Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of February 12, 2014. Give me your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11am. Remember, you can listen online at KFYO.com or on your iPhone/Android with the radioPup App.

U.S. Capitol building
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House Approves

The House voted yesterday to raise the debt ceiling and according to FOX News, the passage came without any spending cuts. One could actually say that House leadership caved to the Democrats.

The House voted Tuesday to raise the government's borrowing limit, as GOP leaders backed down from a potential confrontation with Democrats by declining to seek any concessions in exchange for the increase.

The debt-ceiling bill passed on a 221-201 vote, and now goes to the Senate for final approval.

The vote comes after Republican leaders backed off their strategy of trying to use the debt limit to force spending cuts or other concessions. In 2011, President Obama yielded to similar demands but has since said he would not negotiate with Republicans over the matter.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, swiftly teed up the vote Tuesday after failing to get enough conservative support for a plan that would have tied the debt ceiling measure to one reversing cuts to military pensions. Another failed proposal had tied the debt cap hike to the Keystone pipeline.

The House, as part of a separate bill, nevertheless voted Tuesday to restore full cost of living increases to pension benefits for younger military retirees. The final vote was 326-90.

But Boehner's decision to move ahead on the debt-ceiling legislation without any concessions signals a potentially new approach on these so-called must-pass bills. His party was bruised last year after Republicans tried to extract changes to ObamaCare as part of a budget bill, resulting in a partial government shutdown that lasted until Boehner finally called a relatively clean budget bill to the floor -- which passed on mostly Democratic votes.

The vote Tuesday followed the same pattern. Boehner relied on mostly Democrats to bring the bill over the finish line 193 Democrats voted for the bill, while just 28 Republicans did the same. Boehner and other GOP leaders were among those who voted yes.

Boehner announced before the vote that that was the strategy. "We'll let the Democrats put the votes up. We'll put a minimum number of (GOP) votes up to get it passed," Boehner said. "We'll let his party give him the debt ceiling increase that he wants."

But the vote caused consternation among conservative groups that have pushed Congress -- and particularly Tea Party-aligned lawmakers they helped elect -- to rein in deficit spending, in part by extracting spending cuts wherever possible.

"A clean debt ceiling is a complete capitulation on the Speaker's part and demonstrates that he has lost the ability to lead the House of Representatives, let alone his own party," Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, said in a statement.

The measure approved by the House does not raise the debt limit by a set amount but does suspend it through March 15, 2015. That buys the Treasury Department the leeway it needs to borrow money to pay for Social Security checks, payments on government debt and paychecks for federal workers.

The vote, which was originally scheduled for Wednesday, was moved up a day because of a winter storm headed toward the East Coast.

Conservative lawmakers, too, were angered by the leadership's approach.

"Right now we've got a debt ceiling bill that increases spending, which is diametrically 180 degrees opposite of what we were battling over just two years ago -- where the question was how much in spending cuts we were going to get," said Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala.

Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Ca., described the nature of the minority taking a leadership role in the vote as feeling "like Alice in Wonderland. Totally upside down.

“The majority is supposed to be the party that moves us forward, because they run the ship," he said.

Boehner put the best face on his inability to win over his conservative wing, saying, "Understand, it's the president driving up the debt and the president wanting to do nothing about the debt that's occurring, will not engage in our long term spending problem. And so let his party give him the debt ceiling increase that he wants."

His reference to Democratic overspending came moments before the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office chief Douglas Elmendorf also warned a Senate committee about the runaway debt.

"Such large and growing federal debt could have serious negative consequences, including restraining economic growth in the long term, giving policy makers less flexibility to respond to unexpected challenges, and eventually increasing the risk of a fiscal crisis," he said.

On the Senate side, Majority Leader Harry Reid praised Boehner's decision but threw a barb at House conservatives, saying, "I put nothing past the Tea Party-driven Republican Congress."

Tuesday's developments amount to a blow for a party that has sought to use must-pass debt ceiling measures as leverage to force spending cuts on Democrats. Republicans won more than $2 trillion in spending cuts in a 2011 showdown, but gave Obama two debt limit increases last year with only modest add-ons.

Time was running out for lawmakers to act to lift the debt limit. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew told lawmakers last week that Treasury will exhaust by Feb. 27 its ability to employ accounting maneuvers to borrow to pay its bills.

Lew told congressional leaders Monday that he had begun tapping two large government worker retirement funds to clear room under the debt limit. The action involving the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund will provide $50 billion to $75 billion in additional borrowing room, while tapping the Government Securities Investment Fund will provide about $175 billion in borrowing room, Lew estimated.

Lew announced he would suspend payments to these two pension funds and would also draw down investments made in the funds. Previous Treasury secretaries have also employed this bookkeeping maneuver. Once Congress approves a new debt ceiling, the Treasury makes the funds whole by replacing the withdrawn funds and lost interest earnings.

Lawmakers temporarily suspended the borrowing limit last October in an agreement that ended a government shutdown and extended the federal borrowing limit.

Thoughts?

Gay Marriage Ban in Texas Goes to Court

A federal judge in San Antonio will hear arguments from two same-sex couples who want to see Texas' ban on gay marriage overturned. According to the Austin American-Statesman, the judge is expected to issues a ruling at a later date.

 

Two same-sex couples, including two Austin women legally married in Massachusetts, will ask a federal judge to overturn the state’s ban on gay marriage at a hearing Wednesday in San Antonio.

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia will hear arguments from lawyers for the couples, followed by a state lawyer who will defend the ban. No witnesses will testify, and like oral arguments in other venues, Garcia will be free to interrupt to ask questions and seek clarification.

Although he could issue a verbal ruling when the 9:30 a.m. hearing concludes, Garcia is expected to take the matter under advisement before issuing a written opinion at a later date.

However he rules, Garcia’s decision is likely to be appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees federal courts in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Similar lawsuits have been filed in 22 other states, including Utah and Oklahoma, where federal judges overturned gay-marriage bans as unconstitutional in the past two months — though both decisions are on hold while the states appeal the rulings.

The Texas ban on same-sex marriage, passed into law in 2003 and added to the Texas Constitution by 76 percent of voters in 2005, also is being challenged by two federal lawsuits in Austin that are still in the early stages of litigation.

The San Antonio lawsuit was filed by Cleopatra De Leon and Nicole Dimetman of Austin, who were married in Boston in 2009 and have a 2-year-old son, and Vic Holmes and Mark Phariss of Plano, who have been together for 16 years and wish to be married in their home state of Texas.

The couples are asking Garcia, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, to issue a preliminary injunction barring Texas from enforcing its ban on same-sex marriage.

The ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law, the couples argue.

“Denying gay and lesbian citizens of Texas an equal right to marry signifies that they are inferior to other citizens. This not only gives the green light to those who would exclude, mistreat and demean them based on their sexual orientation, but it perpetuates such discrimination,” their lawsuit said.

Defending the ban in court documents, state Attorney General Greg Abbott argued that Texas has always defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Gay couples cannot prove that same-sex marriage, a relatively recent concept, is a fundamental constitutional right, he said.

In addition, Abbott argued, the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the right of states to define marriage, giving Texans the same right to shape policy as citizens of states where same-sex marriage is legal.

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