His, “Make the Democrats a generational party for a generation” tax plan passes the house 277-148.
Bummer.
Category: Congress
Obama is Now Blocking DADT Repeal
So much for his promise to be a “Fierce advocate” for the LGBT:
Sources on the Hill are telling me a big reason DADT repeal isn’t moving faster comes right from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Despite President Obama’s public support for repeal, with DADT stacked up against the START nuclear arms reduction treaty that Obama carefully brokered with the Russians earlier this year, the White House is putting its legislative push behind START.
At this point, with more than the 60 votes secured to invoke cloture on a repeal bill in the Senate, obstacles to repealing DADT legislatively are a simple combination of time and priorities. Time is short in the lame duck session, and DADT repeal is just one of many items the Senate would like to address before it adjourns. Where repeal slots into the remaining legislative calendar, and how much time is left in that calendar when it does pop up, will make the difference between repealing the ban and keeping the status quo.
I strongly disagree with the next paragraph though:
No one questions that Obama wants to see DADT end, or that he wants to see it end this year. The concern is over the priorities: Obama, it seems, wants START to come first. And with the White House pushing START (in daily phone calls from top White House officials, according to one source on the Hill), Obama could end up standing in the way of DADT getting done.
Truth be told, Barack Obama’s excuses for not supporting LGBT civil rights, whether it’s his slow-walking DADT, or aggressively defending it in court, or ignoring judges orders to recognize gay marriages where they are legal, etc. rivals John McCain’s flip flops on gay rights for their mendacity.
Meanwhile, in the House…
The House of representatives passes a stand alone bill to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:
After impassioned debate both for and against the measure, the House of Representatives today passed a standalone bill to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The measure passed by a vote of 250 to 175, and the House broke into applause at the announcement of the final vote.
The measure was introduced Tuesday, in the final days of the Democratic-led 111th Congress, after the Senate last week failed to pass a defense authorization bill that included a repeal of the policy. “Don’t ask,” which has been in effect since 1993, prohibits gays from serving openly in the military.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today that repealing the law would fix a “fundamental unfairness in our nation” and “honor the service and sacrifice of all who dedicated their lives to protecting the American people.”
Considering the relatively efficiencies of the House and the Senate, I am thinking that the “World’s greatest deliberative body”, i.e. the Senate, is nothing more than growth media for sociopathic narcissists.
Senate Passes Obama’s Assault on the Democratic Party
Otherwise known as the kiss the asses of rich Republicans tax bill.
It passed 81-19.
Seriously, that’s kind of pathetic.
I understand the reluctance of Democrats to vote against their own President, but the fact that after this bad a deal was cut that you can’t even muster enough votes against it to keep the total below 70?
Pathetic.
Of Course the Fix is In
The Senate voted for cloture on the Republican wet dream tax bill.
Notwithstanding the “nonbinding” vote in the House Democratic Caucus last week, I expect it to pass the house largely unchanged.
I simply do not think that there is enough guts in the house to push back in a meaningful way against this.
Point 1: Mark Penn is always wrong……
Point 2: he is now arguing that Democratic Party support of Obama’s awful tax deal is essential to the survival of the party.
Taking political advice from Mark Penn is like taking investment advice from Jim Cramer.
I Hate This,
Of course, he manages to throw in a big of bigotry here
But once again, I agree with Ron Paul, organizations like Wikileaks are a necessary, and beneficial, force for openness and transparency.
He draws the proper parallels between Wikileaks and the Pentagon Papers, and notes that these sorts of operations are essential in uncovering official wrongdoing.
The Invisible Bond Vigilantes Have Appeared
Interest rates on Treasuries have surged in the wake of the tax cut capitulation:
Treasury prices dropped Tuesday, pushing 10-year yields up by the most since June 2009, after Congress and the White House compromised on a tax package that is expected to raise the deficit and increase the government’s borrowing needs.
The drop in prices, which move inversely to yields, extended further after the government’s first of three auctions this week drew tepid demand from investors.
Go figure. Barack Obama has managed to capitulated his way into pushing interest rates up.
That will help the economy.
It is Worse Than a Crime, It Is A Mistake
Well, the White House completely caved on tax breaks.
What the Republicans got:
- A 2-year extension to all the tax cuts, including the tax cuts for those making more than a $¼ million a year.
- Setting a new exemption on the inheritance tax at $5 million.
- Dropping the tax rate on the inheritance tax at 35%.
What Obama got:
- A 13 month extension to emergency unemployment benefits.
- Which means that Republicans will kill extended unemployment benefits in January 2012, putting the economy in a tail spin as the presidential election rolls around.
- A 1-year 2% holiday in Social Security, which will provide a family earning $50K about $1K.
- The difference is supplied from the treasury, so it does not hit the trust fund, and this is probably the best tax cut for boosting the economy.
- Continuation of the college tuition tax credit.
- Which, of course gets taken back out by the financial aid department, which makes awards on the basis to pay.
It’s a remarkably one sided agreement, and Barack Obama followed this up with a lie:
Mr. Obama said he was insisting on a temporary deal on the tax rates for high earners and wealthy estates on the belief that he would ultimately prevail.
“I’m confident,” Mr. Obama said, “that as we make tough choices about bringing our deficit down, as I engage in a conversation with the American people about the hard choices we’re going to have to make to secure our future and our children’s future and our grandchildren’s future, it will become apparent that we cannot afford to extend those tax cuts any longer.”
Let’s be clear, Barack Obama has no intention whatsoever to raise taxes on the rich or on the inheritance of drooling rich heirs.
He’s a pimps harder for the well off than Bill Clinton ever did, and it should be noted that Clinton did it before the rich ratf%$#s on Wall Street blew up our economy.
When one looks at what Obama has done, one can only conclude that we got sold a bill of goods by a Blue Dog.
If he had even the smallest bit of a progressive bent, he would have bent.
He sells out to Republicans because he supports most of their policies.
God Help Me, I Agree With Joe Lieberman
Yes, the sanctimonious rat-fink is saying that the Senate should postpone its adjournment to make sure that there is time to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell:
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) wants the Senate to stay in session until it’s passed legislation to do away with the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
Lieberman, a key Senate proponent of repealing the military’s ban on openly gay or lesbian members, doesn’t want the chamber to adjourn until it’s acted on a defense authorization bill that contains a provision to do away with the policy.
Note that Lieberman has been a stronger advocate of repeal than either Barack “Fierce Advocate” Obama or Harry Reid.
For once, we have a bunch of wankers in the room, and Lieberman isn’t one.
I’m With Jane Hamsher on This
Barack “I suck up to Wall Street Like 1000 Hoover vacuum cleaners” Obama is not folding on tax cuts for the hyper-rich, he wanted them to keep their tax cuts all along:
It’s been clear for some time that President Obama made the political calculation that he does not want any of the Bush tax cuts to expire. He doesn’t want to be the guy in 2012 running for President on having “raised taxes during a time of recession.”But the President also doesn’t want the political blowback of angering people who cheered him on the campaign trail when he promised to let the tax cuts expire. And so rather than just come out and just say that, he’s been actively trying to kill a Chuck Schumer deal to keep them from expiring on income of more than $1 million a year. It was a plan that put the GOP in an awkward position, and had thrown them off message in recent days — hard to be the people fighting for the 315,000 families who fall into that category over the 2 million set to lose their unemployment benefits by the end of the year.The President argued against the Schumer deal, we are told, because he was concerned about “the cost [to the deficit] and the risk of redefining the middle class as those making over [should read under] one million.”
The President’s argument is, of course, pure crap.
I think that when we look at Barack Obama’s performance on issues of real reform, it’s clear that he falls short of his rhetoric because he does not want real reform.
Financial reform was mostly smoke and mirrors, with small steps, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, being driven by a need to avoid totally alienating his base in 2012.
The same goes for taxes, or for the give-away to health insurers that is laughably called healthcare reform.
Go read the rest.
Finally, Some Competence
The House just passed the “Democratic version” of the tax cut extension, with the support of only 3 Republicans, and the opposition of of 20 mostly Blue Dog and mostly lame duck Democrats.
I don’t expect to make it through the Senate, but this is both good politics and good policy.
What is interesting is the parliamentary maneuver used to get it passed by a simple majority.
Normally, you need a ⅔ majority vote in the House to pass the bill without the possibility of a motion to recommit, basically a motion to amend and send back to the originating committee, and the Republicans always come up with stuff that will make weak kneed Democrats vote with them, typically having to do with sex offenders, or in this case, Wall Street tax cuts to make the Blue Dog/New Dem squishes tremble.
Well, Nancy Pelosi found a work around:
Brace yourself for some procedural jargon: Dems once believed they were faced with two mixed options for holding this vote. The first was to hold an up-or-down vote under the normal rules. But that would give Republicans the opportunity to introduce what’s known as a motion to recommit — a procedural right of the minority that would have allowed them to tack an extension of tax cuts for high-income earners on to the legislation.
The second option — suspending the rules — would have foreclosed on that right, but would have required a two-thirds majority of the House for passage: 290 votes, an impossible hurdle.
But Democrats figured out a way to avoid this. They’re attaching their tax cut plan as an amendment to a separate bill [the Airport and Airway Extension Act, to wit]. That legislation already passed the House, and has just been returned from the Senate. The rules say it can’t be recommitted. So the GOP’s hands are tied.
You can blame Obama for the election debacle. You can blame Harry Reid. Don’t blame Nancy Pelosi.
She knows what she has to do, and she does it.
Democrats were savaged because they were perceived as being unable to deliver, but Nancy Pelosi was not a part of that problem, she was just the victim.
Why Reaching Across the Aisle is a Stupid Idea
Arizona Republican John Kyle has announced that he will not allow a vote on the START treaty unless the Democrats capitulate on tax cuts for people making more than $¼ million a year.
I am not disappointed by Kyle, I expect this behavior from post-Reagan Republicans. What does disappoint me is the behavior of Barack Obama, who continues to think that he can dazzle them with his awesomeness and reach across the aisle.
As my brother notes, “Since being ‘nice’ doesn’t work, a sane course might include not being nice….“
Federal Reserve Releases Dodd-Frank Audit Results
So they are out, they are voluminous, and I have neither the time nor the expertise to to review them all, I here is what I’ve seen in other people’s commentaries.
We see loans at absurdly low rates and self dealing, the Fed’s commercial paper program was dominated by European banks, and surprise, surprise, Goldman Sachs actually needed the aid that it claimed to only grudgingly accept.
The full Federal Reserve press release is after the break:
Press Release
Release Date: December 1, 2010
For immediate release
The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday posted detailed information on its public website about more than 21,000 individual credit and other transactions conducted to stabilize markets during the recent financial crisis, restore the flow of credit to American families and businesses, and support economic recovery and job creation in the aftermath of the crisis.
Many of the transactions, conducted through a variety of broad-based lending facilities, provided liquidity to financial institutions and markets through fully secured, mostly short-term loans. Purchases of agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) supported mortgage and housing markets, lowered longer-term interest rates, and fostered economic growth. Dollar liquidity swap lines with foreign central banks helped stabilize dollar funding markets abroad, thus contributing to the restoration of stability in U.S. markets. Other transactions provided liquidity to particular institutions whose disorderly failure could have severely stressed an already fragile financial system.
As financial conditions have improved, the need for the broad-based facilities has dissipated, and most were closed earlier this year. The Federal Reserve followed sound risk-management practices in administering all of these programs, incurred no credit losses on programs that have been wound down, and expects to incur no credit losses on the few remaining programs. These facilities were open to participants that met clearly outlined eligibility criteria; participation in them reflected the severe market disruptions during the financial crisis and generally did not reflect participants’ financial weakness.
The Federal Reserve is committed to transparency and has previously provided extensive aggregate information on its facilities in weekly and monthly reports. As provided by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, transaction-level details now are posted from December 1, 2007, to July 21, 2010, in the following programs:
- Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (AMLF)
- Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF)
- Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF)
- Commercial Paper Funding Facility (CPFF)
- Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF)
- TSLF Options Program (TOP)
- Term Auction Facility (TAF)
- Agency MBS purchases
- Dollar liquidity swap lines with foreign central banks
- Assistance to Bear Stearns, including Maiden Lane
- Assistance to American International Group, including Maiden Lane II and III
Additionally, discount window and open market operation transactions after July 21, 2010, will be posted with a two-year lag.
The data made available Wednesday can be downloaded in multiple formats, including Excel, at www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/reform_transaction.htm. The Excel files allow users to search, sort, and filter the data for each program in multiple categories. The site also provides explanations of each program as well as definitions for the data elements.
In the case of broad-based facilities, details provided include the name of the borrower, the amount borrowed, the date the credit was extended, the interest rate charged, information about collateral, and other relevant credit terms. Similar information is provided for the draws of foreign central banks on their dollar liquidity swap lines with the Federal Reserve. For agency MBS transactions, details include the name of the counterparty, the security purchased or sold, and the date, amount, and price of the transaction.
Never doubt the ability of Democrats to completely f%$# up the basic business of government. Remember the food safety bill that the Senate recently passed? Well it’s <a href=” />unconstitutional because it is a revenue bill that originated in the Senate, when the Constitution explicitly requires all revenue bills to originate in the house:
In what amounts to an epic constitutionality #fail, Senate Democrats may have blown their chances to see their food safety bill signed into law.
The U.S. constitution requires that any revenue-raising bill must originate in the House of Representatives. To honor this provision, the Senate often finds a discarded old House bill, strips it bare, and uses it as a “shell” and passes it back to the House.
They somehow forgot to do that this time.
Now House and Senate Democratic leaders are scrambling to figure out some procedural hocus-pocus that will allow them each to pass identical pieces of legislation before they leave for the holidays.
So our choice today is between the forces of evil and the gang that can’t shoot straight.
In the Annals of the Unsurprising…
The 10 month long Pentagon study shows that the overwhelming majority of those serving in the military have no problem with repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell:
“We are convinced the U.S. military can make this change, even during this time of war,” the Defense Department report concludes, noting that 70% of the tens of thousands of military personnel and family members surveyed predicted there would be “positive, mixed or no effect” from allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly.
This won’t stop Republicans from blocking a repeal though, because pandering to a small, but vocal, minority of bigots is how they play.
I Am So Glad That I Do Not Live 15 Miles Further East
Because if I did, the biggest wanker in Congress would be my Congresscritter:
A conservative Maryland physician elected to Congress on an anti-Obamacare platform surprised fellow freshmen at a Monday orientation session by demanding to know why his government-subsidized health care plan takes a month to kick in.
Republican Andy Harris, an anesthesiologist who defeated freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, reacted incredulously when informed that federal law mandated that his government-subsidized health care policy would take effect on Feb. 1 – 28 days after his Jan. 3rd swearing-in.
“He stood up and asked the two ladies who were answering questions why it had to take so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care,” said a congressional staffer who saw the exchange. The benefits session, held behind closed doors, drew about 250 freshman members, staffers and family members to the Capitol Visitors Center auditorium late Monday morning,”.
“Harris then asked if he could purchase insurance from the government to cover the gap,” added the aide, who was struck by the similarity to Harris’s request and the public option he denounced as a gateway to socialized medicine.
Andy Harris campaigned non-stop against government run healthcare, but that’s only for people who aren’t him, I guess.
Signs of the Apocalypse, Steny Hoyer Showing Guts Edition
You got that right, Steny fracking Hoyer is finding a damn backbone:
Steny Hoyer, the number two in the House Dem leadership, told Democrats at a caucus meeting this morning that they would get to vote this year on just extending the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, a senior Dem aide tells me, signaling support for a confrontational move towards the GOP that liberals have been pushing.
Asked if Democrats would definitely get a chance to hold this vote, the senior aide responded: “Definitely.”
Hoyer’s declaration comes as Democrats have been debating the way forward on the Bush tax cuts, and another aide tells me that “more than half” of the Dem caucus supports this course of action.
I approve, but I wonder just who the hell had Steny’s testicles, and why they decided to give it back to him.
Raising taxes on people making more than a ¼ of a million dollars a year is excellent policy, and excellent politics, so it surprises me that Democrats are even thinking about doing this.
Doubtless, they will find a way to screw this up, and I’m sure that Heath Shuler will be leading the way, but I’m still getting a heavy duty umbrella, just in case it starts to rain frogs.
And the Award for Lame Losers Goes to ……You know that recovery that we seem to be having, well expect it to stop, suddenly, in just a few weeks.
Why, because somehow or other the House Democrats managed to lose a vote on extending unemployment benefits extension, meaning that roughly 5 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits on November 30.
That’s 5 million Americans who will be unable to make car or house payments of buy much of anything at all.
Figure about $1.5 billion pulled out of the economy a week, or a little bit over ½% of GDP that would just go away.
Not only did they not manage to pass the bill, but it was only a 3 month extension that they managed not to pass, so they failed on a lame half measure.
For some reason known only to God, they tried to pass it under a “suspension of the rules” requiring a ⅔ vote, which it failed, by 258 to 154.
OK, I do know the reason why the Democrats tried to pass this under a procedure requiring a 2/3 vote: If it passes by a simple majority, then people can make a “motion to recommit”, which could kill the bill, and would not pass, or a “motion to recommit with instructions”, where it is sent back to committee with instructions to make amendments, which doesn’t kill the bill.
The problem is that the Democratic Caucus discipline is so lax that if the Republicans try to attach something that Democrats fear might be used in a campaign, like, for example, banning felons from getting UI benefits, then many of the Democrats, fearful for being cast as soft on crime in the next election, will vote for the measure and against the party, and the country, because they have no damn guts.
Of course, the reason that the Dems lost on November 2 was because they have no damn guts, so their solution is even more gutlessness.
Cthulhu on a cruller, it’s lame.
Buh Bye Bean
Melissa Bean has conceded the election to her Republican opponent Joe Walsh, and honestly, it makes me happy.
I’d feel different if she were the margin for control of the house, but she isn’t, and she is arguably the worst Democrat in Congress, because she sold her soul for campaign donations to the financial industry, and she was the most effective force on Congress for gutting financial regulations.
While she is (until January) was a member of both the Blue Dog and New Democrat Caucus, she was always about raking in the campaign dough from banks, pharma, etc. so that they can stay in office, which shades her more toward the New Dem side, as opposed to the Blue Dogs, who tend to be motivated more by their own misguided philosophy or a desire to appease constituents.
Give me an honest reactionary over a pseudo-moderate careerist any day.
In related news. Lisa Murkowski beat Joe Miller in her write-in bid.
In your face, Sarah Palin.