Senate pushes conservative budget toward approval

[Geee]

Townhall:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans pushed a balanced-budget blueprint toward post-midnight Senate approval early Friday, laying down conservative markers for a likely veto struggle with President Barack Obama over their plans to end deficits, cut trillions in spending and repeal the health care law.

 

Approval of the non-binding budget was a certainty, not long after a vote in the House on Wednesday that ratified a slightly different version on a party-line vote.

 

Separately, legislation to stabilize the system for paying physicians who treat Medicare patients cleared the House during the day and was expected to pass the Senate. As a result, the week's events gave credence to Republican claims that their new, two-house majority would be able to govern without the chaos that has often plagued Congress in recent years.

 

 

But first, senators plunged into a peculiarly senatorial ritual known inside the Capitol as "vote-a-rama" — bringing up dozens of proposed changes freighted with political implications but little bearing on the budget.

[Valin]

Speaker John Boehner’s Big Week

March 27, 2015
Newt Gingrich

 

228-199.

 

392-37.

 

These two sets of numbers indicate why historians may look back on this as the week Speaker Boehner really began to run the House.

 

The first numbers, 228-199, were the final vote on passing the budget. This was a vital step because the budget leads to reconciliation. Reconciliation is the ONLY legislative vehicle that can pass the Senate on a simple majority. If Republicans are to send a bill repealing Obamacare to President Obama’s desk, they have to use reconciliation. Otherwise a regular bill takes 60 votes to pass the Senate. It is obvious that with only 54 Senate Republicans there is no way for them to use the regular procedure.

 

A week ago observers had suggested that Boehner could never get 218 Republicans to stick together. There was a large block of conservatives who sounded as if they would oppose everything. With help from a conservative leader, Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, Boehner developed a plan which enabled conservatives to vote for their budget and then vote for final passage of the budget proposed by Chairman Tom Price of Georgia.

 

The House leaders allowed six different budgets to be offered so the Democratic liberals, the Black Caucus, and conservative Republicans could all have a chance to present their versions. That enabled many conservatives to vote for more aggressive spending cuts and then vote for final passage of the House GOP Budget. That was a huge victory for Boehner which no one expected a week ago.

 

(Snip)

 

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