Noted for M&O Next Edition

...of The Broken Branch, that is: so the House Republicans are bringing a bill to the floor this week to repeal the medical devices tax, which is evil because (1) it's a tax and (2) it's part of the ACA. Whatever; that's not what I want to get into here. I went to look for information today about whether there's a pay-for, figuring that there probably wasn't and so I could do a war on budgeting item about it. But that's not what I found.

Instead, it turns out that this bill, which has tons of sponsors and has already cleared committee, will have a pay-for. By the time it reaches the House floor. So say the Republicans.

Hey, usually it takes a party a few years after they become the majority to resort to this type of Mad Tea Party style of legislating (mark-up the bill in committee first, decide what provisions will be in it later). And there's not a lot of reporting here, so perhaps there's some legitimate excuse for this, although I certainly can't think of one (surely there was no urgent need to get it out of committee quickly, given that this is a go-nowhere effort intended purely for electioneering purposes). Both parties have done stuff like this when they're in the majority, but it does strike me that it usually takes longer than seventeen months to get there, since most parties (including the GOP this time) enter office full of complaints about how the previous House majority ran things.