ACA and the Debt Ceiling - Non Partisan Question

Factual Questions
1

While there is little hope that this thread will not devolve into aisle bashing, I do have a serious non partisan question for those more studied on this recent political battle who can remove their Donkey or Elephant “my team is number 1” foam finger for a moment.

Simply asked (and from a layman’s perspective):

Does the GOP forcing the inclusion of any modification to the ACA AS PART of the current issue of raising the debt ceiling reek of an improper use of leverage or is this fairly common and generally accepted by both parties?

I ask because it feels to me like the two are completely parallel and separate issues with the ACA already being voted on, passed and upheld by the Supreme Court.

It seems analogous to me going to my car dealer for an oil change and when I arrive to pick it up they tell me I cannot have my car unless I buy a new set of tires from them. :eek:

Set me straight as I am sure I am missing something and I have been committing to much of my free time to GTA V :smack:

2

It’s politics. “Give me something in exchange for something else.” Unfortunately, this brand of politics is more extreme (and more public) than most brands. It’s not against any rules or protocol. It’s just extreme and public. The voters affected by this tactic may or may not respond in-kind at the ballot box next November.

That’s the calculation politicians always make when making political moves like this, a cost-benefit analysis to see if it’s 1) good for constituents and/or 2)what their constituents want. Unfortunately, a third consideration is becoming more and more prominent: whether it’s good for the politician’s pocketbook (through a job on K Street, fundraising, or media and book deals).

3

I think it’s pretty much business as usual in Washington. Just on a larger scale in this case.
It’s pretty common for things like bills to be compromised and passed on the basis of adding or omiting things that have nothing to do with the bill itself.

4

Let’s not fall into the easy, lazy, false “Both sides do it” and “This is just how it works” traps. Controversy over raising the debt ceiling, including refusal to do it and insistence on tying it to something else, *is *new with this Congress. It hasn’t been done before, aside from some grandstanding incidents. It’s never actually been voted down until 2011.

5

If this is the new normal, the Senate should attach amendments repealing the sequester, creating a federal assault weapons ban, and abolishing the Bush tax cuts as preconditions for ending the shutdown and raising the debt ceiling. Then, if the House refuses to pass it, they can blame the them for shutting down the government and endangering the country’s credit-rating.

6

No one’s saying both side do this *brand *of extreme and public politicking. But this is just another brand of politicking. This is not the thread to attack one side or another. But make no bones, this is a very extreme and public and bold tactic.

And this is not new with this Congress. The first debt ceiling controversy happened with the previous Congress.

7

Without being too partisan - it seems to me that the ACA has become a topic like abortion, where there is zero room for tolerance by the Republicans.Thus rather than admitting defeat, that they lost several years ago, they seem to be determined to undo what’s there.

This has not been a feature of many democracies, nor the typical rule in Washington. The rule of thumb has typically been, that when a party gains control of the government, they do NOT spend their first hundred days undoing what the last government set in place. Otherwise, you end up with a yo-yo government, where any policy runs the risk of being reveresed in 2 or 4 years’ time. Businesses cannot operate with the rules of the game doing a U-turn every 4 years.

Plus, in this case, the Republicans control the house but not the senate or the executive and still presume they have the right to call the shots.

Washington used to be a place that worked on compromise - if one side could not get what it wanted, it could wheel and deal to get some changes in return for a small win in their column. The Tea Party especially has changed all this. A Republican who shows a hint of willingness to compromise risks having a more strident opponent run against him in the next primary, financed by the Tea Party. This increases the incentive on even the more moderate types not to compromise. (The more committed, more ideological tend to vote in primaries, so moderates tend to lose to special interest candidates who can motivate their fellow travellers.)

Note the negotiations leading up to the passing of the ACA featured the administration making one concession after another to try to get the republicans to take part, only to receive no support for anything anyway. (To the point where some criticized Obama for this, asking “if they won’t compromise, why not ram through the version you want?”)

This is the same problem we saw in Egypt up until a month ago - if one side is convinced they are right, and will tolerate no deviation from their appointed path to rightness, and will refuse to compromise, then it’s safe to say democracy itself is at risk. Much as we like to joke about politicians and their willingness to embrace expediancy over principle, it is impossible to govern a country filled with different points of view without rsorting to compromises and occassionally admitting defeat.

8

Well, if nobody is going to actually offer facts…

I looked at the most recent 18 bills that increased the debt limit, dating back to April 1993.

Of these increases, several of them were included in bills that generally had to do with reforms of budgeting laws or balanced budget proposals. I would include in that category the Budget Control Act of 2011, the PAYGO Act of 2010, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993.

Two debt limit increases were contained in what I’d call spending bills: the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka the stimulus), and the Troubled Asset Relief Program of 2008.

There was also a debt limit increase on the Energy Act of 2008.

And finally, there was a debt limit increase on a hodge-podge bill that nearly fits into the first category I mentioned: it was one bill that included the Line Item Veto Act, the Small Business Growth Act, and the Senior Citizen Right to Work Act. That law was passed in 1996.

To summarize, out of 18 debt limit increases in the last 20 years, call it four and a half of those bills were closely related to budget process and reform, two were on spending bills, one was on an energy bill, and if my math holds, 10 of them were clean bills that only had to do with the debt limit.

In my opinion, that shows a trend that it is not unusual to address strictly budget related items on bills that increase the debt limit, and that it is unusual – but not the first time – to address larger policy disagreements on a debt limit bill. Others may reach a different conclusion.

9

Well stated, thank you for the research.

So this is not completely out of left field. Perhaps a bit distasteful, but not unprecedented.

I do however agree with an earlier poster who said this is a big gamble/risk for the GOP because - at least to me - they look like the bad guys here who are sore they lost the ACA battle.

Time will tell.

10

It’s not unusual to tack a totally unrelated topic onto a bill. It seems to happen all the time in Washington.

It is unusual for one house to play chicken or refuse to budge on an issue of national importance. I assume the last time something like this happened was 1860 and 1994.

Usually when a legislature refuses to budge on an issue of serious national importance, it involves an issue where they believe they have an overwhelming majority of public opinion PLUS the might of moral right. (Civil rights, emancipation, etc. come to mind).

As several commentators have mentioned on the news (I believe too it was a thread here) the “defunding” option was a red herring and could not work. The next step was to ask for a 1 year delay.

There’s a dead silence on what happens after next year if they get their way. See, this is the essence of compromise - what does the other side get in return for a 1-year delay? The exact same argument all over again next year? A promise that this is the last time they will ask for a delay? A promise to agree to fix some of the minor glitches in the program? Simply getting a year’s worth of government funding is not enough of a win to set up a repeat next year of the same thing.

This is where the art of compromise has failed. Even if there were a compromise to delay the ACA in return for some concessions to make it work better, do you think the administration or the senate Democrats even believe the Tea Party would follow through and keep its promises?

Along with a breakdown of compromise has come a breakdown of trust.

Some liberal commentators even suggest the action is deliberate - destroy the ability of the government to borrow money in order to “starve the beast”. Unfortunately, the net result will of course be much higher interest rates (i.e. higher taxes) if there is a failure of confidence in government bonds… or posibly a reference to the supreme court to determine what the “full faith” clause really means.

11

According toelectoral-vote.com, “Continuing resolutions are standard practice and have been used for decades without either party attaching its political wish list to them. This time the House Republicans did that…”

I’m unclear if that means it’s a *first *for a continuing resolution (intermediate funding). It seems to imply it. It’s the best info I have on the question.

12

Your question, as asked, is incorrect.

There are two critical issues before Congress referring to funding of the government:
[ul]
[li]Debate and passage of the Fiscal Year 2014 federal budget.[/li][li]Debate and passage of raising the current debt ceiling.[/li][/ul]
The current issue of the government shutdown now in progress involves only the passage of the FY2014 budget. The government shutdown has nothing to do with raising the debt ceiling. Within this current issue, the Republicans are attaching non-budget riders to the bill. The rider most often in the news is to defund the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) which officially went into operation today.

When the FY2014 budget is passed, be it as one or more Continuing Resolutions (CRs), which are only temporary short-term budgets, and/or full fiscal year budgets, it/they may or may not have attached non-budget riders.

If the Republicans concede their ACA fight with the budget bill (in whole or in part), they may choose to continue the fight with raising the debt ceiling bill. That deadline is later this month (October 17th?).

13

+1, upvote, like, etc.

The only clarification I would make is that it’s not really a FY2014 budget, it’s a continuing resolution to fund the government using the figures from the most recently passed budget (that was April 29, 2009) for two more months. By design, the CRs being considered now would have us back in the position of facing another government shutdown in 45-75 days. What concessions would be demanded at that time are also unknown.

14

That’s not accurate. The budget you refer to from 2009 does not provide any funds for the operation of government. That budget is simply a blueprint for later spending and revenue decisions – it doesn’t do anything on its own.

And it really is a problem with the FY2014 budget. FY2014 begins today. FY2013 appropriations acts were signed into law this past spring. The bill under consideration would extend the funds available under those 2013 appropriations acts for a few weeks in FY2014.

15

In many countries, there are rules that a bill must address a single topic. It is up to the speaker to enforce such rules. US Congress has no such rule and, I believe, never has. In Canada, although the speaker does come from a political party (usually, but not always, the dominant party unless the party cannot spare the vote), they pride themselves on acting in a non-partisan fashion. In the US house, this has never been a tradition and the speakers have always been highly partisan (anyone here still recall Sam Rayburn?), and no one on either side of the aisle ever expected anything different from John Boehmer.

16

This may be as good a thread as any to link to interesting graphs about polarization in Congress.

Note that the “starve the beast” proponents are not “fiscal conservatives,” in the sense of working toward a balanced budget or debt reduction. Mounting debt (and any useless spending, e.g. on higher interest) is part of their strategy – it is the peril that lets them keep ranting and starving. (And of course, they don’t want to starve expensive programs like Social Security or the military. “Reduce spiraling government spending” is just a codeword for deregulation, despite that spending by regulatory agencies is almost insignificant.)

17

IIRC from my high school “how government works” a bill you cannot amed a bill in parliament to substantially alter what it does without consent of the person who presented the bill. Ie. if the bill says “Ban cellphones in public” you can’t amend it to say “Don’t ban…” without the consent of the presenter.

There are plenty of “Omnibus Bills” that wrap a few dozen issues into one big bill in order to limit debate and speed things through parliament (since with a majority, it’s an irrelevant rubber stamp and impediment to the dictatorship powers of the PMO and Privy Council). They have been over the decades the subject of protests, extended bell ringing episodes, etc. to try and shame the government into breaking it up into multiple separate bills with their own debate and vote. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.

18

1984 - debt ceiling increase voted down twice, by Democrat-controlled House.

19

Not exactly.

20

Yes, exactly. You said “it’s never actually been voted down until 2011”. It has been voted down, in 1984, twice, by Democrat-controlled House.