Thursday, December 15, 2011

Carrot and Stick

How is the House going to pay for it by destroying Social Security?

House Republicans Push Toward Vote on $1 Trillion Spending Bill (click title to entry - thank you)

December 15, 2011, 8:15 AM EST

Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) -- House Republicans unveiled a $1 trillion spending bill setting budgets for hundreds of government programs in a bid to force U.S. lawmakers to wrap up their work for the year.

Republicans aim to put the more than 1,200-page spending measure to a vote tomorrow, a move designed to give them an advantage in a separate battle with Democrats over extending an expiring payroll tax cut.

Passing the spending bill would let Republicans leave for their Christmas holiday, increasing pressure on the Democratic-controlled Senate to accept it as well as Republicans’ version of the payroll tax cut. Democrats have been holding up the legislation on concerns that approval would ensure the House recess, forcing them to accept both measures.

A short-term bill funding federal agencies expires tomorrow and without action by Congress, the government will partially shut down. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers, a Kentucky Republican, said his colleagues want to break the payroll-tax stalemate.

“Hopefully, the Senate will act,” he told reporters yesterday. “But you know how they are. We’re not going to sit around here and wait two weeks, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for the Senate.”...

It would seem as though the current budget before the Senate continues to defund the government and this is the House's answer.

...House Republicans (click here) officially unveiled the massive, bipartisan spending bill late Wednesday to fulfill transparency rules, but Senate Democrats had yet to officially sign on. However, the measure wasn't expected to change much, if at all, before a vote Friday, despite White House protests and an explicit veto threat regarding provisions placing limits on the ability of Cuban immigrants to visit families on the island or send money back to them....