You have questions. I have answers.
Yesterday I wrote about Sen. Pat Toomey's opposition to the PACT Act, which funds health care for veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits and other environmental hazards while serving in the military. Toomey doesn't object to the overall intent of the bill, but he does object to a technical change whose origins are notably murky—as they usually are in Congress. There are probably a few 23-year-old Senate aides who could explain this to me in 60 seconds, but unfortunately I don't have any Senate aides handy on my Rolodex. Instead, because I'm dedicated to bringing you the news you need, I took a dive myself to figure it out.
This was initially made difficult by the fact that Congress is currently considering five different PACT Acts.¹ That delayed but didn't discourage me. Here's the timeline:
- February 18: House posts text of HR.3967 on its website. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill contains no reallocation of existing spending from discretionary to mandatory.
- March 3: House passes HR.3967 and sends it back to the Senate. CBO says its budget impact is identical to the February 18 version.
- June 16: Senate passes HR.3967 by a vote of 84-14 and sends it back to the House with "technical corrections." One of those corrections is this one:
There is authorized to be appropriated...(1) the delivery of veterans’ health care associated with exposure to environmental hazards in the active military, naval, air, or space service in programs administered by the Under Secretary for Health;
....BUDGET SCOREKEEPING.— (1) Immediately upon enactment...expenses authorized to be appropriated to the Fund in subsection (c) shall be estimated for fiscal year 2023 and each subsequent fiscal year and treated as budget authority that is considered to be direct spending—
Note that "direct spending" is another term for "mandatory spending." According to CBO, this is the language that reallocates $400 billion of already existing spending from the discretionary budget to the mandatory budget.
- June 23: Toomey speaks on the Senate floor objecting to the reallocation. Nobody cares.
- July 13: House passes S.3373, an old Senate bill repurposed with the text of the PACT Act. It is then sent back to the Senate.
- July 27: S.3373 is brought up in the Senate for a cloture vote but it fails 55-42. Only six Republicans vote for the bill, compared to 36 on June 16th.
The objectionable clause about reallocating funds to the mandatory account was made in the Senate sometime between March and June. Probably in May, when the chair and ranking member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee agreed on the text of the bill.
But who made the change? Sen. Tim Kaine is the sponsor of the bill and Sen. Jon Tester is chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee, so I suppose they're the two obvious suspects. But why did the bill get 36 Republican votes on June 16 and only six on July 27 when nothing changed between those dates? I can think of two or three possibilities:
- Nobody knew the bill had been changed. Toomey figured it out on June 23 and it was only then that Republicans understood what was going on. I find this fairly unlikely. The change to the bill was pretty obvious and pretty easy to find for anyone with legislative experience. What's more, even after Toomey started talking about it, Republicans showed little interest.
- There was lots of initial support because the reallocation had been quietly agreed to on a bipartisan basis, with Democrats and Republicans both promised a piece of the pie. I find this fairly likely.
- Most Republicans don't care one way or the other about this issue, but voted against the bill on the 27th to show that they were pissed off about Joe Manchin's "betrayal" a few hours earlier when he agreed to a new spending bill after Republicans had already helped pass the CHIPS Act and no longer had any leverage to stop it.
My own guess is that Tester and Jerry Moran, the ranking Republican member of the Veterans Affairs Committee, added the reallocation language jointly. The rest of the committee knew about it too, and quietly accepted it because it seemed like a good way to get a little extra money for everyone. Later, when the whole thing blew up and started getting attention on Fox News, they backed off.
That's just a guess, though. Someone with inside knowledge of Senate horsetrading would need to step up if we want to know for sure what happened.
¹The other four are the Partnership Agreements Creating Tangible Savings Act; the Pediatricians Accelerate Childhood Therapies Act of 2021; the Keep Our Promise to America's Children and Teachers Act; and the Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency Act.
The obvious answer is that the IRA was announced earlier in the week and this is Mitch taking retribution.
I think that’s unlikely. Mitch McConnell is a reasonably savvy operator. This is such inside baseball that I don’t see a political upside for Republicans. Kevin and the Democratic leadership will concede that, of course, Republicans have a point (and the party’s leadership will make only the most tepid response. A state of affairs which has existed for a long time and has largely insulated Republicans from paying a political price for what once would have been considered political malpractice.
But times are changing. There’s a new generation of Democrats who know how to play political hardball. The tv and newspapers have been overloaded with Democrats attacks, attacks by vets and veterans groups, and by Jon Stewart. This is a new environment but my guess is that Mitch will adapt better than MAGA.
"This is a new environment but my guess is that Mitch will adapt better than MAGA"
And this is exactly why the MAGA movement is so dangerous for Republicans. This will cause severe heartburn for Mitch. Why? Well it was a war started under a republican president, a vocal troop supporter, a flag waver. This strikes at the heart of of one of the core principles of the republican party. Defense, spend the money show we're strong, wave the flag - which now adds to that mantra - until its time to pay. This is a dangerous political stance for republican because tried an true conservatives who relished the win of overturning ROE now are faced with a HUGE backlash because they didn't "take care of" Vets.
It was "ONLY" $40B - but to set it on auto pilot means they had no say in it - in the future. This then causes both parties to re-think what is really mandatory spending.
The republicans stepped in it this time. They could increase the defense budget by $100B next year but until they address the troop medical issue - all those shiny new toys they use won't mean a damned thing to some grunt on the ground.
Troops vote, Abrams tanks, and aircraft carriers don't.
I would generally agree with your analysis. But there’s a certain real weirdness that cane with Trump but I can’t decide whether he caused it or whether the GOP and the media were basically already there and just waiting for the dam to break. It’s worth remembering that Trump mocked and disrespected the military regularly and, most famously, insulted John McCain.
Yet, Trump paid no price for an extremely outrageous attack. Neither was he hounded by the media or the Democrats. It turns out that assumptions about Republican “patriotism” are so deeply ingrained in the media that it’s now possible to vote against vets and even insult them without fear of political consequences.
But I agree that this is scaring the hell out of Mitch. The MAGA people have been emboldened but, I think, from Mitch’s perspective they seem to be flirting with disaster. I think he sees the rise of more combative Democrats and is seeing more pushback. Even now MAGA antics might conceivably cost the GOP the senate.
Mitch-
What happens if the DEMs decide welfare, medicare, medicaid or food stamps should be moved to mandatory spending? Is THIS what the GOP fears most?
The amount of money is so small but I wonder if it's the precedent republicans fear? (Especially when the DEMs have control of both houses in the future)
Or Maybe the GOP fears that making it mandatory spending would end their efforts to privatizing VA benefits ????
This has been a good issue for the GOP - taking care of veterans. I am surprised they fell for this over $40B
I think the Republicans real issue is that the Democrats didn’t offer concessions regarding their other priorities and legislative agenda. I think Josh Marshall’s observation that both the media and Democrats have accepted as normal the idea that Republicans take hostages and need to be paid off to do anything explains a lot. I think one assumption was that nobody would complain if they “justifiably” were forced to hurt vets because the Democrats didn’t hand over their lunch money.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/you-be-you
The other is that, yes, being “pro-veteran” was good marketing for the GOP, I think it was assumed that the media and, especially, Democrats would just take it without hitting back or taking political advantage. As I say, that’s true for the leadership and the consultants but that worldview is breaking done. I think it never occurred to them that any Democrats would make a fuss.
The assumption was obviously that, like Kevin, they’d carefully explore and acknowledge Republicans concerns before submitting to the GOO rather than beating them to a bloody pulp.
Damn. Tim Kaine keeps fucking the Democrat Party agenda.
First, he serves as DNC chair during the midterm shellackings under Obama.
Then, he insinuates his anti-abortion self onto Hillary's ticket in 2016, leading to the final bleeding of women voters that propelled Trump to victory.
Now, he messes up the burn pit bill.
What will he fuckup next?
Anything and everything.
For reference:
https://twitter.com/CentristMadness/status/1540525886809591808?s=20&t=6XbZef6f2x389olN90nOsQ
I was mocking the Fauxgressive Left for repeatedly lying about Tim Kaine's position on Roe & its effect on the 2016 race.
How unfortunate. I thought that in your own rather oblique way you were making an excellent point about the decades of terrible damage and needless pain imposed upon the Democrats and the country by these performative centrists.
I still don't get it.
The senate passed the bill with the "technical corrections." Then the House passed it. So why does it need to go *back* to the Senate? Did they make more changes? If so couldn't the House just re-pass whatever the Senate did last and send it on to Uncle Joe?
And if they can't do that, and the Mandatory thing really is the hangup why don't they just drop the fucking changes and pass what the Repubs SAY they will vote for? How much difference can it really make?
Or are the Dems just enjoying the opportunity to bash the Reps for holding it up? If so they really should stop fucking around because there's too much other important shit to get to!
The House had to delete a sentence about a tax, because taxes have to originate in the House, that was the only change, and why it had to go back to the Senate.
If the money isn't mandatory, then vets may have to lobby for the money every year, if Congress decides to not spend it on these vets during appropriations, like 9/11 first responders were doing until Stewart and others took on the cause and got that money allocated to mandatory spending.
The mandatory spending provision is a canard from Republicans. They had already voted on this bill with that provision includes and it passed without an issue. This is 100% a retaliation for the Manchin deal and they are just trying to use whatever excuse they want to not call it that.
Toomey voted against H.R.3967 twice in June, voting against cloture on June 7, and against final passage on June 16. Then Senator Testor realized that there was an issue with the bill that has to be fixed. On June 23, he asked for unanimous consent for the Senate to pass a corrected version of the bill[1]. Toomey refused to consent, and it is at that point that he first raised the issue he now contends is the basis for his opposition to the bill.
My suspicion is that Toomey opposed the bill all along. Probably some enterprising staff member in his office who was familiar with the reallocation provision had an inspiration: it would be more politically palatable to oppose that provision than to say you oppose health care for veterans. The inspiration came too late--the bill had already passed--until the discovery of a flaw in the legislation gave Toomey another chance to defeat the bill. This time he could offer his Republican colleagues a better justification for voting against the bill, which is one reason he was more successful on July 27 than on June 16.
[1] Congressional Record, June 23, 2022, starting at the very end of page S3143.
Thanks for digging into this. In other words, standard operating procedure, and indeed the Republicans are voting against the same bill they voted for a few months ago.
But the Republicans (Toomey) gets to go on the Sunday shows and call it a "slush fund", which it isn't.
I think the "slush fund" they're referring to is that moving money from the "discretionary" side of the federal ledger to "mandatory" creates more flexibility now on the discretionary side come budget negotiation season. Republicans are claiming that Dems are then going to claw this money back and spend it on t-bone steaks and Obamaphones for young bucks or somesuch bullshit. Kudos to Jon Stewart for pointing out the other day that these same senators routinely vote for a *literal* slush fund each year to cover extra defense outlays and such that benefit almost exclusively their fatcat donors in the defense industry. The hypocrisy is so fucking sickening.
KD- so basically your original reporting and analysis was off. Before I read this I was going to say something to the effect that the “change” really does nothing (and your take was surprisingly naive). Either we spend the money or we don’t. Sure, the way a bill is drafted allows politicians to play the game, and who knows, perhaps some of the senator’s individual power is diminished. But at the end of the day the difference is remarkably insignificant. GOP, the party against the Inflation Reduction Act, forcing preteen rape victims to birth and preventing vets from getting care for injuries suffered during war. It is almost as if they really don’t want to come back to power (which is probably true as they are incapable of governing and they know it).
This was a temper tantrum by Republicans pissed about the Manchin-Schumer deal and secondly, about actually having to fund the bill. They want to vote for a bill, but not actually commit money to it over the long term.
Yes. Your two sentences explain the situation far more accurately and concisely than Kevin's two voluminous "investigations" into this topic.
What happened to the PAYGO legacy of the Bush-43 regime? Back when, the GQP wanted to ensure mandates funded for 75 years (at least for the Postal Service).
From a Jennifer Rubin column today, with the headline "Jon Stewart shows Democrats how to respond to GOP cruelty".
"In other words, Republicans threw a temper tantrum because they would no longer be able to hold the semiconductor bill hostage to block passage of the Democrats’ popular agenda. Think about that for a second. Republicans took their frustrations with Democrats out on sick veterans. That’ll show them! ........
(John) Stewart is a gifted communicator. His basic approach — righteous anger, blunt language, mastery of the facts, determination to call out the GOP’s bad faith — is something all Democrats should follow, whether the topic is veterans’ health, abortion, the Jan. 6 insurrection, guns, climate change or just about anything else. Enough is enough."
I personally think we need more of Rubin's attitude and less of Drum's.
Do you remember what she was like before Trump? Max Boot hit realization at the same time as Jennifer Rubin. They finally had their eyes opened and saw clearly what the GOP had become.
Yes, I remember. I think she has more than made up for it. Max Boot was a little slower than Rubin. He still supported Kavanaugh for Supreme Court. He still was very hard on Biden for the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Pingback: But wait! It was the House that played PACT games, not the Senate – Kevin Drum
Dems can do a whole lot better to simplify the message. That is your outrage line to sell to Americans, specifically veterans:
If Republicans are openly blocking mandatory spending on programs to support veterans, where does this stop? Will they eliminate mandatory spending on veterans benefits altogether?
Shorter:
Republicans say they support veterans and our 9/11 heroes, but they want to make it optional to fund their healthcare. Is that what you want?
Simpler than that. Republicans are playing politics with their vote against funding healthcare for veterans injured while defending our country.