The Disasterous Congress

Breaking: Lacking GOP support, Boehner pulls 'Plan B' vote --'Tea Party emboldened' 20 Dec 2012 Lacking enough support to pass a backup proposal to avert the "fiscal cliff," House Republican leaders on Thursday night pulled from the floor a vote on 'Plan B' legislation that would have preserved Bush-era tax rates for all earners making less than $1 million but raised rates on the country's top earners. Boehner and other GOP leaders had firmly indicated earlier Thursday that they had sufficient support to pass the Plan B legislation, along with another package of spending cuts. But a breakdown became evident after the GOP-dominated House only narrowly passed the package of spending reductions, which was intended to replace automatic defense cuts, or "sequestration." That measure, meant to encourage possible conservative dissenters to support the tax proposal, squeaked to victory by a margin of 215-209, with twenty-one Republicans voting against the bill.

G.O.P. Leaders in House Pull Tax Bill, Citing Lack of Votes 21 Dec 2012 House Republican leaders abruptly pulled their fallback tax bill from the floor Thursday night, conceding that they did not have the votes to pass it. The decision was a major setback for the speaker, who was pushing his so-called Plan B to prevent lower tax rates from expiring on most Americans. It came after the House had narrowly approved a plan to suspend planned Pentagon cuts [and replace them with cuts in domestic spending].

 

Obama proposes Social Security cuts 20 Dec 2012 The cuts in Social Security and other critical social programs proposed Tuesday by the Obama White House as part of negotiations with House Speaker John Boehner over the so-called "fiscal cliff" mark a watershed in US social policy. Obama has publicly proposed to cut future benefits for Social Security recipients, underlining the bipartisan agreement that the working class and the elderly, not Wall Street or the super-rich, must pay for the crisis of American capitalism. According to press reports Tuesday, the White House counter-offer to Boehner calls for reducing future cost-of-living increases in Social Security benefits by adopting an inflation index that is deliberately distorted to underestimate the amounts that the elderly will have to pay for the essentials of life.