Could they really be doing something?

Rumors of a possible budget deal between the White House and congressional leaders has become a New York Times story which suggests the deal is close to completed.

Apart from avoiding potential upcoming unpleasantness over the debt ceiling as well as funding the government, the two year deal also reportedly remedies the scheduled 50% rise in Medicare B premiums for many seniors (including me).  The Times:

The prospective agreement would also prevent expected increases in out-of-pocket costs for millions of Medicare Part B beneficiaries. The increases would have been caused by the rare absence of a cost-of-living increase in Social Security for some beneficiaries, because of unusually low inflation.

The headlines will say that cuts are made in Medicare and Social Security but these appear to be technical and administrative, and do not affect benefits, including to the disabled.

The story does not deal with political prospects for its passage by Congress.  So stay tuned.

Update: As of Monday evening, according to the Washington Post, the deal has been taken to Republican members in the House and Senate.  Conservatives have signaled that they aren't going to contest the debt ceiling hike this time, but no word yet on the other elements of this two year budget deal.

Update 2: As of late Monday, a CNN story says a number of Republicans are upset by the deal, but the story agrees with earlier stories that probably there are enough Republicans to join with Democrats to pass the deal, which the current House Speaker John Banal will likely bring to the floor on Wednesday, just before Paul Ryan is nominated as the next Speaker.

Update 3: Just before midnight Monday House GOPer leaders introduced the budget deal bill on the House floor, ensuring that it will come to a vote no later than Wednesday, according to the Washington Post. (As you recall from Civics, spending bills must originate in the House.) The provision preventing the Medicare premium rise from going into effect is in this bill.

Update 4 Tues: The Washington Post summarizes the provisions in more detail, while the New York Times narrates how the deal came about--a combination of the unique circumstance of a Speaker leaving, and President Obama's firmness in budget priorities, backed by congressional Democrats.  According to the Post, the rise in Medicare premiums will be $18 a month, instead of $54.  Still an unusually large jump in premiums.  The House is expected to vote on the package Wednesday and the Senate on Thursday.  It's expected to pass in both houses.

Update Wednesday: The House passed the bill with only 79 Republican votes, 266-167. No major changes in it were reported.

Update Friday: After a nightime fillibuster by Rand Paul and other GOPers, the budget bill passed the Senate on Friday, and President Obama announced he would sign it.  The immediate effect is to avoid the government running out of money in a few days, and another preposterous fight over authorizing the US to pay its debts.  But the Medicare provision remains in the law.

Washington Sticking It To Seniors

This hits home, literally.  The recent announcements from Social Security and Medicare raise multiple issues, but the very local bottom line amounts to what for me is a hefty cost, as my medical insurance monthly rate will increase by 50%.

As per stories like this one in the Washington Post, Social Security announced there will be no cost of living increase in payments next year, because the Consumer Price Index formula they use says that costs haven't gone up.

Then in the very next breath, the Medicare branch of Social Security announced that medical costs have gone up for them so much that the charge for Medicare part B (covers doctors) will be raised from around $100 to over $150 a month.

The logic of this is incredible.  Cost of living hasn't gone up, and mine has just gone up by $50 a month.  First of all, anybody alive in California and most places in the US know that costs of almost everything essential have been going up all year--you know, little things like food, clothing and shelter.  Just about the only thing that hasn't increased lately is gasoline.

So where does gas figure in the costs of seniors I wonder?  Except for the RV crowd, not very high--certainly not as high as food, clothing and shelter--and medical care.

The situation is crazier because not all seniors will feel this Medicare increase--just some of those collecting Social Security, and all of those of us who aren't yet but have Medicare.  We're waiting to claim when the benefits get a little higher.  They will still be inadequate, but they'll be a little higher.  Except thanks to this increase, they won't be even as much as they would have been--because this premium raise will be deducted from those monthly checks, which otherwise haven't been increased because the cost of living hasn't gone up.  Right.

So let's review: Congratulations, the cost of living hasn't gone up so neither does your Social Security check.  And incidentally, we'll be deducting an extra $55 or so from your check because our medical insurance costs have gone up by 50%.  It's a new definition of fixed income.

I'm paying Medicare B even though I've yet to use it but that's perhaps beside the point.  It's insurance.  Still I'm one of the unlucky ones who gets to pay even more--a lot more.

As this Post story indicates, some people in the federal government--in the White House, even in Congress--recognize the multiple injustices in these announcements.  But thanks to our non-functional Congress, the chance of something actually being done in a timely fashion to correct any or all of this, approaches the vanishing point.

Like an indecent proportion of my limited income.

Tweeter Says: Bribes are just somebody's way of saying I love you

What's the fuss about Congress killing disclosure of who finances their free trips?  If money is speech and corporations are people, what's the problem?  Bribes are just somebody's way of saying I love you.

House of Horrors

There are real stories accompanying this New Yorker cover, but the one that sums up the national mood is a previous post by Andy Borowitz, titled Poll: Americans Divided Over What Wild Animal They Would Like To See Congress Mauled By:

"While a majority of Americans say they would enjoy seeing Congress torn limb from limb by a ferocious bear, there is disagreement over which species of bear would be best suited for that assignment.

But the poll showed that there was also strong support for the idea of Congress being set upon by a pack of rapacious animals, with rabid hyenas the first choice of many respondents, followed by feral dogs and cats.

While insatiable, bloodthirsty mammals were most often cited as the animals Americans would like to see eviscerate Congress, there was significant support for another scenario, involving Congress being consumed by a swarm of predatory insects."

One of the actual stories is about the 14th amendment, especially apropos since--and this is not satire--a GOPer congressman who supports the party's position threatening default has said that if default actually happens, Obama might be impeached for failing to guarantee the full faith and credit of the U.S.

At his press conference, Henrick Hertzberg notes, President Obama said that invoking the 14th amendment is so legally controversial that it would not end insecurity and doubt in the market, and so would not leave the economy undamaged.

But if default were really going to happen, H. writes, Obama's best option might still be the 14th amendment:

"In the end, Obama could have no honorable choice but to invoke the Fourteenth. There is little doubt that he would prevail. The Supreme Court would be unlikely even to consider the matter, since no one would have standing to bring a successful suit: when the government pays its bills, who is damaged? The House Republicans might draw up articles of impeachment, adopt them, and send them to the Senate, where the probability of a conviction would be zero. This would not be a replay of Bill Clinton and the intern. President Clinton was not remotely guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, but he was guilty of something, and that something was sordid. Yet impeachment was what put Clinton on a glide path to his present pinnacle as a wildly popular statesman. President Obama would be guilty only of saving the nation’s economy, and the world’s."

Everything You Need To Know About the Impending Federal Govt Shutdown

Today's Headlines

Boehner Advises Americans to Delay Getting Cancer for a Year
(satire)

House GOP Votes for Shutdown, Says That’s Not What They Did
(not satire)

Circus of Disgrace

I've been trying to ignore the latest round of disgrace in Congress over the federal budget and the debt ceiling.  (As apparently have others, as evidenced by the only slightly satirical Borowitz headline: In Poll About Debt-Ceiling Crisis, Americans Totally Excited About New iPhone.)  I do note that 2 years after the first attempted shakedown, the White House is repeatedly characterizing it for what it is: blackmail, extortion, holding the American people hostage.  (One WH aide quoted today saying we're not negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest.)

The House GOP maniacs forcing these crises issued what Jonathan Chiat charactrized as their ransom demands for passing the bill that says yes Congress will pay its debts after all. As Jonathan Chiat writes: "It’s Mitt Romney’s 2012 economic plan. Almost word for word, in fact... The fact that a major party could even propose anything like this is a display of astonishing contempt for democratic norms. Republicans ran on this plan and lost by 5 million votes. They also lost the Senate and received a million fewer votes in the House but held control owing to favorable district lines. Is there an example in American history of a losing party issuing threats to force the majority party to implement its rejected agenda?"

WH Press Secretary Jay Carney quipped that he was surprised it didn't include a birther bill.  But like a lot of absurdity we've become all too used to, at the core this has a price in people's pain, suffering, illness and forced death: specifically the horrifying and cynical efforts to prevent Americans from getting better and more affordable health care.

The Affordable Care Act exchanges open on Oct. 1, with generally lower premiums offered that before and that anyone predicted, including the CBO.  But there have been glitches and delays in parts of it.  Jonathan Bernstein in his blog suggested possible real world reasons for these and asked the political scientists and other professionals who read his blog for the information they had, since reporters don't seem to do that kind of reporting anymore.  In several of the responses, it seems that the delays and glitches are often caused deliberately by GOPer governments in the states actually trying to make it harder for people to get health care, and congressional GOPers trying to subvert the program partly by denying it enough funding.

We all know that politics more often brings out the worst than the best in people who hold office.  But the price of their illusory power and cheap perks is the health and happiness of many people, most of them in the lower depths of the 99%.  It's sick and sickening.

Where the Brains Are in Congress

"By ending his filibuster only when he finally had to take a leak, [Senator Rand] Paul made a powerful case for the proposition that our government might function far more smoothly if our elected representatives’ bladders rather than their brains called the shots."
--Frank Rich, New York Magazine online

cliffnotes continued, plus Cockroaches More Popular Than Congress

There are three remaining cliffs: the debt ceiling, renewing the funding for the federal government, and the sequestered budget cuts.

For awhile it seemed they might be happening simultaneously, but now, maybe not quite.  It turns out that the U.S. will be unable to pay its bills in mid-February, requiring that the debt ceiling be raised.

President Obama has been saying for some time now that he will not negotiate on the debt crisis.  Before the tax cliff deal, those words were being ignored by GOPers and the media.  They figured President Obama would have to negotiate.  But he kept saying he won't.  And Democrats in Congress kept saying it.  And now, media and GOPers alike are beginning to believe him.  And GOPers are beginning to back away. Commentators on Lawrence suggested that Obama may even get authority for all presidents to raise the debt ceiling on their own, so that this issue will go away forever.

Partly this seems a judgment that the GOP can't win on this.  The polls clearly show that the public believe President Obama handled the tax cliff deal better.  Republicans were even harder on Banal than the public in general.

That Congress itself is reviled isn't news.  But a new PPP poll found that in head to head matchups, cockroaches are more popular than Congress.  So are root canals.  So is Genghis Khan.

How much more reviled can Congress get?  Well, they're still more popular than Gonorrhea.

The Con in Congress

The election of Barack Obama hasn't changed the unfortunate fact that we're still at the mercy of idiots, ideologues and did I mention idiots, otherwise known as Congress.

After one phony, disingenuous, lying argument after another, the people who are merely imbecilic have become the power brokers on the Economic Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Senate barely has a deal to pass something, which is good, but what they're passing is not good enough. Too much of what President Obama touts in his radio address--and which I'll bet he'll be talking about in Indiana and Florida and on national TV Monday--isn't in the bill anymore.

It cuts aid to education, some green measures, and of all the stupid things, money for state governments. Don't these Congresspeople talk to their Governors? Aren't some of them supposed to be in the same party?

All their dancing around to show that they are cutting spending, which is only going to result in cutting jobs--Paul Krugman figures they've destroyed the job creation prospects by 600,000, almost precisely the number of new unemployment claims in January. "According to the CBO’s estimates, we’re facing an output shortfall of almost 14% of GDP over the next two years, or around $2 trillion. Others, such as Goldman Sachs, are even more pessimistic. So the original $800 billion plan was too small, especially because a substantial share consisted of tax cuts that probably would have added little to demand. The plan should have been at least 50% larger... Now the centrists have shaved off $86 billion in spending — much of it among the most effective and most needed parts of the plan...This is really, really bad."

As an example of the spiteful, chickenshit stuff this Senate is pulling, here's something they passed with wide support, Republican AND Democrat, the Coburn amendment:

None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, art center, and highway beautification project.

This is such a self-defeating, shameful, embarrassing, mean and stupid amendment that I'm almost speechless but not quite. Here's a quick quiz for you--what are the most remembered and most lasting achievements of the New Deal? You know, that economic recovery and reinvestment and stimulus New Deal that got the country started upward out of the Depression? The answer: anything they did in the arts, theatre, public parks and other constructions and repairs for public services. A lot of them are still here, still serving us as individuals, families, communities. Something wrong with that?

Just look at that dishonest, craven amendment. It starts out denying funds to casinos and gambling establishments. Is anyone proposing spending federal money on private for profit businesses like casinos? If it's in the Obama plan I missed it. Maybe if there's a medical clinic in one of those casinos, they might get a new computer?

But right away it goes to very similar institutions: acquarium, zoo--then it sneaks in golf courses--before proceeding to community park, museum, theatre, art center, community park---Huh?

Let's note and then put aside the fact that nothing else on the list is remotely like casinos. There might be a few (absent golf courses) that are for-profit, but very few.

Let's note and put aside for the moment that building or repairing or installing insulation and solar panels for anyplace at all is going to mean jobs and money spent on materials etc. and therefore more jobs. Let's even note and put aside that these places are likely to be nonprofits and adjuncts of educational institutions, and performing a public good. Let's concentrate on the fact that theatres, museums, art institutions etc. all employ people and generate economic activity everywhere around them. They're stimulating, in every sense!

So why did this amendment pass 72-24, with every Republican supporting it, PLUS 32 Democrats including such used-to-seem-like-non-idiots-but I'm way not sure now, as: one of MY Senators Feinstein, plus liberal icon Feingold, Obama boosters Casey of PA, McCaskill, Klobuchar and Stabenow, and supposed liberal stalwart Chuck Schumer of New York. How could any Senator from New York or California vote for an amendment like this? Their economies depend on the arts--what's wrong with these people? Even new Democratic Senators that Obama people worked so hard to elect this year, voted for this. It's a disgrace.