Senators Gone Wild
10 Terrible Amendments Offered Today by Senators
The
Senate has been debating the Democratic budget for the past few days. One of the
quirks of Senate rules means that the amendment process on the budget is
completely open, allowing senators to file and request a vote on an unlimited
number of amendments. They don't even have to say what their amendments are in
advance, but many still choose to file them in advance. Since the process is so
open, a rarity in the gridlocked Senate, senators often use this opportunity to
file highly political message amendments. We sifted through the more than 400
amendments filed and found dozens that are terrible, ridiculous, nonsensical,
damaging, or just plain crazy. Here's a look at ten of those proposals.
- BOSS IN YOUR BEDROOM: Sens. Fischer (R-NE), Cruz (R-TX),
Johanns (R-NE), and Enzi (R-WY) introduced an amendment to put your boss in your
bedroom by allowing them to deny you birth control coverage based on
their beliefs, not yours. This is just one of numerous anti-Obamacare amendments offered by
Republicans. Incidentally, the law turns three tomorrow. 42 GOP senators and 2
Democrats voted for this amendment.
- NRA-FUELED CONSPIRACY THEORIES: Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) offered
an amendment that would prevent the U.S. from signing on to the United Nations
Arms Trade Treaty. The NRA and other right-wing groups falsely claim
that this is some backdoor gun grab, which led the Senate to fail to ratify the treaty last
year. The NRA is currently making a full court press to kill or at least gut the treaty. Sen. Vitter
(R-LA) offered a similar amendment that would prohibit the U.N. from registering
or taxing Americans' guns, something the organization obviously has no plans to
do.
- HOUSE GOP BUDGET: While Republicans found time to cook up
hundreds of other amendments, it seems no Republican senator wanted to vote on
the House GOP budget as a substitute for the Senate Democratic plan. When
Democrats offered the draconian Ryan plan that ends Medicare and raises taxes on
the middle class in order to slash them on the wealthy, a measly 40 GOP senators voted for the plan from
their counterparts in the House. Three GOP senators, however, voted against it
because it wasn't extreme enough.
- GIVEAWAY TENS OF BILLIONS TO WALL STREET BANKS: In the same
so-called "reconciliation" bill that was necessary to finish passing Obamacare
was a provision that stopped routing federal student loans through the big
banks. Previously, the banks acted as a middleman between the federal government
and borrowers, reaping billions in fees each year even though they bore no risk
because the government was the one guaranteeing the loans. The banks role was
eliminated in 2010 and the money was shifted to Pell grants. Earlier today,
Republicans put forward an amendment to repeal all of the Obamacare bill,
including the student loan reforms. This would literally take money away from students and hand it over to
the Wall Street banks. 45 Republicans backed this proposal, which also was the third
time this week that GOP senators forced a vote on repealing
Obamacare.
- OBAMAPHONE: One of the more racially-charged moments in last year's
presidential campaign came when Republican groups promoted a video of an
African-American woman proclaiming her support for Obama because, she said, the
government was giving out free cell phones, among other things. The Drudge
Report and other right-wing media immediately dubbed this the "Obamaphone" controversy. As it turned out, the
FCC's Lifeline program offering free cell phones to low-income Americans began under President George W. Bush and is based
on a Reagan-era program to provide low-income Americans with subsidized
telephone service. Sen. Coburn (R-OK) offered an amendment to "reform" or, more
likely, eliminate, this otherwise obscure program that is important to
low-income Americans.
- MITT ROMNEY'S TAX PLAN: The Democratic plan raises close to
$1 TRILLION in revenue just by closing loopholes that benefit the wealthy and
corporate special interests like Big Oil. Republicans wanted to replace this
with revenue-neutral tax reform that used the money to pay for huge new tax cuts
for the wealthy and corporations instead of using it to reduce the deficit. This
is almost identical to the Romney-Ryan tax plan that raised middle class taxes
and which voters soundly rejected last year. All 45 GOP senators voted for this recycled Romney
plan, which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) also included in this year's House GOP
budget.
- KILL WIND JOBS, SEND CLEAN ENERGY INDUSTRY TO CHINA: Sen.
Alexander (R-TN) wants to repeal the vital tax credits for wind power, just as
Mitt Romney proposed last year. This would kill 37,000 jobs more or less
immediately and effectively cede the clean energy industry to
China and our other foreign competitors.
- LEAVE THE UN: Sen. Paul (R-KY) proposed one measure to save
a very small amount of money: withdraw from the United Nations.
- RACE-BAITING WELFARE LIES: You may remember that Mitt
Romney and other Republicans advanced the outright lie that President Obama
"removed the work requirement from welfare." This was categorically untrue, but that didn't stop
Republicans from airing millions of dollars in ads about it. In any case, the
GOP campaign of distortion around the amendment has resulted in no states taking
advantage of the flexibility requested by some Republican governors that the
Obama administration offered to grant. Nevertheless, Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) is still
so concerned that he offered an amendment to address the non-existent problem of
the work requirement having been removed from welfare. For good measure, he
offered a second mean-spirited amendment that mandates drug testing for welfare
recipients.
- CREATE A PERMANENT IMMIGRANT UNDERCLASS: Sen. Sessions
(R-AR), who has faced charges of racial prejudice in the past and
was once denied a seat on the federal bench as a result, put forward a proposal
to bar even those immigrants who receive legal status
from receiving numerous tax breaks directed at the working poor. This would
even prevent immigrants from receiving tax breaks that they are claiming on
behalf of their American citizen children.
These are just a few of the
dozens of terrible proposals put forward today by Republican senators.
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