Conrad-Gregg commission debate today in Senate
AARP and Social Security Matters sent these messages:
AARP:
As early as today, your senators will vote on whether to allow the future of Social Security and Medicare to be decided by a commission without a public debate.
Unless we can count on AARP supporters like you to flood their senators with calls right now – there’s still a chance they will pass this dangerous amendment.
If they do, a special commission would then have fast-track power to propose drastic cuts to the programs that millions of seniors depend on to survive: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Socialsecuritymatters.org sends this e-mail:
Subject: The Call-In Day is TODAY
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www.socialsecuritymatters.org“Say NO to the Fast-Track Commission”
National Call-In Day – January 19, 2010 – # 1.800.998.0180
Contact: Anne Bollinger
Phone: 202.719.0725
Visit: www.socialsecuritymatters.orgWASHINGTON, DC – On Tuesday, January 19, 2010 OWL, AFSCME Retirees,
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Americans, American Association of University Women, Generations
United, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare,
National Senior Citizens Law Center, NOW, Pension Right Center, Wider
Opportunities for Women (WOW) and several other national organizations
are calling on their members to flood the Senate with phone calls
against the Conrad-Gregg Fast Track Commission proposal.Senators Conrad (D-ND) and Gregg (R-NH) have come up with a special
fast-track commission that they say will cure America’s budget
problems, and they are holding up other legislation until the Senate
votes on their proposal. Debate begins on January 20th.“It is clear from their press release that Senators Conrad and Gregg
have painted a big red target on Social Security and Medicare,”
Senator Baucus (D-MT) warned. “That’s what this commission is all
about. It’s a big roll of the dice for Social Security and Medicare.”This type of fast-track commission is undemocratic and takes power
away from Congress to make decisions about Social Security. Social
Security does not contribute to the national debt; it is insurance
that workers have earned through their hard work.Social Security is fundamental to the economic security of all
Americans, particularly women, seniors, minorities, the disabled
children who lose a parent, people who lose a spouse, and veterans.“The average Social Security recipient receives $13,860 annually, less
if you are a woman. The fact that Senators Conrad and Gregg think the
way to fix budget shortfalls is to make seniors poorer is shocking and
laughable – first, because Social Security doesn’t contribute in any
way to the national deficit, and second, because essentially Congress
has allowed $150 billion in Wall Street bonuses,” stated, Ashley
Carson, OWL Executive Director. “Robbing grandma to reward Wall
Street fat cats is not sound economics.”###
The number for the call-in day is 1.800.998.0180 and has been
generously provided by the National Committee to Preserve Social
Security and Medicare who has been a leader on this issue and whose
members have been making calls already.
My daughter lives in North Dakota. She called Conrad’s office and was told
“Conrad’s office says that the fiscal task force has nothing to do with Social Security, that it is a subcommittee within the budget committee, and that it isn’t holding anything up…………”
They don’t mean Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit… Conrad is going around saying that the purpose of the deficit commission is to “do the hard work of cutting entitlements.”
So his office is lying about it. I believe what they are trying to do is keep the people from organizing against their plan to cut Social Security until it is too late. Given the President’s apparent buy-in, I think we are seeing a real revolution in this country. The people who hated Roosevelt are taking their country back…. back to the days when the rich ruled and the peasants kept their mouths shut.
They won’t need to fire a shot. They control the media and the Congress and the White House (advisors), and the people don’t care about anything but what’s on television…. yet.
coberly,
First Conorad is a royal pain in the b***. His staff is worse. This from direct experience with them while I was at the Pentagon. He is the only reason Minot AFB has not been closed and we still send people to the frozen north. He will sell his vote to anyone who will keep that base open.
Otherwise it looks like this commision needs to get drowned in the bathtub quick. And I hate commissions. Congress should be voting on this stuff and taking the heat. That’s what I’m paying them for not to hand it off to some commission so they can have ‘plausable deniability.” This is exactly the kind of stuff that is driving voter anger….
Explain how this is happening with a Dem Pres, Dem Senate, and Dem Congress????? You would think the centerpiece of the New Deal would be safe.
Islam will change
Emailed both of mine in letter fashion. Make sure you list your name and address as a part of the header to get their attention.
Krugman has a good post today on his blog about the dangers of a commission of this sort. A must read. And here he is re the bankers who rule over us:
Whatever happens on health care — if House Democrats have any sense, they’ll just pass the Senate bill, but that’s a big if — financial reform is next up. But that leaves us with a question: what strategy should the Democrats follow?
They could do what they did with health care, which is to make a lot of compromises with interest groups so as to round up just enough votes. But that would be the wrong strategy, both substantively and politically.
On the substance, a financial reform that’s too weak will provide nothing more than the illusion of stability, and by creating that illusion could actually make the next crisis worse. On the politics, the Obama administration desperately needs to distance itself from Wall Street; a deal that the street likes will, almost by definition, be political poison.
So what to do? The House has passed a pretty good bill; but the Senate should try for something stronger, not weaker. Crucially, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency must be in the bill; it’s a good idea economically, but even more important, it’s essential to making the case that this is not a bill of the bankers, by the bankers, for the bankers.
Oh, and put that Obama bank tax before Congress too, ASAP.
What if all of this faces uniform opposition from Republicans, with the support of some Democrats? That’s easy: make them vote against it. Expose the hollowness of their populist posing. And do what can be done with simple majority votes: I’m not a parliamentary expert, but as I understand it a bank tax could be enacted through reconciliation, bypassing the filibuster.
In short, take on the banks — and force those who are covering for them into the open.
Warprofiteers=warmongers.
Here is Krugman on the commission:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/errors-of-commission/
Warprofiteers=warmongers
coberly,
This is one of the reasons Conservatives are critical of Social Security – they can change it at any time. So all of your past analyses can go out the window. It’s just too big a pot of money (40% of the budget) to ignore. Politicians can’t keep their hands off of it and they really don’t care about people they don’t know, except to the extent that they get their votes.
Given the recent election having this commission strikes me as listening to the public with a tin ear. So how is this thing supposed to work. The commission goes up to Mt. Sinai (of the nearest convenient hill) and comes back with 15 commandments on what to do; cuts in social security; increased taxes; and they expect us like sheep defer to the experts. I don’t think the country is in the mood for more commissions — or policy Czars for that matter.
I thought that the Administration already cut the deal on the commission.
Folks, I think you are all wrong. The commission is supposed to work like the BRAC Commission. It takes most of the politics out of the selection process, but holds every politician’s feet to the fire to vote for and make the recommended changes.
As a process it works. Without BRAC we would have had nearly zero closings. With this commission some untouchables will no longer remain so. Focusing on the entitlements is an eventual necessity, but you are forgetting the focus will also include the discretionary funds. Y’ano those ole DOD, DOE or EPA budgets.
Aren’t there two different commission proposals? One is the “fast-track” design that would avoid amendment, and has mostly died. The other is the deal Obama has struck with congressional leaders to create a commission through presidential order. That commission’s recommendations are intended to be open to amendment and cherry picking.
It does seem that a good mand Democrats are willing to shift the burden further onto the FICA system and off of the general fund, never mind (because of?) the distributional impact this shift has already had and that further shift would have. An additional reason for the shift, I think, is that in dealing with the general fund, one is left saying “your tax pays for all that government stuff – including school (for those with no children), roads (for those with no care) and bombs (for those with no stomach for our foreign policy).” When it comes to Social Security, the argument is “you are paying for your own retirement, give or take.” That second argument seems to me far easier to sell.
CoRev–No one in the Congress will ever vote for budget cust in DOD, DOE, or DOJ. Never. The received view is that the only problem with the budget deficit is SS and “entitlements”. These include not only Medicare and Medicaid, but also VA benefits, military medical services, various HHS programs like NIH and CDC, and the like. No good would come of this.
If Obama is destined for one term, let it be a doozy. No point in holding back now. However, no one who favors this admittedly “lefty” view shouldn’t hold hs/her breath. It ain’t gonna happen. Instead, the people who gave us the fillibuster will show us what bad news is all about.
Congress can change anything at any time.
Conservatives are critical of Social Security for two interlocking reasons. One they do not seem to believe that the General Welfare clause has any operative meaning, and that we should not be taxing capital to provide social services that would ideally be provided by charities. (Gingrich pushes this lot). The second reason is that a Social Security system perceived to be successful and solvent risks people asking why we should extend this Social Democratic solution into other areas. As of course we did in 1965 with the establishment of Medicare under the Aegis of Social Security. Conservatives believe we are on the slippery slope to Socialism and that Social Security and Medicare are pointing the way.
The NW Plan for a Real Social Security Fix delivers a system that is fully funded and which draws little on capital going forward, in fact it actually smooths out the repayment of the Trust Fund, instead of the General Fund having to pay back everything by 2037 those payments can be stretched into the 2090s. And all of the new funding is provided by workers and not income tax payers. So what is not to love for Conservatives, make workers self-fund their own ‘charity’.
But Bush took any tax based solution off the table when he founded his Social Security Commission, although it was the easiest and cheapest fit to a problem defined as a future cut in benefits, it was a terrible solution to creeping Socialism. Instead the answer was the Ownership Society.
The opposition to Social Security was and remains ideological, Milton Friedman called it “immoral”.
As to being too big a pot for politicians to keep their hands off. Well despite some really shitty analysis and rhetoric every penny ever sent to Social Security is exactly where it is supposed to be, and this mostly because for almost all its history Social Security was considered the Third Rail of American Politics, touch it and you die. Social Security ran cash deficits in every year from 1971 to 1982 and in quite a number of years prior to that. No one dared suggest that politicians not honor the bonds in the Trust Fund. But after the “debacle” of the 1983 Commission (that is what Cato called it) a group of organized Conservatives set out on a marketing campaign to convince people of three somewhat contradictory things: Trust Fund surpluses are not real, two they were already stolen, three politicians will just steal anything left over, and BTW kids you are getting nothing.
This cynical attempt to drain the juice out of the Third Rail was quite successful, it is not even clear when people pushing this line are actually lying, but Sammy every part of your narrative can be traced to deliberate decisions made in NYC in 1983. Call it marketing, call it whavever, you fell for it hard.
Which commission?
There are three proposals: Cooper-Wolf SAFE, Conrad-Gregg and now whatever the WH is coming up with. Cooper-Wolf and Conrad-Gregg were worked up with no participation by senior Democratic leadership and is clearly designed to do an end run on the center-left in much the same way Stupak did. The new Commission seems to have full participation by leadership and so presumedly won’t have the built-in traps of the other too (although Obama endorsed Cooper-Wolf in principal last February, and Clinton suggested something of the same during the campaign.
The priority today is to kill Conrad-Gregg which is mostly a Trojan Horse to give cover for Social Security cuts.
Yes indeed. You have it right. Krugman states very well the objections to the commission.
warprofiteers=warmongers
Hmm. No. Bruce Bartlett already let the cat out of the bag over at Economist’s Mom.
If you examine the structure of Conrad-Gregg as proposed you can see that it is heavily loaded to deficit, tax, and defense hawks. While it is true that cutting the deficit going forward by only be done by one: devising some way to get health care dollars under control, two: cutting other discretionary spending, including military, three: tax increases. Is there any world in which 4 of 8 Republicans are going to agree to tax increases? Or cutting military spending in a time of two wars?
The strategy is clear enough:
1) Get consensus on debt crisis
2) Agree we only have choices A, B, C
3) Establish commission tasked to address A, B, C but without any committment to include any particular one
4) Consensus impossible on A – can’t cut taxes in a recession
5) Consensus impossible on B- can’t cut the military in a time of war
6) ‘Regretfully’ put forward a package focused on the ‘real issue’ (as defined by Peterson et al) “soraring entitlement costs”
7) Dare House Democrats to vote against the final proposal by labeling them ‘fiscally irreponsible tax and spend liberals’
Bush did the same thing with CSSS. He gathered a bi-partisan group of experts, all of whom were previously committed to cutting entitlements, had them make up three plans. And then without explicitly endorsing any of them set out to sell ‘Crisis’, hoping that once he got buy-in he could spring his Model 2 plan. The same bait and switch is going on here, tell people all options are on the table even though realistically they are not, and then slip in your preferred solution.
Now they (at least Drudge) is immediately suggesting Brown for President in 2012. What we need is a tool/dupe of Wall Street and a buddy of Limbaugh and admirer of Palin (she could be his VP) for President….from the annals of Crazyamerica.
warprofitters=warmongers
There isn’t much cause for optimism re Crazyamerica, but it might be noted that ONE thing Shrubby didn’t get done was to wreck SS. It just might be that it is really untouchable. If so, then money will have to be got elsewhere. I would think most likely sooner or later would be a VAT. Europe has it; it is regressive and thus tolerable to the plutocracy and it would raise a lot of money. I expect it.
warprofiteers=warmongers
A VAT has other enticing aspects. You can start it low and then raise it as needed. The US standard of living will have to come down, no way out of that, and the drop will need to be cushioned in some fashion. A VAT at a very low rate to start with and then once in place rather rapidly raised would probably be the most expedient way to lower our standard of living. And get by with it.
warprofiteers=warmongers
There are three. Two fast track (Conrad-Gregg and Cooper-Wolf) and then whatever the President is coming up with. And the fast track ones are not ‘dead’, the Senate may be voting right now to amend the debt ceiling bill to attach Conrad-Gregg.
Hopefully C-G will be dead by the end of the day, at least for now, but it is still out there, hence the news releases Dan posted.
This guy thought it was funny to pimp out his daughters during an acceptance speech “they’re available”. Well yeah but are they easy?
Its early days but I am thinking we may have another Dan Quayle, too dumb to know that he is over his head.
The assault on Social Security never really did have anything to do with using the surpluses for other things, certainly not before 2001. The actual big cash surpluses that started in the mid-nineties were largely unexpected and where always known to be temporary. The narratives that come from the left and right alike about Social Security having been ‘looted’, ‘stolen’ whatever are all overblown, the money just wasn’t that big.
About half of the Trust Fund Balance has always been made up of compound interest, under the strange accounting of Social Security that interest can be used to disguise other spending in the Unified Budget, but cannot actually be used to fund it.
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR05/IV_SRest.html#wp215603
In 2000 Social Security ran a $153 bn surplus which helped to bring the Unified Budget Surplus in at around $253 billion. But only about $90 billion of that SS surplus was actually available for spending after being borrowed by the General Fund. In no year from 2001 to 2008 did Bush actually get $100 billion out of Social Security. Not that $750 billion over eight years isn’t real money, but it didn’t pay for $1.5 trillion in tax cuts either.
Bruce, anything the president proposes for commissions is a Trojan horse. It will be precived as just another executime power grab. It won’t have any authority.
Either of the two congressional approaches would be workable if they took the BRAC Commission form. Everyone’s ox gets gored. Until we see the final form, further discussion on details is meaningless.
Nancy, in today’s political structure you first observation is correct, but, that also explains why such a commission is being recommended. Reduce the politics to identify the essential changes neededs, then vote on those changes.
What happens is the early rounds see most of the fat stripped. The later rounds, when the issues are dearer to more, then the politicians always get some input. Today, we can not get to, let alone through, the early rounds.
No they won’t be workable, not the way the membership is being stacked, and not given the way the messaging has been handled over the last few years.
Peter G Peterson has been spending millions for twenty plus years and has committed a cool $1 bn to establish a particular Conventional Wisdon among the Right and Center. That messaging has been extraordinarily effective, you get echoes of talking points originated by his people on every comment thread. The comparison to BRAC the comparison to Greenspan are deliberate products of that same messaging, they want to you believe that two things are alike that are not alike at all.
On BRAC every base, every district, every state was faced with the prospect of pretty much the same risks and oppotunities, the direct risk of losing immediate jobs against the opportunity to do some massive redevelopment of previously off limits property. There really were not totally distinct constituencies. For a debt commission it is much different.
For example the consituency affected by an increase in top rates barely overlaps the constituency who would be harmed by price indexing initial Social Security. Nor does the core constituency for the Military Industrial Complex neatly align with those of wage workers. A base closing is like a base closing is like a base closing. But you can’t say that about debt reduction where the impacts would hit different sectors and can I say it different economic classes.
Over the last decades we have managed to raise and lower taxes through regular order, to increase and cut defense spending, we don’t need Commissions for that. But for most of that time Social Security has been off limits, and deadly to those who want to cripple it for ideological reasons. It is abudnently clear that this Commission effort is a simple continuation of an effort that started with the 1994 Kerrey-Danforth Entitlements Commission (on which Peterson was a member), the the 2001-2002 Bi-Partisan Commission to Strengthen Social Security, followed by Bush’s Social Security Tour, which after it failed was followed up by the Concord’s Fiscal Wake-Up Tour which has been constantly pushing for just this kind of cut in Entitlements.
These people have been gunning for Social Security for seventy years now. Not only do I not intend to go fooled again, I wasn’t much fooled the other two times around the track.
CoRev take a look at the proposed structures here. They are not suggesting naming some impartial folk to embark on a listening tour around the country, then hold hearings, and so some early rounds of cutting. These Commissions will be loaded up with partisans with pre-existing agendas.
The 2001 CSSS was a joke because its guidlines were set up in a way to guaranteed a particular outcome: taxes couldn’t be included and there had to be private accounts. These Commissions are being set up with the same kind of strictures, doing nothing will not be an option, while you can bet the house that certain somethings will never be agreed to (Republicans are already arguing that tax cuts should be off the table. The whole thing is a sham of a mockery of a travesty of a sham, the fix is in. This just isn’t BRAC. Or is it Greenspan. Nor when you come down to the Greenspan Commission didn’t happen they way it was presented.
buff,
First Conorad is a royal pain in the b***. His staff is worse. This from direct experience with them while I was at the Pentagon.
Based on my experience I would have awarded that honor to Sen. Carl Levin.
Buff
the dems are by no means to be trusted on Social Security. I have always felt the two parties were good cop and bad cop.
CoRev,
Folks, I think you are all wrong. The commission is supposed to work like the BRAC Commission. It takes most of the politics out of the selection process,
Taking the politics out of the selection process? BRAC??? Are you kidding? Do you actually know any of the BRAC commissioners? The BRAC process (especially the BRAC 2005 process) is about as corrupt as things get. You get all upset over the UK Met’s treatment of “raw” data…hey, you should see what the BRAC process does to “raw” data!!! And then they make you sign all kinds of statements promising that you’ll never reveal what the actual data was!
Over the years there have been very few BRAC actions that actually saved the taxpayer any money. In some cases BRAC actions shift costs from DoD to GSA (e.g., the BRAC moving the Army’s Aviation Command from St. Louis to Huntsville, AL). Almost 15 years later the govt still owns the property. The govt lost its shirt on that whole transer. Ditto with Ft. Sheridan. Ditto with Ft. Ord. And ditto with the Army’s BRAC move out of Germany (the Germans are insisting that we clean up the toxic waste…imagine that). And the BRAC 2005 is proving to be a huge loser as well. One particular BRAC action is proving to be a net loser of ~$250 million.
So surprisingly I do sort of agree with you that the deficit commission is modeled after the BRAC approach…and it will almost certainly be just as corrupt and just as political.
Sammy
unforunately your argument amounts to “the crooks can steal it, so we should let the crooks steal it.”
if there were a reasonable “free market” alternative that couldn’t be stolen or mislaid, you’d have a point, but my solution to the crooks trying to steal it to get a big dog.
Sorry, Bruce. I just disagree with your focus on SS. In the mix, yes. The end game, I don’t think so. doing something different thet is effective, yes. Continuing to tax and spend even more and build deficits, no.
Bruce
what was true last year may not be true next year. Congress is going to have to come up with the equivalent of a 3% tax on incomes over 100,000 to pay off the TRust Fund debt. and that is coming.
unless they can moot it with benefit cuts.
CoRev have you gone to Conrad or Cooper’s websites, seen how endorses those plans and then gone to their own websites to see what their own focuses are? Well I have, a lot. Do, you think I.O.U.S.A. has a lot of focus on any discretionary spending? Do Bixby and Walker take their Fiscal Wakeup Tour on the road promoting sensible tax increases? When they are quoted in the newspapers do they use any other examples?
These commissions are not being pushed by a desire to reduce deficits as such, they are being pushed by people who want to lower General Fund transfers to Medicare and Social Security over the long haul. They call this concept ‘sustainable solvency’. You can search for it and see that it is clearly associated with Social Security and Social Security.
I don’t know if you are carnival barker or just his rube but a sucker either way. Peter G Peterson did not spend the last 25 years nor establish a $1 Bn endowment because he is just dying for billionaires like him to pay more taxes.
With or without the NW Plan?
And is that the cost of an immediate fix or could a slightly larger one be phases in over time?
with the NW plan as written. it is just the cost of paying back 3 Trillion dollars. i haven’t done the detail arithmetic yet, but that is my guess. if i read the charts right the income in this country over 100k per person adds up to about 3T, a 3% tax would yield 90 billion a year (roughly what is needed to pay back the TF per year) times about 30 years = roughly 3 Trillion… about what the TF will reach. i have counted interest,
but please note, this is not a “cost of Social Security”; it is the cost of paying back the money Congres borrowed.
The crisis is that deficit spending did NOTHING for the productivity of the US. Stifled productivity growth is why the deficit keeps growing. In part helped by capital moving to the Pacific rim with low taxes on capital involved.
Is it too late to throw around numbers?
If you look through the OMB tables you will find one that shows the ratio of federal debt to GDP rising above 100% for a couple of years around 2013.
That is a tilting point to a few, although roundly abused on this forum in the past.
Check the last table in: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/summary.pdf
This table gives the debt held by government accounts and that held by the public. In 2009 it is 4336 intra gov accounts, with 8531 held by the public, total 12867 with 34% intra gov accounts.
In 2019, 7263 intragov accounts, 16027 held by public for 31% of a total of 23290B.
The crisis on the bond market with no action is a few percent increase.
There is no crisis!!
what was true last year may not be true next year. Congress is going to have to come up with the equivalent of a 3% tax on incomes over 100,000 to pay off the
Yogi Berra said that cash was just as good as money, too bad the social security trust fund is not as good as cash.
Okay this the outside scenario if we chose to fund all of the payback from the top 10%. In reality a portion of existing general fund revnues can be used just as they are now.
What I take from this is that there is no absolute burden on the wealth to pay back in excess of the tax cuts they enjoyed along the way.
bruce
exactly. they got those tax cuts. and they can pay the money back with all thier profits from “growth.”
Cantab
the trust fund is exactly as good as cash. if the Congress wants to steal your money it doesn’t have to use the trust fund. what is behind the drive to steal the trust fund now is the desire to kill social security.
yeah, and a little raise in pay for the lower quintile erases all debts.
Coberly,
If it was as good as cash you would just take the bills and spend them. With the social security trust fund you have to go out an raise new taxes to take money out of the economy. The social security trust fund is not money, that’s why you have to find new money since the trust fund is not really money.
Cantab the Social Security Adminstration can take those Notes and spend them. They are legally redeemable at par at any time and so are in fact more liquid than any other Treasury Notes and Bonds.
You have got yourself caught in a spiderweb of abstraction and are logically strangling yourself. From 1971 to 1982 the Treasury quietly redeemed the bonds in the Trust Fund. Nobody noticed much because there was nothing to notice, these bonds were as good as cash which was just as good as money.
The DI Trust Fund started taking General Fund cash in lieu of credited interest in 2006, last year it started taking General Fund cash as it retired bonds in the TF. Nobody noticed because there was nothing to notice. Has the ongoing paydown on the DI TF required taxes or borrowing? I guess just like any other federal expenditure requires one or the other. But your attempt to find some existential difference falls on it’s face.
:…Warprofiteers=warmongers…”
And, I got to look up “filibuster” today. I never knew that
“…The term filibuster was first used in 1851. It was derived from the Spanish filibustero meaning pirate or freebooter. This term had evolved from the French word flibustier, which itself evolved from the Dutch vrijbuiter (freebooter). This term was applied at the time to American adventurers, mostly from Southern states, who sought to overthrow the governments of Central American states, and was transferred to the users of the filibuster, seen as a tactic for pirating or hijacking debate.”
MG: I thought that the Administration already cut the deal on the commission.
BW: Which commission?
Bruce,
I was referring to the unnamed deficit or budget commission that the Administration and key Members of Congress negotiated tentatively late Tuesday. I agree that there are deficit commission bills on the table; H.R.1557, S.1056, and S. 2853 by my count and perhaps a few other related bills and amendments including S.640. Rep. Steny Hoyer said that there aren’t enough votes to pass S.2853, The Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action Act of 2009, in the House. Another Member of the House didn’t believe that more than 100 votes could be rounded up for that bill. Guess we’ll find out if it clears the Senate.
Granted, Conrad is waivering on the Administration’s approach (the unnamed commission), but if S.2853 can’t be passed by the both houses of Congress, then he and Gregg will have to regroup or suck it up.
Here are some good news stories regarding Tuesday’s negotiations on the unnamed commission:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/19/AR2010011904338.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/19/AR2010011903310.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/us/politics/20commission.html?hpw
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703837004575013852530566476.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31691.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/20/AR2010012002599.html
If anyone wants to read the existing bills and note the sponsors and co-sponsors, just type in the bill number here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/
.
Update: the vote on Conrad-Gregg will not happen today, On the other hand Baucus slipped in an amendment (3000) that would prevent any policy changes for Social Security from simply being fast-tracked. This could be important.
Oops. Baucus amendment is 3300. Conrad-Gregg is 3302 and both are pending and could bet votes today.