If Sen. Reid wants to hold up the jobs bill, he will go on Santa’s naughty list.Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) • Offering a somewhat … uh, interesting take on the House’s passage of a payroll tax cut, which Republicans pushed through with a fairly large caveat — it would speed up the process of approving the Keystone XL pipeline, which was delayed until 2013 to give some time to examine environmental issues brought up by critics. The bill is expected to die in the Senate, and even if it weren’t, Obama would most likely veto it. The divided Congress is under the gun to pass a payroll tax cut and a spending bill to fund the government beyond Friday. Sounds like a fun week, all. source (via • follow)
Remember how in 1995 when the government shut down? Well, guess what we just set ourselves up for in March? See, as a stopgap to avoid a massive omnibus spending bill from getting through the pipe with a crapload of earmarks, Congress agreed to set up a temporary spending bill that gets us into late Winter. (Obama should sign it before he heads off to Hawaii to be with the fam.) Which means that if Obama and the GOP are at one another’s throats come the Ides of March, the government could shut down 1995-style. Or Obama could switch parties and weird everybody out. Et tu, Brute? source
» Our point still stands: The problem with the bill was not the earmarks. The problem was that it was a trillion dollars, but a few senators have made earmarks the issue, which sucks, because the earmarks are a tiny part of the plan and if they would’ve gone to some random bureaucracy had they not been earmarked for the states.
As we’re sure you’ve seen, we’ve been having a bit of a back and forth with chrisjgavin about earmarks and the Senate’s omnibus spending bill. We probably don’t agree with Chris on a lot politically, but on this issue, we’ve come to something of an understanding. Now’s probably a good time to point out the hard work of the Sunlight Foundation, which tries to make the hard-to-comprehend nature of Congress (data is often released in an absurdly cumbersome format that’s basically useless to outsiders) something relatively easy to understand using technology. Above is something specifically about defense earmarks added into the Omnibus spending bill, presented in such a way that you can actually figure out what it’s saying. The Sunlight Foundation does some great light-shedding work and they need to be supported with donations.
Oh God. Yeah, its ONLY $2.2 BILLION. Only. It’s like spending a dollar at McDonalds when you have $1,000 in your pocket, right? No biggie. We can afford an extra $2.2 BILLION bucks. I wonder what China would say…
China wouldn’t way anything, because another government agency would eat up the $2.2 billion instead – because so many are clamoring for more money, anyway. The point is not the $2.2 billion. In the grand scheme of a huge spending bill, that’s not very much. The problem, however, is the $1.1 trillion overall price tag. And here’s another point – the roughly $8 billion in earmarks over the entire Senate, which will go to heavily-used things like roads, is about the same as the $8 billion cut from the defense budget that would return thanks to the Senate’s spending bill. So here’s the big question: What’s worse, $8 billion going to the states, or $8 billion being fed to our already-massive defense monster? You’re a common-sense addict. Tell me. Because common sense tells me that both are just as questionable. Keep in mind, though, that we’re only at roughly 16 thousandths of a trillion-dollar spending bill. So, while you’re at it, why don’t you go read the Senate’s omnibus spending bill (I just downloaded the PDF – it was 1924 pages) and tell me what else you think should be cut. How can we get this bad boy down to a slim $750 billion? You have ten minutes. Go.
(Source: shortformblog)
» OK, Tom, you’ve made your point: Democratic and Republican leaders alike in the Senate are taking a lot of federal money and giving it to the states. But you’re trying to deceive us. Here’s why; see, a trillion dollars is a thousand billion by our last count. And Tom, who’s anti-earmark, is pointing out how wrong it is for Senate leaders to throw roughly two-thousandths of the entire spending bill back to the states, $2.2 billion which would get spent by the federal government otherwise. (The total amount, $8.3 billion, is still absurdly tiny in comparison to the entire spending bill.) To put it another way, Tommy Boy’s trying to make hay out of an issue that’s actually needle-sized. You know what the real problem is? The hay. Not the needle. (And in case you’re wondering, these earmarks were made earlier this year, before the current anti-earmark vibe hit.)
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