Thune: No Surprise Democrats Are Rethinking Their Support for ObamaCare
U.S. Senator John Thune (R-South Dakota), Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, discusses a prominent Democrat #39;s second thoughts on ObamaCare and highlights the damage the law is...
By: JohnThune
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Thune: No Surprise Democrats Are Rethinking Their Support for ObamaCare - Video
The mood among Democrats on Capitol Hill soured as details of a $1.1-trillion spending bill confronted them Wednesday with the reality of their eroding political leverage.
Elections have consequences, Democratic negotiators said as they spent much of the day defending the deals they cut with Republicans, saying it was the best they could do.
"I say to my colleagues: Stay steady; stay strong," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the chief Democratic negotiator on the huge bill that will fund most government departments through the end of September.
"You know, sometimes you give a little, you take a little," she said.
As is typically the case with must-pass money bills, the current appropriations measure, which is necessary to prevent a government shutdown, not only sets spending levels but also includes a host of substantive provisions tacked on by influential lawmakers.
Democratic leaders said they had stopped dozens of Republican proposals -- to restrict abortions, loosen rules on mountain-top coal mining, enable ivory imports and expand gun rights -- in return for the ones they did agree to.
They said that compromise was tough, but that leaving decisions to next year, when Republicans will have a majority in both houses, would have been worse for Democratic priorities.
Those arguments did not soothe critics of the 1,603-page bill that is making its way toward a House vote on Thursday, with the Senate expected to follow by week's end.
A coalition of liberal lawmakers, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), made a last-minute pitch to change a provision of the bill that would weaken financial regulations.
The measure would loosen rules on certain types of financial swaps by banks -- deals that were at the heart of the 2008 financial meltdown. The rules were adopted under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and have been a major target for Republicans.
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Democrats sour over government funding bill with Republican priorities
Congressional Democrats objected on Wednesday to controversial financial and political campaign provisions tucked into a $1.1 trillion U.S. spending bill, keeping the risk of a government shutdown alive.
The complaints from House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats clouded the chances for passage of the funding bill as a midnight Thursday deadline drew near.
Republicans were preparing a one-or-two day extension to keep federal agencies open past the deadline, but were unwilling to make any concessions on dozens of provisions added to the bill.
Pelosi said Democrats were "deeply troubled" by Republican measures that would kill planned restrictions on derivatives trading by large, federally insured banks and expand tenfold the amounts that individuals can donate to national political parties.
"These provisions are destructive to middle-class families and to the practice of our democracy. We must get them out of the omnibus package," Pelosi said in a statement.
Democratic support is seen as critical to passage of the spending bill in the House, as Republican aides and lawmakers say it is unlikely their party would be able to muster enough votes for passage on its own.
Many conservative House Republicans oppose the bill, claiming it fails to deny funding for President Barack Obama's controversial executive action on immigration. And Democrats still control the U.S. Senate.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a staunch advocate for tougher regulation of Wall Street, called for Democrats to withhold support from the bill due to the derivatives provision, which would effectively strike down a portion of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law enacted in the wake of a financial crisis fueled partly by complex mortgage derivatives.
But House Republicans were not blinking. A party leadership aide said no changes would be made to the spending measure, which was negotiated by appropriators from both parties. A vote was planned for Thursday.
In 2013, a House vote to repeal the same rule, which requires that banks move derivatives trading to units that do not benefit from federal deposit insurance, attracted 70 Democratic votes.
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Democrats balk at spending bill as government shutdown looms
The U.S. House is set to pass a $1.1 trillion spending bill that includes a banking provision opposed by many Democrats as a giveaway to large institutions.
Current funding for the government ends today, and the measure would finance most of the government through September 2015. The House also plans to pass a two-day stopgap spending bill to give the Senate until Dec. 13 to vote on the measure and avoid a government shutdown.
The banking language, insisted upon by Republicans, would ease rules enacted to protect taxpayers against bank losses after souring derivatives trades helped cause the 2008 financial crisis. The dispute over the banking rule is a preview of Republican plans to roll back other business regulations when they take control of both chambers in 2015.
The provision would put taxpayers back on the hook for Wall Streets riskiest behavior, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said yesterday.
Though Pelosi opposes the banking provision, she stopped short of urging fellow House Democrats to vote against the bill, said a leadership aide who sought anonymity.
A deal on the measure was announced Dec. 9 after Senate Democratic negotiators accepted the banking rule changes and Republican demands on other policy provisions. Republicans oppose changes to the measure and said theyre not reopening negotiations.
House Republicans say they will have the votes to pass the bill without support from Pelosi because other Democrats, including retiring Representative Jim Moran of Virginia, are willing to back it.
House Speaker John Boehner told reporters yesterday he looks forward to it passing with bipartisan majorities in the House and the Senate in the coming days.
Senate opponents led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts arent threatening to hold the bill up. Chief negotiator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, the Senate Appropriations chair, is standing by the deal.
The banking provision would let JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Citigroup Inc. (C) and other lenders keep swaps trading in units with federal backstops.
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Democrats Criticize Bank Plan in Spending Bill as Deadline Nears
Democratic lawmakers wanted to use a year-end spending bill to punish U.S. companies that moved their tax addresses overseas by barring them from getting government contracts. It didnt work.
In the end, all the Democrats got was new language that may not affect any companies and a renewed provision that has proved ineffective in the past.
Its fairly watered down, Representative Ander Crenshaw, a Florida Republican, said of the corporate tax inversion language that applies across the U.S. government. Democrats wanted to strengthen that, and I think most people are happy that that didnt happen.
The policy is a victory for companies including Medtronic Inc. (MDT) and Tyco International Plc (TYC), which have millions of dollars in U.S. contracts and will be able to keep their business with the government. Medtronic is moving its tax address to Ireland next year and Tyco completed an inversion in 1997.
The language in the 1,603-page spending plan to fund the government represents the latest setback to Democrats efforts to prevent companies from inverting or punish them if they do. Inversion plans by companies such as Burger King Worldwide Inc. and Pfizer Inc. (PFE) have brought national attention to the issue.
Democrats including Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois have been trying to use tax law or contracting rules to curb the practice.
The spending bill, which will avert a government shutdown after funding expires this week, includes two limits on federal contracts to inverted companies.
The first continues an existing rule. Lawmakers prohibited some companies that had completed inversions from receiving contracts from the Department of Homeland Security starting in 2002, and temporarily expanded the ban across the federal government in 2007.
Similar one-year bans were enacted in four of the following six years.
That hasnt stopped some of the companies from winning U.S. government contracts by exploiting gaps in the rules.
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Inversion Curb Democrats Sought Watered Down in New Bill