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If the government shuts down and Congress is still getting paid, it will be the House Republicans' fault
March 30, 2011 - by Donny ShawA reader writes in with a good question. On March 1 Republicans and Democrats in the Senate pulled together to pass a bill that would amend current law so that members of Congress do not receive pay during government shutdowns; why isn’t the House acting on this bill so that if a government shutdown does occur Congress will take a pay cut like other federal employees?
The answer, of course, is that it has gotten tied up in a ploy to score political points. According to reports (e.g. TPM), House Republicans are rolling the Senate-passed bill into the so-called “Prevention of a Government Shutdown Act” that they will vote on Friday. Besides blocking pay to Congress during a shutdown, the bill would deem the House’s continuing resolution (CR), policy riders and all, the law of the land if the Senate does not pass a CR by April 6. It would do this despite the fact that the Senate has already voted on the House’s CR and rejected it. As the National Journal says, the bill is “purely symbolic” — it’s a complete abdication of the legislative process that would never be entertained by the Senate or the President, both on policy and procedural grounds. The House cannot make laws unilaterally — they have to work with the Senate and the President.
House Republicans are pursuing this symbolic bill at the expense of actual legislating, but it may end up helping them politically. When the government shuts downs because a deal on the CR was not struck and pundits explode in faux populist rage over the fact that Congress is still getting paid while park workers are being laid off, House Republicans will say, “We passed a bill to take away Congress’ pay, but the Senate Democrats wouldn’t vote on it.” Of course, Senate Democrats will try to explain that the Republicans are misstating the facts and that the Senate did in fact pass a bill to block congressional pay during shutdowns. The public then, unsure of who to believe, will pout the blame on Congress in general. But the fact is, the House Republican leadership could call up the Senate’s stand-alone bill to block pay to Congress during a shutdown at any time and it would pass without any resistance. Instead they’re tacking it onto a divisive, possibly unconstitutional bill that stands no chance of being enacted. If the government shuts down and Congress is still getting paid, it will be the House Republicans fault, not Congress’.
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Displaying 1-30 of 31 total comments.
That is very true reporting. Very true indeed. Although, since we’re blaming parties in this post, it is the Democrats’ fault it’s gotten this far. As has been said before, if they had done their job last year and passed a full budget, instead of trying to make the freshmen Republicans pass 1.5 budgets, then we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. That doesn’t negate the Republicans’ accountability in not passing this bill, but it does balance the argument of: “If A didn’t happen, B wouldn’t have happened and C didn’t need to happen”.
Agreed.
“If A didn’t happen, B wouldn’t have happened, and C didn’t need to happen.” You could put this comment all the way back to the beginning of the Bush Administration you know. If President Bush & the GOP House and Senate then would have kept the Clinton Administration’s policies in place, ie the PAYGO rule, and kept the tax base where it was, (since we were looking at a projected budget surplus when Clinton left office) but NO we couldn’t do that! God forbid that we would put a bit away for a “rainy day”. Well we had several “rainy days” first came 9/11, then Katrina and Rita, all without any effort on the GOPs part then to revert back to either the PAYGO rule or to revert back to the tax policies of Clinton> So let’s put the blame where it truly belongs, on the shoulders of the GOP.
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Your link is playing number games to manipulate the data.
Fact is the public debt went down during the last 3 Clinton years.
The link you provide is double counting the social security T-bills, adding the amount owed to SS by the T-bills as debt, and again adding the amount spent from those T-bills as debt even know at this point the SS T-bill money had not yet been spent(remember Clinton was pushing the SS lock box thing and the “debt and spend” republicans rejected that).
And the last budget bill passed by the Bush white house had a $1.7 TRILLION dollar deficit. Obama has actually gotten that down a bit, And this deficit is mostly a conglomeration of temporary spending(unemployment, medicaid, stimulus), a drop in tax revenue from recession, and the continuation of the Bush tax holiday. Without these 3 items the budget would be balanced.
Luminous – your statements are factually correct, but let’s be intellectually a little more honest on this site and lay blame across the political spectrum and over a longer period of time than just Obama/Dubya/Clinton.
The cold hard truth is that Federal government spending has grown every single year since the end of World War 2 (normalized to 2005 dollars). Whether or not it is deficit or not depends on the amount of revenue being collected, which has been shown to be ~19% of the GNP regardless of marginal tax rates. What we need is a Congress and President with enough cajones to cut government, not just spending but intrusion and allow the GNP to grow while cutting actual spending.
Right on eth111,
Every POTUS, no matter which side of the spectrum they’ve been on, for the last 100 years, has operated in debt and deficits. If we don’t eventually cut government, including government jobs and pensions and departments and, well, everything that makes up government, then we will grow too big for our britches; so to say. This is why the states should have more power. If 1 state screws it up, at least it’s that 1 state and we have 49 others to rely on. If 1 federal government screws it up, then it’s all the states and we have no one to rely on. Now, it would be up to us to make sure that 1 state doesn’t screw up, but hey, it’s hard work to stay free, that’s part of the burden we bear.
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The middle class no longer posses the negotiating power to maintain benefits without large amounts of business benefiting deductions, nor do they have the power to maintain their wages, even Unions over the last 20-40 years have been doing little more then negotiating what rate at which inflation eats away at their real earnings.
Nor will further tax cuts help the situation, as we already are not collecting enough, the only way to pay for more tax cuts is to start removing deductions and attacking social services that create upwards mobility into the middle class.
What we need is for government to start directly spending on some of these issues rather then using the tax system marry-go-round that merely props up the broken business models of health insurance, and 401k/individual retirement savings methods.
Wait, you’re saying to raise taxes when so many people can’t afford what they have to pay now for their bills?
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Ok, so we’re clear, you are talking about raising everyone’s taxes for the benefit of the general public. As long as we’re clear on that, then ok.
I can agree we need to reform health care and retirement, because Obamacare and Social Security aren’t going to make this country better, and SS has already done a number on us.
Now, I don’t know about your business, but the businesses I’ve come into contact with will take any deduction, even if it’s $1 for every $100 spent, as long as they’re already spending the money. And the way I’m reading your statement, it seems businesses will be saving less. Isn’t that what you’re advocating?
Let’s say we tax both the top 10% and bottom 50% one hundred percent of their pay for a year. This will not wipe out the $14+ trillion in debt we have, and Congress wouldn’t stop taxing after 1 year. Raising taxes by itself will not help out. Raising taxes on people who can’t afford it, won’t help out.
We need to cut government. Cut programs, cut SS, cut handsouts and bailouts, cut subsidies. We need the states to do their jobs and have them look out for their own people more so than the FED.
I see no reason their should be a $250k and below carve out of the bush tax cuts, I think they should all expire. But that is besides the point, If we reform health care and retirement the end result could be lower marginal rates with some flattening of the brackets.
The savings from moving to a single payer health care system could be plowed into lower marginal income tax rates. 401K’s lost $18 trillion dollars in 2007 so clearly the $100 billion a year we spend in tax deductions for those is clearly a waste, end them and plow that money into social security, along with raising the payroll tax 2.2% and removing the cap on taxable income, This would both solve the short fall projected in 2037 and allow the payout to be increased to around 70% of pre-retirement income, this would cost less then the 4%+3%match that 401k’s cost as well.
And I disagree with this being a “states” problem, health care and retirement are an interstate issue and need to be solved by the fed.
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So, I’m curious, how can total spending go up although public debt goes down? Oh, wait a minute, could it be that the government was spending more every year but not borrowing from the public because they were getting the money somewhere else? I mean, that would explain why spending and federal debt held by the government went up every year, but public debt went down.
Your missing a bar for revenue, spending can go up every year just as a normal function of growth, even if you flatline spending increasing at the rate of inflation you could theoretically have record spending every year.
And again what do we count as debt? Normally I would think that it would just be all of the money actually spent over whatever revenues are made!!, but in many charts for some reason or another the SS bonds bought by the federal government are counted as debt not once but twice without regard for whether or not the money from the bonds actually was spent.
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Clinton could’ve used the “surplus” instead of borrowing so much. Oh wait, there wasn’t a surplus b/c we were $5.6 trillion in debt during the same time period. Well dang. Doesn’t that suck.
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Absolutely repulsive! We need a law that says Congress will not be exempt from any laws or rules of government. They should be held to the same standard. This should not even be an issue – if the government shuts down and no one is paid it should include Congress. I’m so sick of these people making laws that exempt them from following the laws of this country.
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