . But in the past, we have not had a 14 trillion dollar deficit!" he shouted. "That's the danger to this country--is the 14 trillion dollar deficit and the 1.6 trillion we add to it every damn year!"

The first continuing resolution that came before the House earlier this week failed when Democrats joined 48 Republican conservative fiscal hawks in the House to defeat it. So House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) appealed to conservatives and made deeper cuts in the current resolution, which drew opposition from just 24 House Republicans. Six Democrats also supported the current bill.

Both parties face a time crunch. The government is currently funded through the fiscal year, which concludes Sept. 30. Democrats say FEMA may require additional funds as early as Sept. 26. And Congress is scheduled to be in recess following today's session in observance of next week's Rosh Hashana holiday.

Reid said Friday he would put the measure up for a vote this morning but that it is dead on arrival.

Update 12:47 p.m. EST: The Senate voted to table the resolution 59-36. Reid has scheduled a vote for Monday evening.

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Pennsylvania's Voter Photo ID Bill Passes in House (ContributorNetwork)

Voter photo identification is becoming a huge issue as the 2012 presidential elections approach. A frequent complaint heard from some Democrats is that many voters will become disenfranchised due to the more stringent voting regulations being passed in several states.

Republicans point to close elections as good reason to ensure the integrity of America's electoral processes through electoral reform legislation.

Meanwhile, Monroe-Pike County State Rep. Rosemary Brown voted yesterday with 107 members of the state assembly for a voter photo identification bill meant to maintain the integrity of the state's election systems. If the bill is approved in the Pennsylvania Senate and then signed by Gov. Tom Corbett, it will require that voters present valid photo identification each time they go to the polls.

The bill was opposed by many Democrats who say that it will impact the poor, minorities, and other groups. The vote favoring House Bill 934 was debated and voted upon yesterday, after several amendments were turned back during the week.

Though the vote in favor of the bill was split largely along party lines, Brown feels that ensuring the integrity of the state's elections is not a partisan issue.

Brown referenced the recommendations of the 2005 Commission on Federal Electoral Reform co-chaired by former President Carter and by former Secretary of State James Baker. The Commission report cited examples in which illegal votes determined election outcomes in Wisconsin and the state of Washington in 2004.

With regard to the assertion that photo identification voting would discriminate against certain groups, the committee recommendation was that election officials would develop initiatives to locate voters without suitable IDs and to provide them with IDs free of charge.

Representative Brown pointed out that suitable photo identification was required to board airplanes, cash checks, and enter federal buildings.

As things stand now, seven states have strict photo identification requirements although the election rules governing those states, in some cases, are not yet in effect. The new photo ID rules in those states are expected to be applicable to voting in 2012, and so the new initiatives to validate voter rolls has become a hot political issue.

In addition to those seven states where strict voter identification rules will apply in the presidential elections of 2012, there are seven more states where non-photo-ID voters can vote if they identify themselves through other means. It is the variability of other means that could invite illegal voters to game the system.

Some poll monitors allow identification with such documentation as utility bills or bank statements which can be manipulated by those so disposed. Others allow provisional voting if the voter provides acceptable documentation within 48 hours of the provisional vote. The lack of uniformity in validating legitimate voters and weeding out fraudulent ones is one of the reasons voter identification initiatives have become popular.

Requiring acceptable photo identification may ultimately be the least expensive way to curtail vote fraud of all types, even if additional state resources must be spent to assist some voters. Another Washington State voter fraud case wasn't intended to determine the outcome of an election, but rather to line the pockets of the voter registrants.

In 2007, seven paid employees and supervisors of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) were hit with felony charges and fines for attempting to register voters from phone book listings.

Anthony Ventre is a freelance writer who has written for weekly and daily newspapers and several online publications. He is a frequent contributor to Yahoo in news pertaining to Pennsylvania.

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