You May As Well Try And Read It, Your Congresscritters Probably Won’t Bother

UPDATE:

Ruh roh, chicanery time, they really are desperate to jam this through without anyone getting to read it.

The Democrats’ 2,309-page reconciliation bill was released for public viewing Sunday and will begin the mark-up process in the Budget Committee Monday at 3pm. Contrary to the Democratic pledge to post the reconciliation measure 72 hours before consideration, the bill posted is a dummy — or a “shell” as Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wisc.) put it — an early version of the House bill that cleared key committees in 2009, thus making it eligible for the reconciliation process under budget rules. Once that bill clears the the committee it will be gutted and replaced with the closed-door “fixes” agreed upon by Congressional Democrats, and appended with an unrelated student loan bill.

*****

House Democrats release bill for Budget markup Monday

House Democrats on Sunday night set into motion what they hope will be the final steps on healthcare reform.

The House Budget Committee on Sunday evening released text that will serve as the base legislation for the changes the House will seek to the Senate bill this week.

Specifically, the Budget committee released a 2,309-page effort that had been previously recommended to the Education and Labor Committee and Ways and Means Committee last year.

The measure posted online does not include the substantive changes to the Senate healthcare bill that House Democrats will seek. Those changes will be offered during the markups in the Budget and Rules committees, which the budget panel hopes to begin on Monday afternoon.

The House is expected to approve the Senate’s healthcare bill along with the package of changes. The Senate would then be expected to approve the package of changes under budget reconciliation rules.

Because the bill will be considered under budget reconciliation rules in the Senate, GOP senators will not be able to filibuster the package and Democrats will not need 60 votes to move the legislation through the Seante.

A BILL
To provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 202 of
the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2010.

Oh, sure, it’s 2300+ pages, but to make any real sense of it, you’re also going to need to refer to the United States Code a lot.

Oh yeah, you’re going to need to reference the 2400+ page Senate bill too.

Have fun! Pack a lunch.

See also:
Next Steps: How The Health Bill Could Move Forward
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Health Care This Week
Democrats look for consensus on final health overhaul package
A Big Week for Health Care Reform: What Could Happen Next?
Nancy Pelosi’s strategy for passing health-care reform
The House Health-Care Vote and the Constitution
John Campbell: ‘It ain’t over ’til it’s over’ on health care

Remember, it’s still not too late to make your voice heard.

/Take Action!

A Real Man With A Real Plan

Rep. Ryan proposes radical solution to budget problem

I spent the first part of the week thinking about President Obama’s proposal for next year’s budget. It’s a modest document meant to take current policy and nudge it forward and leftward while beginning the hard work of pushing the deficit downward. It makes its changes at the edge of the state, freezing growth here and expanding programs there.

But I spent the latter part of the week thinking about the proposal from Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) for what our budget should look like 60 years from now. Ryan’s budget is a radical document that takes current policy and rolls a live grenade underneath it. Social Security? Ryan’s adds private accounts. Medicaid? Ryan privatizes it. Medicare? Same thing. Health care? Ryan repeals the subsidy for employer-provided insurance, replacing it with a tax credit.

The boyish Ryan is a conservative darling and the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, but there’s nothing conservative about this document. It does not respect, much less preserve, the status quo. But then, that’s a point in Ryan’s favor. The status quo does not deserve our respect. It is unsustainable. Left unchecked, it will bankrupt our country. On that, Ryan’s radicalism is welcome, and all too rare. The size of his proposal is shocking, but it is proportionate to the size of our problem: According to the Congressional Budget Office, which examined a simplified version of his proposal, it would wipe out our projected long-term deficits.

GOP Rep. Paul Ryan tackles Obama’s path to deficit disaster

The new era of Democratic bipartisanship, like cut flowers in a vase, wilted in less than a week.

During his question time at the House Republican retreat, President Obama elevated congressman and budget expert Paul Ryan as a “sincere guy” whose budget blueprint — which, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), eventually achieves a balanced budget — has “some ideas in there that I would agree with.” Days later, Democratic legislators held a conference call to lambaste Ryan’s plan as a vicious, voucherizing, privatizing assault on Social Security, Medicare and every non-millionaire American. Progressive advocacy groups and liberal bloggers joined the jeering in practiced harmony.

The attack “came out of the Democratic National Committee, and that is the White House,” Ryan told me recently, sounding both disappointed and unsurprised. On the deficit, Obama’s outreach to Republicans has been a ploy, which is to say, a deception. Once again, a president so impressed by his own idealism has become the nation’s main manufacturer of public cynicism.

To Ryan, the motivations of Democratic leaders are transparent. “They had an ugly week of budget news. They are precipitating a debt crisis, with deficits that get up to 85 percent of GDP and never get to a sustainable level. They are flirting with economic disaster.” So they are attempting some “misdirection,” calling attention to Ryan’s recently updated budget road map — first unveiled two years ago — which proposes difficult entitlement reforms. When all else fails, change the subject to Republican heartlessness.

Read the report:

A ROADMAP FOR
AMERICA’S FUTURE
Version 2.0

See also:
The Roadmap Plan
A GOP Road Map for America’s Future
Roadmap to Solvency
Ryan’s fiscal plan draws attention
Paul Ryan’s Long (Deficit) Goodbye
Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan Stands Alone on Economic Solution
Rep. Paul Ryan says his budget plan doesn’t represent GOP
Political Punch Podcast: Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc
Paul Ryan and his critics
The Savaging of Paul Ryan
Ryan Gets Serious

Paul Ryan is my favorite Republican, he gets it. He understands, like anyone with even half an ounce of honesty, that the current path of America’s fiscal future is bleak, unsustainable, and will inevitably lead to collapse and default. Sure, Ryan’s plan is radical, full of hard, painful choices, a big solution for a big problem. But, unlike the current “keep kicking the can down the road” policy, RYAN’S PLAN WILL ACTUALLY GET US OUT OF THE GIGANTIC MESS WE’RE IN AND IT’S ALREADY LONG PAST TIME THAT SOMEONE DID SOMETHING!

/although he says he won’t, I wish Ryan would run for President, he’s exactly the kind of leader this country needs right now