The Money is Where the Fight is

Obama is out with his budget for the year. 3.73 trillion, not bad. It cuts in some places, spends more in others. Of course, its not going anywhere in the new GOP controlled House, but the budget has to get down, unlike every other thing we are going to fight about this year. No budget, and the little old ladies in the Tea Party woun't get thier Social Security checks. And we can't have that, can we?

Every other thing that the House, the Senate or the President wants can get killed by the other branches. The Senate makes it so easy to kill policy iniatives that sometimes they kill things by accedent. But the budget is different.

So this is where the fight is.

Running Stuff is Hard

Especially when you have no agenda except no.

So the House Republicans failed to pass the Patriot Act yesterday as about 26 GOPers deserted ship. Now this loss reflects more about obscure House procedures than a sudden outbreak of civil libertarianism on the part of the Republicans, but it does reflect the problems of moving from mindless opposition to needing to get things done.

Mindless opposition is easy to do. Just vote no and denounce everything that get proposed as communism. Easy. But getting things done means having to think about the consciouses of what you do, both as policy and politics. Thus we get a few Republicans who suddenly thought that surveillance without limits might be an expansion of government power, and ain't we against that sort of thing?

Keep in mind, this is just for renewing a law that's already in effect, not passing some new program. Is the GOP going to be able to do that?

The Cuts Never Get Here

If the GOP has one talking point that it always goes to its "We must cut government spending." It's their one and only answer to our economic troubles.

But when it comes right down to it, those cuts never show up. Here is the GOP worming its way out of a promised 200 billion dollars in cuts and here is Rep. Paul Ryan dodging the question on specific cuts.

This is a pretty simple game. People like the idea of cutting "government" when you don't name a specific program. They just mentally fill in whatever real or imaginary government spending they don't like. Be it cash money for drug addicts or bombs that kill orphans, everybody has got some form of government they hate.

But in the really real world cutting government means picking which deadly disease doesn't get research funding or picking which FBI agents to fire and everybody hates that.

So the game continues. Promises to cut "spending" and never touch a real program.

Greedy Little Kids

My working assumption is that the GOP controlled House will be indistinguishable from a House controlled by greedy little children. Case the first, a newly elected Republican, who dedicated his campaign to screwing people out of thier health care, really wants his government health care right now.

Fast Sell-Out Rate

Rand Paul is selling out on earmarks already. At this rate, he should be in favor of deficits by the time he is sworn in and for single-pay health care by the end of the term

Oh Senate

Where good legislation goes to die. They managed to kill efforts to end 'don't ask, don't tell" and the DREAM act all with just one vote. And a vote where a 56 vote majority was in favor of both. This is no way to run a Country.

The Grayson Way

Alan Grayson shows us how its done. While other Democrats try and survive by ducking votes and running away from fights, Grayson plans on surviving and thriving by picking fights and generally making a spectacle of himself. Grayson doesn't represent a safe district. The normal playbook to win in such a district is to act as much like a Republican as possible. We shall see if the Grayson way works

Just Add Congress

Want to make the baseball steroid scandal even better? Just add Congress. Sure you can lie to the public, the media, the fans. But lying to Congress is a crime. A crime which Roger Clemens now stands accused indicted of.

Sure when Congress held those steroid hearing it was a show and everybody, players and Congress-critters did their grandstanding, but in the end, you swear to tell the truth, and it looks like Clemens didn't.

Couldn't have come at a better time. Let's hope this circus takes attention away from the Cordoba House. If we have to burn baseball to keep religious freedom in America. I'm ok with that.

Rarr!

Time for a pissed off Congressman:

This Week's Ignored Defeat

Climate legislation has died the death of the Senate.  Yeah,  a majority of Senator support it, but that's how the rules work in the Senate. So yeah, let it all burn.

Who Stands Up for the Oil Company

Texas Republican Joe Barton that's who.

You can destroy anything you want to. The GOP has got your back.

If They Worry, We're Doing Fine

As soon as you see happy lobbyists, start to worry.

Shitty Deal

Great Movements in Congressional debate.

Under Pressure

This goes out to all those wavering Dems who are swing voters on health care and are really feeling the pressure right now.



I have a message for you all.

Suck it up. This is why we made you members of Congress. To feel pressure, make hard votes and make peoples lives better. Deal with it.

Can't Watch

I can't stand to watch the health care process any more. If I have to take the swings of all these Congress-critters back and forth, I shall go mad.

Are You Lamb or Sheep?

Could we get some congressional Dems with just a little fight in them? I'm not asking you to be a lion. Just not a lamb. Having the courage of a sheep would be enough.

Pileup

We hear a lot about how the Senate is holding up big pieces of legislation, like health care. But it turns out that the Senate is holding up a huge list of legislation. There are currently 290 bills that have been past in the House and are still pending in the Senate. Some of these bills are nothing, some are really important to small groups, like the Utah National Guard and some are important to large groups, like everyone who does drug in North American. But the point is, none of it is getting done. The great GOP stall is stalling everything.

Fun

Remember Scott Brown, whose election in Massachusetts completely undid the Obama agenda, and was a body blow to liberalism in American? Well, he just voted for the Democratic jobs bill. Which seems to complicate the story just a bit.

Time to Get Tricky

Looks like Congress will be bypassing the normal way of doing things in order to get health care reform to the finish line.

Why? Because Congressional procedure has become a twisted parody of itself, used only by a nihilistic opposition to destroy any chance at real reform. Damn the procedure, full steam ahead.

60

We got sixty votes on health care. Sure it was messy, Lieberman made it worse, Nelson made it worse, and the whole proccess make you want to vomite, we are getting close to the end.