This past week Congress played a tough game of tug-of-war between the House and the Senate. Here is how it all ended up.
The Senate spent its third and final week trying to pass the tax extenders bill that proposed to extend as many as 50 expired tax provisions. Many of these expired tax programs were popular with teachers, doctors, and states with no individual income taxes, just to name a few supporters.
The Senate majority leader offered three different proposals during the three-week marathon. The price tag of these proposals ranged from $140 billion to approximately $100 billion, with the third and final proposal adding approximately $35 billion to our debt. Each time the Senate conducted a vote on the proposals, it fell short of the needed 60 votes to move the process along.
Thursday evening was no different. Although the majority leader has slimmed down the third proposal, the price tag of $35 billion was still too much to swallow for 41 U.S. senators, including one Democratic senator from Nebraska. Just prior to the vote, the Senate Republican leader went to the floor and said, "The majority leader wants to make this debate about Republicans opposing something. The only things Republicans have opposed in this debate are job-killing taxes and adding to the national debt."
Several attempts by Senate Republicans to pay for the price of the bill were rejected. Consequently, the Senate Republicans felt they were left with no other alternative than to vote down the bill. However, before this final attempt to pass it was made this week, the Senate Democrats, suspecting defeat, stripped out a provision that would stave off a cut in reimbursement payments to doctors and passed that provision as a separate bill. The Senate constructed this separate bill with provisions that paid for its entire $6.5 billion cost.
The speaker of the House of Representatives had said repeatedly that she would not ask the House to consider the "doctor fix" bill unless and until the Senate was successfulin passing the larger, deficit-increasing tax extenders bill. However, by late Thursday afternoon, the writing was on the wall for the larger tax extenders bill.
Once the Senate failed to move the bill along for the third and final time, the speaker acquiesced and called the "doctor fix" bill up for floor consideration. It ultimately passed the House, with no changes, and thus is on its way to the president for his signature. The vote on passage of the "doc fix" was 417-1. It is amazing how easily Congress can do its work and pass quality legislation when it pays the tab associated with the cost of the bill in a fiscally responsible fashion.
While both houses of Congress were playing this game of tug-of-war, the leaders decided they should pause the warfare and consider a bill that had bipartisan support -- that being the Iran sanctions conference report. This bill was designed to enhance United States diplomatic efforts with respect to Iran by expanding economic sanctions against Iran. It passed the Senate by an overwhelming vote of 99-0. The House then followed suit and passed it by a vote of 408-8, with one voting present.
So, the final score for this week in Congress was a shutout: one win for those who want Congress to stop adding to our already exploding debt, and one loss for those who think our government should spend its way out of our debt problems.
Stay tuned to learn what Congress has in store for us next week before they take a week-long recess to celebrate our nations birthday.
Elizabeth B. Letchworth is a retired, four-times-elected United States Senate Secretary for the Majority and Minority. She is the founder of GradeGov.com.
