(Jim Young/Reuters)
That didn't take long. Details of the
next hostage-taking effort from House Republicans surfaced Thursday morning. Their draft Labor/Health and Human Services appropriations bill would defund implementation of the Affordable Care Act, NPR, the president's education plan, and anything remotely "liberal."
The Senate majority now says that is going to be dead on arrival. That's because it goes far deeper than just ACA funding.
Already, Democrats in both chambers are saying a draft of the House's Labor/Health and Human Services appropriations bill is dead on arrival, because it contains deep cuts to heating assistance for the poor, requires the repeal of a major provision of the health care law that will help provide assistance for disabled people, halts implementation of the entire law until the Supreme Court determines the constitutionality of its individual insurance mandate, and slashes Planned Parenthood and public broadcasting. Just for starters.[...]
A Senate Dem aide familiar with appropriations issues weighs in with the following statement.
"Members of the House have introduced more than 3,000 bills so far this Congress. This is one of them," the aide said.
Until [House Appropriations Subcommittee] Chairman Rehberg can muster enough support on his subcommittee to get his draft bill through a markup, that's all it is - a bill that's been introduced by a member of the House. Even if he did succeed in marking up the bill, it has no chance of passing the Senate. The Senate will not agree to kicking hundreds of thousands of students out of the Pell Grant program, decimating programs that train unemployed workers to get a new job, or adopting any of the dozens of radical legislative riders that the Chairman has proposed.
The Senate Democrats essentially got the Republicans to back down on the latest shutdown threat over FEMA (with a major assist from that penny pinching agency) so jumping in now with a "no way, no how" on these ideas might, just might, deter House Republicans from going insane again.
But there's plenty of room here in these proposals for yet another hostage-taking, shutdown showdown, and relying on House Republicans to not be crazy in averting the next crisis is probably not a good bet.