Congress breaks for summer, fiscal cliff looms this fall

[Winehole23]

Congress is leaving Washington for the summer by putting in place all the elements for another debt and spending showdown in the fall, when funding deadlines for federal agencies and highway programs are expected to collide within weeks of when the Treasury’s borrowing authority will expire.


Add to the mix the desire to extend billions of dollars in special tax breaks by the end of December and a rising call from some lawmakers for a rewrite of the international tax laws in order to fund federal programs, and the likelihood of a government shutdown looms larger by the day.


Congress set the latest piece of this potential logjam in place Thursday, when the Senate approved an extension of highway funding that lasts at least until Halloween but might have enough money to make it into mid-December. That vote followed the House’s approval of the same plan Wednesday, after the GOP majorities in the chambers fought for weeks and eventually deadlocked over competing plans for a longer-term plan.


The prospect of the collision has some lawmakers envisioning December as a mini-replay of the “fiscal cliff” of 2012, when trillions of dollars in tax cuts were set to expire on New Year’s Day and tens of billions in automatic spending cuts, known as sequestration, were slated to kick in two days later.


Despite the major pileup ahead, no serious talks have begun about the fiscal clash. The House left Wednesday for a 40-day break and will return after Labor Day; the Senate’s recess begins late next week. “When we come back after August, we’ll discuss the way forward on getting the government funded,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters Thursday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/congress-departs-for-the-summer-setting-up-a-fall-showdown/2015/07/30/b41f1178-36d5-11e5-9d0f-7865a67390ee_story.html

[Wild Cobra]

If you ask me, democrats need to agree to reducing social benefits. that the largest chunk of the federal budget.

[Wild Cobra]

I know...

You didn't ask...

[boutons_deux]

If you ask me

:lol

Medicare is the biggie, overwhelmingly due to health industry raising is prices EVERY YEAR way above inflation, NOT due to ACA, plus the Repug "privatization"" disaster, THANKS!, of Medicare Advantage into which more seniors are moving. Medicare Advantage cost taxpayers about 12% more than Medicare.

Repugs want to cut the social welfare net while increasing the MIC corporate welfare net ...

It's Republicans, Not Obama, Who Want to Bust the Sequestration Deal

President Obama has signaled his intention to bust, once and for all, the severe 2011 spending caps known as sequestration. He's vowed to reject any GOP-backed appropriation bills that increase government funding for the military without also boosting domestic programs important to Democrats such as Head Start for preschoolers.

The Republican-controlled Congress is also digging in. Since taking control in January, GOP leaders had promised to run Congress responsibly and prevent another shutdown like the one in 2013, but their spending proposals are defying the president's veto threat by bolstering defense accounts and leaving social-welfare programs to be slashed.

Republicans are claiming they want to keep the sequestration deal, but they don't like the fact that back in 2011 they agreed it would cut domestic and military spending equally. Instead, Republicans now want to increase military spending and decrease domestic spending.

They're doing this by putting the additional defense money into an "emergency war-spending account," which technically allows them to get around the sequester caps.

Unsurprisingly, Obama's not buying it.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/07/its-republicans-not-obama-who-want-bust-sequestration-deal

I'd love to see Bernie, Sherrod, Warren, etc shutdown the govt over the TPP as it is now.

[TeyshaBlue]

:lol motherjones

[boutons_deux]

GOP’s broken promises: Gridlock & dysfunction still rule the day despite congressional control

Unified Republican control of Congress was supposed to break the chambers' gridlock. That...hasn't worked out

The first fully GOP-controlled Congress in nearly a decade is almost on their five-week recess and off to the town halls of their local districts to face their constituents, the American people, who recently gave Congress a measly approval rating that often can’t even hit double digits.

When Republicans campaigned last fall to wrestle control of the Senate from the Democrats, they promised a grand makeover, attempting to shed their image of obstructionists lying in opposition. After the elections, their 54 seats in the Senate and overwhelming majority in the House would be enough, the argument went, to bring productivity back to Washington. :lol

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed (http://www.wsj.com/articles/john-boehner-and-mitch-mcconnell-now-we-can-get-congress-going-1415232759)the morning after their election night victory, newly minted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House
Speaker John Boehner vowed to “honor the voters” by “focusing, first, on jobs and the economy.” :lol

Republicans promised to get off to a fast start but after an ill-fated GOP strategy to fight President Obama’s executive orders on immigration threatened to shut down the Department of Homeland Security in February just as the terror group ISIS made headlines for a gruesome mass beheading, any hopes for a functioning legislative body were quashed. Boehner had, after all, promised to fight “tooth and nail” the executive action allowing roughly 5 million undocumented workers to remain in the U.S.

DHS was ultimately funded.

In March, Senate Republicans hijacked a bipartisan bill against human trafficking to impose new limits on abortion because — jobs?

“The terrible, horrible, no good start for GOP,” headlines read as Republicans reached their first 100 days in office, seeing only two bills become law — a terrorism insurance measure and a veterans suicide prevention bill, both of which were left over from the year before. :lol

Now as they head off to summer recess, Salon takes a look at just some of the broken promises Republicans will have to explain to their base supporters, supporters who have spent a summer being fed right-wing red meat by the likes of presidential candidates Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and the rest of the circus:

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/03/gops_broken_promises_gridlock_dysfunction_still_ru le_the_day_despite_congressional_control/

[Clipper Nation]

:lol Salon