Boehner and McConnell offer games instead of jobs. (Kevin Lamarque/REUTERS)
With
yet another day passing in which the Republican House of Representatives does nothing about jobs, Brian Beutler explains their next
petty game in pretending they're doing something, but really are just trying to stick it to President Obama.
This week, they’ll pass legislation that includes perhaps the least stimulative measure in President Obama’s jobs bill and pay for it with perhaps the most regressive measure in a recent package of deficit reducing proposals he submitted to the joint deficit super committee.
It's a case study in the perils of offering concessions to your opponents before negotiations have begun. And it will force Democrats in both chambers, but particularly in the Senate, to decide whether to pass a proposal comprised of measures Obama’s backed in the past, even though they’ve been cherry picked to essentially constitute a Republican piece of legislation. If Senate Dems block the measure, Republicans will accuse them of wanting to pick political fights instead of passing Obama jobs legislation. If Dems pass the measure, and Obama signs it, the GOP can cite it as evidence that they’re not simply standing in the way of action on the economy.
Boehner is following in Sen. Mitch McConnell's footsteps on this. McConnell pulled this stunt last week, forcing the Senate to vote on this same narrow provision from the larger package when Reid brought up the teachers and first responders jobs bill. This provision would eliminate the three percent withholding tax charged on federal contractors. This is a rule adopted by Congress during the Bush administration to ensure tax compliance by federal contractors. The government withhold three percent of the cost of a project when a contract is awarded as a sort of tax downpayment by the contractor.
To pay for repealing this revenue source, Democrats would put a surtax on millionaires. Republicans, however, will punish the sick and elderly. Literally. "Republicans have selected a provision from Obama's deficit reduction recommendations that would limit Medicaid eligibility for people who also receive Social Security benefits" as the pay-for.
Here’s how it works: The government uses a measure known as Modified Adjusted Gross Income to determine Medicaid eligibility. Currently, though, it only incorporates the taxable portion of Social Security income in that calculation. Under this proposal, it would factor in all Social Security benefits. That means some seniors who currently qualify for Medicaid would no longer be eligible. Doing this would save about $14.6 billion over 10 years—more than the cost of repealing the 3 percent withholding compliance measure.
It was included in Obama's jobs package as a sweetener to potentially get some Republican votes, an as-usual futile endeavor. Republicans will think it's cute to force Democrats to vote against this part of the President's plan. Not the actual job-creating parts of the plan, because they are still wholly committed to doing as much damage to the economy as possible in the next 12.5 months, but the parts that are best for playing politics with. Still, it's an instructive moment in the folly of providing anything in any large policy package in hopes of attracting Republican votes.