Chicago and Springfield, U.S.A. — The Republican led U.S. House of Representatives wasted taxpayer dollars playing a partisan game on Wednesday, when they voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

It represented the 33rd time Congress has attempted to repeal the Act, even though the measure is destined for certain defeat in the U.S. Senate. Keith Kelleher, President of SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana, uniting 91,000 health care and child care workers, issued the following statement in response:

At a time when Congress should put its full attention on the country’s economic recovery, the U.S. House Republicans squandered a day at the office Wednesday when they voted for a politically motivated and legislatively futile repeal of President Obama’s landmark health care reform.

While average Americans need Congress to focus intensely on policies that will create jobs, make college education more affordable, reduce the federal deficit and generally improve our economic fortunes, the House Republicans chose to spend the day on a blatant political stunt. The attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act is considered dead on arrival in the Senate, so Wednesday’s vote was an exercise in empty symbolism, wasting time, energy and public dollars that should have been marshaled to accelerate our economic revitalization.

In response to today’s vote we will be informing our union members of all of Illinois’ Congressional members who voted to deny Illinois citizens quality, affordable health care. In the wake of last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act, the time has come for opponents of the bill to dispense with partisan gamesmanship and move on to the business at hand: putting more Americans to work.

Congress should let the Affordable Care Act continue to work for the people of Illinois.

According to the Campaign for Better Health Care, the law has already generated the following rewards in Illinois:

• More than 3.6 million residents became entitled to preventative medical services, such as mammograms and colonoscopies, without having to pay deductibles or co-pays.
• More than 100,000 uninsured young adults under the age of 26 became eligible for coverage under the parents’ health insurance.
• More than 150,000 seniors with Medicare received a $250 rebate to cover the cost of their prescription drugs once they hit the so-called donut hole.

For all of these reasons, members of Congress who voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act must explain to Illinois voters why they chose to deny health security to their constituents and why they oppose providing quality and affordable health care for all Americans.

Image Courtesy of  Jose Gil / Shutterstock.com

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The House of Representatives has passed the Budget Control Act proposed by their Speaker, John Boehner (R-OH), by a vote of 218-210.

The bill passed without any support from the Democrats and, despite an intensive lobbying effort by Boehner and the rest of the House GOP leadership, twenty-two Republicans broke ranks to vote against it as well.

Speaking in support of his bill, Boehner said that he “stuck my neck out a mile trying to get an agreement with the president of the United States. I stuck my neck out a mile. And I put revenues on the table in order to try to come to an agreement to avert us being where we are.”

“But a lot of people in this town can never say yes. This house has acted and it is time for this administration to put something on the table, tell us where you are,” he continued.

The House was originally supposed to vote on the bill last Thursday, but Boehner abruptly postponed the vote at the last minute when it became apparent that he did not have enough support. Another round of intensive arm-twisting ensued, and Boehner agreed to tweak the bill to make it more palatable to the Tea Party faction of his caucus.

The original bill called for a $900 billion increase in the debt ceiling and spending cuts worth $917 billion. This increase would only tide the government over until 2012, at which point the issue would have to be revisited. However, Boehner’s legislation contained provisions for a bipartisan committee to come up with further spending cuts, at which point the debt ceiling could be raised again. As a result of pressure from the Tea Partiers, Boehner agreed to a further amendment that would require Congress to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and send it to the states for ratification before the debt ceiling could be raised a second time.

Once the bill arrived in the Senate, Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) moved to ‘table’ (i.e. kill) it. That motion was agreed to by a vote of 59-41 that saw several Republican senators join the Democrats in opposing Boehner’s plan. Now the Senate will likely turn its attention to Reid’s own proposal to solve the debt ceiling crisis, with a final vote likely to occur sometime during the early hours of Sunday morning. But it is almost certain to receive a chilly welcome from the House, and, with only days to go before the August 2^nd deadline, a solution to the debt crisis seems as remote as ever.

Image Courtesy of  http://www.flickr.com/photos/republicanconference/

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In a bid to end the protracted stalemate over raising the debt ceiling, President Obama and senior Democrats have met to hash out a solution that they hope will be palatable to the Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) unveiled the Democrats’ plan on Sunday night after the latest round of talks with Republicans broke down. It offers a $2.7 trillion package of cuts, an increase in the debt ceiling through 2012, and (perhaps most crucially) none of the tax increases that Republicans found so galling.

“We hope Speaker Boehner will abandon his ‘my way or the highway’ approach, and join us in forging a bipartisan compromise along these lines,” Reid said in a statement.

The Democrats’ maneuver comes as the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner (R-OH), announced that the Republicans would press for a short-term increase to the debt ceiling along with $3-4 trillion-worth of spending cuts and a program of long-term deficit reduction.

Under US law, Congress sets a maximum cap on the amount of money that the government can borrow. Currently, that cap is set at $14.294 trillion. On August 2, the government is projected to reach that cap and, according to the US Treasury, failing to increase the debt ceiling would leave the government in default of its obligations.

Although both Republicans and Democrats agree in principle that a default would be a bad thing, many Republicans are eager to use the issue as leverage in their bid to achieve their long-term financial objectives. Spurred on by the Tea Party, the Republicans want to see drastic spending cuts put in place before any increase in the debt ceiling is voted through. Because they control the House of Representatives, a certain amount of bipartisan agreement is essential before any plan can pass into law.

Vice President Joe Biden led bipartisan talks aimed at finding common ground which produced a plan for $1.5 trillion in cuts over 10 years, mostly through discretionary spending. But further agreement proved impossible when the Republican participants refused to countenance any tax increases.

Last week, the Republican-controlled House passed the Cut, Cap and Balance Act. It would have cut total spending by $111 billion in Fiscal Year 2012 and scaled back total federal spending by a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product. Also, it would have increased the debt ceiling, provided that the states ratified a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Obama made it quite clear that he would veto the act if it ever reached his desk, but it ended up dying in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

No doubt the president and his party leaders hope that their latest proposal will win the Republicans’ approval by giving them much of what they have been clamoring for. Even if this plan becomes law, America’s credit rating may still be downgraded, which could result in higher interest rates for mortgages, credit cards, and student loans.

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On Wednesday afternoon, debt ceiling talks between leaders of Congress and the President broke down, causing frustration and fear to reverberate throughout the country.   House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) repeatedly pushed President Obama to accept a temporary resolution to the debt ceiling according to multiple sources that were present at the meeting.

“Eric don’t call my bluff. I’m going to the American people on this,” the president said, according to both Cantor and another attendee. “This process is confirming what the American people think is the worst about Washington: that everyone is more interested in posturing, political positioning, and protecting their base, than in resolving real problems.”

Cantor, speaking to reporters after the meeting, said that the president “abruptly” walked off after offering his scolding. “I know why he lost his temper. He’s frustrated. We’re all frustrated,” the Virginia Republican said.

Democratic officials report things went a little differently than Cantor is reporting. “The meeting ended with Cantor being dressed down while sitting in silence,” one official said in an email. “[The president] said Cantor could not have it both ways of insisting on dollar-for-dollar and still not being open to revenues.”

The president said he would be willing to sign off on over $1.5 trillion in discretionary spending and mandatory spending cuts. With additional negotiations, he added, he could move that figure up to $1.7 trillion, and with a willingness to consider revenue increases and tax loophole closures, he added, lawmakers could get to over $2 trillion. His preference, he said, was to continue to push for the biggest package possible, so long as it was balanced. Apparently this concession was not large enough for Cantor.

Cantor, who has taken over as the chief Republican negotiator from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), responded by insisting that revenues were off the table. Without steeper cuts, he stated that the votes didn’t exist except to pass a smaller short-term resolution.

“It is easy to get to a higher number when you are not asking anything difficult from yourself,” Obama retorted. Cantor continued to press negotiators to cut $2.5 trillion. The president pointed out that Cantor was just looking for a way to say, “No.”

“Talk about arbitrary,” he said of Cantor’s figure, according to a Democratic attendee. “I am totally willing to do the hard stuff to get well above what you need and you won’t do it because you can’t put one penny of revenue on the table.”

“At least Mitch McConnell, to his credit, was willing to work for a solution,” the president added, acknowledging the proposal by the Senate Minority Leader to, essentially, give him the authority to lift the debt ceiling without passing commensurate cuts.

“I have reached the point where I say enough,” Obama concluded, according to Reuters. “Would Ronald Reagan be sitting here? I’ve reached my limit. This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this.”

mistydawnphoto / Shutterstock.com

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The Republicans in Washington have not learned a bit from the Wisconsin debacle and, instead, are continuing their attack on workers.  To recap, the crisis on Wall Street has led lawmakers to ask workers and the middle class to sacrifice, while companies like GE and Bank of America pay not a single cent in corporate taxes.  And now, the attack continues.

A group of House Republicans is launching a new assault on union workers.  GOP Reps. Jim Jordan (OH), Tim Scott (SC), Scott Garrett (NJ), Dan Burton (IN), and Louie Gohmert (TX) have introduced H.R. 1135, which states that it is designed to “provide information on total spending on means-tested welfare programs, to provide additional work requirements, and to provide an overall spending limit on means-tested welfare programs.”  Nothing too awful so far.  The bill mostly about verifying those that apply for federal benefits are eligible to do so.  But, buried deep in the bill is the sneak attack on workers.  The bill, if passed, would actually cut off all food stamp benefits to any family where one adult member is engaging in a strike against an employer.  The bill states that “striking workers are ineligible.”

The bill also includes a provision that would exempt households from losing eligibility, “if the household was eligible immediately prior to such strike, however, such family unit shall not receive an increased allotment as the result of a decrease in the income of the striking member or members of the household.”

Entire families would lose eligibility for food stamps based on a strike.  This means children that have no control over their parents’ jobs could go hungry.  Tell me the GOP is pro-life because it just doesn’t seem like it to me.  Currently, there is a record 42 million Americans utilizing food stamps during this great recession.  Prohibiting families from receiving food stamps is just another nail in the GOP coffin.

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