Wednesday, December 5, 2007: Partisan tempers flare as the AMT fix goes broke and Republicans are accused of taking filibuster steroids

[18:51]
The Senate adjourned at 18:13. Meanwhile, the Environment and Public Works Committee just passed a global warming bill by a vote of 11-8. The measure is co-sponsored by Lieberman and Warner. Warner was the only Republican in committee to support it. Those Republicans voting against it were Craig, Bond, Inhofe, Voinovich, Isakson, Barrasso, Alexander, and Vitter.

The bill institutes a carbon emissions cap-and-trade regime aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020 and 70% by 2050. Who knows what the full Senate will do with this bill when it considers it on the floor sometime next year.

[17:30]
On another note, Daniel Akaka (HI) takes to the floor to congratulate the University of Hawaii football on an undefeated season. He says that the Warriors played tough teams from across the nation. In truth, Hawaii played a very weak schedule and faced only one team east of the Mississippi. Come on now, senator.

[17:24]
Now minority whip Dick Durbin (IL). He says that Republicans want to debate all kinds of things under the guise of the farm bill. He says that a senator from Alaska wanted to offer an amendment concerning Exxon Valdez spill litigation.

And as for the AMT, there is a Republican senator that wants to debate the flat tax. Durbin is flabbergasted. The flat tax!? We've got to debate the flat tax before we can fix the AMT!?

56 times this year the Republicans have created a filibuster situation, says Durbin. talk, talk, talk. Or in the modern era, recess, quorum call, recess, quorum call.

The Republicans are determined from stopping anything substantive from happening, he says. They want to stop up and then they want to blame us. They can't have it both ways.

[17:23]
Now Mitch McConnell (KY) minority leader on the AMT. McConnell says that he offered a consent agreement on AMT where the limit would be four amendments. But the majority didn't want to agree to that. He says that the Senate hasn't been doing anything today. We could have been working on the Farm Bill, he says.

[17:16]
Reid and Chambliss on the farm bill. Reid says, Harkin told me that you and he had agreed to 40 amendments, is that right? Chambliss responds, Well, we didn't quite agree on that. Reid cuts in. See, this is what always happens, the rope-a-dope. Nobody will agree to anything. Maybe the ranking member (Chambliss) simply doesn't want a bill. This is pretty pointed talk.

Reid now says that "the Republican are on steroids when it comes to filibusters."

I'm ready to bring this bill to the floor, says Chambliss. Senator Harkin and I didn't have any discussion about 40 amendments; I don't have any idea where that came from.

Now Reid says of Chambliss, respectfully, that he is "speaking out of both sides of his mouth." What is wrong with getting cloture on the farm bill and voting on germane amendments. We can't get any agreement because we're being rope-a-doped.

[17:07]
There will be another cloture motion on the Farm Bill, set for Friday morning. Reid wonders why the Republicans are blocking the Farm Bill. Maybe they don't care about it, he says. Maybe they're afraid that Democrats would claim passage of the bill as a victory. If cloture passes, then the tree would open back up but only germane amendments could be offered. What's wrong with that? asks Reid.

And, wow, he says that there could be a cloture vote Saturday on the Energy Bill (due to arrive tomorrow from the House). Senators should be advised of this possible Saturday vote, he says.

As for the AMT. Why don't we just vote on what the House passed? asks Reid. We can vote on that and then we can vote on the Lott proposal to get rid of the AMT. It'll cost about $1t but we'll vote on it, says Reid. The Democrats want to pay for the AMT and they want to vote on it. The Republicans won't agree to vote on AMT if it's paid for or half paid for, he says.

"If there is no AMT patch, then it's the fault of the Republicans," he says. "They won't vote on anything."

Chambliss (GA) shoots back on the Farm Bill. He regrets that Reid filed cloture on it. He says that the Senate has been working on the Farm Bill for five weeks and that if it had operated on an open-amendments basis, the Farm Bill would be in conference today.

[17:00]
Senate Majority Leader Reid is on the floor. He has called up a motion to proceed to the AMT bill. Now he has withdrawn that motion to proceed. His withdrawal of the motion to proceed means that there won't be a cloture vote tomorrow on the AMT patch, leaving it unclear as to when the Senate will proceed with an AMT fix.

The pending business becomes the farm bill. Clerk reports a cloture motion on the (Harkin substitute amendment to the) Farm Bill. Now Reid is talking about the Farm Bill and how he offered the Republicans a deal of a ten-amendment limit on the bill.

[16:52]
Ken Salazar (CO) is talking about the Farm Bill. As Salazar tells it, the Democrats most recently offered Republicans a deal whereby the Republicans could offer 10 floor amendments to the bill and the Democrats would offer five. The Republicans turned down this offer. Salazar ends by saying he is hopeful that the Farm Bill supporters can get the Farm Bill moving again on the floor.

Recall that Reid filled the tree on the Farm Bill preventing anyone from offering amendments to it. Reid said he did this because the Republicans were going to flood the bill with non-germane amendments on the estate tax and immigration. The bill failed to get 60 votes for cloture, leaving it stalled on the floor.

If the Republicans are not willing to bite on ten amendments, would they do 15? 20? My guess is that they will not agree to any limit and will continue their hold on the bill until the tree is opened.

[15:51]
Charles Grassley (IA) is talking about the need for a repeal of the AMT, or at least holding it back for one more year ("kicking the can down the road").

Grassley does not believe that a one-year patch for the mutating AMT has to be offset.

So here's the rub. The House-passed package for AMT relief — a "patch" that simply prevents the AMT from affecting more taxpayers in April 2008 than it did in April 2007 — is offset by tax increases or tax-cut rollbacks in the amount of $45b. This offset is required under the Democratic principle of pay-go. The idea of pay-go is that Congress must bring in new revenue to offset the loss of another source of revenue.

Here's what Grassley and the Senate Republicans are saying: By stopping AMT from affecting more families this tax year, the government is not losing a revenue stream. Rather than losing money, the government is merely not getting something that it could have gotten were the AMT not patched.

If the AMT is not freshly patched going into tax year 2008, Grassley says that an additional 23 million families will owe an average of $2,000 more than they did last year.

Grassley also says that refunds could be delayed if Congress does not act quickly.