The Budgetmania Begins

Late last night, the House began voting on the substitute budget amendments to the Ryan budget.  Here is a quick rundown.

Simpson-Bowles

Every single Republican in Washington is committed to doing everything in his or her power to terminate Obamacare, right?  Wrong!

Last night, 16 Republicans from the ‘pale-pastel caucus’ voted for the Simpson-Bowles budget alternative in the form of the Cooper-LaTourette amendment.  This budget fully funds Obamacare. Period.  There would have been more supporters if not for the fact that Heritage Action and other organizations scored against the vote.

Over the next few months, we will hear many self-ingratiating protestations over our conservative choices for Congress, particularly our Senate candidates.  They will claim that we must elect any Republican that they deem to be electable, as the only means of garnering 51 votes to repeal Obamacare through reconciliation.  Anyone who thinks that “just any Republican” would have the courage to seek full repeal through expedited parliamentary measures (especially if the Supreme Court strikes down only part of the law) is not grounded in reality.

As an aside, the Simpson-Bowles budget also raises $1.2 trillion in taxes to feed the voracious bureaucracy, fails to deal with the major drivers of the deficit, cuts the military, and fails to close one agency or abolish a single program.  The amendment was defeated 38-382; 22 Democrats and 16 Republicans voted for it.  The list of Republican supporters is below the fold.**  And no, they’re not all from swing districts.

In addition to the Simpson-Bowles budget, the House held votes on several other proposals.  The final vote on the underlying bill – the Ryan budget – and the RSC alternative will take place later on Thursday.  Here are the roll call results for those budget alternatives:

Obama’s Budget

Mick Malvaney offered an amendment in the form of Obama’s budget proposal to see how many votes it would attract.  Well, it didn’t attract any.  It was defeated 0-414.  What a bunch of cowards.

CBC Budget

The annual Congressional Black Caucus budget, which proposed $595 billion more in spending than Obama and raised $4 trillion in taxes, was defeated 107-314.  Yes, there are that many inviolate kooks in the House.  If only we had 107 unvarnished conservatives on our side in the most conservative districts like they have in the most liberal districts.

Tomorrow, the House will vote on the RSC budget and the Democrat Budget Committee amendment before voting on final passage of the Ryan budget.

Here is one cautionary note about the vote tally on the RSC budget.  While a yay vote on the annual RSC budget is often a good litmus test for where the member is holding, there are some wolves in sheep’s skin that muddle the tally with unprincipled yay votes.  Confident that the budget will ultimately fail to win passage, they cast a yay vote as a means of protecting their identity.  Last year, Democrats exposed these imposters by voting present on the RSC budget.  Fearing that the present votes would give conservatives the low-threshold majority to pass the bill, many of the pale-pastel Republicans changed their yay votes back to nay in order to ensure that Democrats wouldn’t “saddle” them with the RSC budget.  It will be interesting to see what happens this time around.

**GOP yay votes for Simpson-Bowles

Bass, C. (NH-02)

Buerkle (NY-25)

Dent (PA-15)

Dold (IL-10)

Gibson, C. (NY-20)

Johnson, Timothy (IL-15)

LaTourette (OH-14)

Lummis (WY-AL)

Meehan (PA-07)

Petri (WI-06)

Platts (PA-19)

Reed, T. (NY-29)

Shimkus (IL-19)

Simpson, M. (ID-02)

Wolf (VA-10)

Young, D. (AK-AL)

Cross-posted from The Madison Project

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