The House Ways and Means Committee managed to come up with a little bipartisan support for a bill.
The crack in the congressional ice wall appeared last week, when members of the committee voted 23-12 for H.R. 2575, a bill introduced by Rep. Diane Black, R-Tenn, that calls for federal and state agencies to include Social Security benefits when deciding whether a family qualifies for the new health insurance purchase tax subsidies that are supposed to spring to life in 2014.
All 22 Republicans on the committee voted for the bill.
So did Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wis. – a Democrat.
President Obama has put a similar provision in a budget proposal, but all other Democrats on the committee voted against the Black bill.