Thew had to hold the vote open in the Senate for 5 hours, because Sherrod Brown (D-OH) had to attend his mother’s wake, and none of the Republicans had the decency to make an accommodation.
Charming to the last.
Category: Legislation
The EU Gets a Major Case of the Stupids
The European parliament’s legal affairs committee just voted to extend copyright on music performances to 95 years. It was 50 years.
It has to go to the full parliament, but it’s likely to pass next month.
Stupid.
This won’t create any more performances, people don’t perform in the expectation of revenues on year 51, so it won’t create any more music, but what it will do is ensure that obscure works will be lost over time, because the difficulties of preserving and reproducing them will be too great.
Under the rules that they are proposing….Hell under the rules that they have now, Shakespeare’s works would have been forever lost to decay.
They would be gone, but we have to protect the f^%$ing mouse for another 45 f^%$ing years.
Not a Single Republican Vote
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the stimulus package, with no Republican votes….yet again….
The ‘Phants got your “bipartisanship” right there.
Good News In the Stimulus Package
It appears that whistle blower protections for contractors remains in the bill.
Good for Congress, and bad, I guess for Bath Iron Works.
It appears that attempts to strip out collection of performance data on drugs and medical devices have been defeated, which is good for all of us.
House-Senate Stimulus Bill Reports Out
That was fast, I think that the deal may have been negotiated on the way to the conference room.
Basic changes are (unless otherwise noted, changes are from the House):
- Size, down from the $820 billion (House) to $838 billion (Senate) 50 789 billion.
- Retains the AMT tax cut put in by the Senate. ($70 billion, not stimulative)
- Cuts in grants for broadband build out in rural areas remains, but has been trimmed a bit.
- The Senate tax provisions allowing losses to be carried further forward by businesses was limited to only small (under $5 million/year receipts) businesses.
- The car purchase tax credit, proposed by my Senator* Barbara Mikulski which would allow consumers to write off interest on auto loans, was shrunk to just cover sales and excise taxes.
- The house flipping tax credits were trimmed. Instead of a $15,000/10% tax credit, the existing $7500 tax credit, which is actually a loan, it has to be repaid over time, was extended a year.
- Thank goodness, the house flipping tax credit was a really bad idea.)
- Individual tax credits were reduced from $500/$1000 per person/couple to $400/$800.
- Grants to state governments and grants for school repairs were trimmed from $95 bllion to $54 billion.
- Extend and increase unemployment benefits.
I’m not particularly impressed, but it’s better than doing nothing.
*And I wish that she wasn’t.
Maybe Because She Didn’t Want Someone Ratting Out Bath Iron Works
It appears that one of the sticking points on the stimulus package was that Senator Susan Collins insisted on stripping whistleblower protections from contractors from the conference report.
Considering the history waste, fraud, and abuse at BIW, the largest private employer in the state, I could see how the distinguished gentlewoman from Maine might not favor transparency.
Just Shoot Me!
It looks like executive pay caps in the stimulus will be dropped because the so-called fiscal hawks think that they will cost too much:
Unfortunately, [Representative Brad] Sherman told me that he believes the executive compensation limits added to the Senate’s stimulus are going to get removed during conference talks with the House. The reason: a new Congressional Budget Office estimate that the pay caps will cost the government $10.8 billion in lost tax revenue over the next 10 years.
“The plan is to take out the executive compensation provisions … and blame the Republicans for setting out the level [of $800 billion]” for the final version of the stimulus, Sherman said.
Gaah!!!!!!!
Dems Win Cloture Vote on Stimulus Package
Here, with Kennedy showing up to cast his vote.
Once Again: What Paul Krugman Said
Just go and read the shrill one’s latest:
What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?
A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.
Good writing. Go Read.
People Who Speak Better than I Do
Rachael Maddow on the stimulus.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Hopefully, We Can Unfrack This in the Conference Committee
So, based on my not so informed analysis, what the Senate now has a deal on sucks. It appears that the only criteria used by those “wise people” in the middle was what had extensive lobbying support.
Cuts:
- Aid to states.
- Education funding.
Kept or increased:
- More tax cuts.
- Increased funding on the census. (Like that’s going to help now?)
- Subsidies for digital TV receivers. (Whiskey tango foxtrot)?
- More tax cuts.
- The $15,000 house flipping tax credit.
Total spending is down by around ¼, and tax cuts are up.
Without some Republican style shenanigans in the conference committee (how about stripping out all the tax cuts?) this will really suck.
Regulating Credit Default Swaps
The head of the Agriculture committee, Collin Peterson (D-MN-07) is proposing that credit default swaps be treated like the insurance that they are. Here is money quote(PDF):
(h) LIMITATION ON ELIGIBILITY TO PURCHASE A CREDIT DEFAULT SWAP.—It shall be unlawful for any person to enter into a credit default swap unless the person would experience financial loss if an event that is the subject of the credit default swap occurs.
…
EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendments made by this section shall be effective for credit default swaps (as defined in section 1a(34) of the Commodity Exchange Act) entered into after 90 days after the date of the enactment of this section.
Basically, what this is saying is that you can’t buy insurance on something unless you actually benefit from it.
This was discovered a long time ago, specifically 263 years ago, when the British Parliament passed the Marine Insurance Act of 1746:
In 1746, Parliament passed the Marine Insurance Act, requiring anyone seeking to collect on an insurance contract to have an interest in the continued existence of the insured property. Thus was born the insured-interest doctrine. The indemnity doctrine, which precludes a buyer from insuring property for more than it’s worth, soon followed. The point of these rules is to limit insurance contracts to trading existing risks and not to create new risks by giving buyers of insurance incentive to destroy property. The doctrines have been part of insurance law in both England and the United States (which in 1746 were colonies under English common law) ever since.
Unfortunately, it appears that the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota only intends for this regulation to be temporary, but it’s a good start.
It should be permanent though, there is a reason that this adopted so long ago.
The House Flipping Subsidy
The Senate just voted to add a $15,000 tax credit for home buyers to the bailout program.
It’s a bad idea, which Dean Baker correctly calls it a house flipping subsidy.
Republicans Formally Come Out in Favor of Syphilis
Mark Steyn supports Syphilis and other STDs because they might prevent people from having sex outside of wedlock:
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is on TV explaining the (at this point the congregation shall fall to its knees and prostrate itself) “stimulus.” “How,” asks the lady from CBS, “does $335 million in STD prevention stimulate the economy?”
“I’ll tell you how,” says Speaker Pelosi. “I’m a big believer in prevention. And we have, er… there is a part of the bill on the House side that is about prevention. It’s about it being less expensive to the states to do these measures.”
Makes a lot of sense. If we have more STD prevention, it will be safer for loose women to go into bars and pick up feckless men, thus stimulating the critical beer and nuts and jukebox industries. To do this, we need trillion-dollar deficits, which our children and grandchildren will have to pay off, but, with sufficient investment in prevention measures, there won’t be any children or grandchildren, so there’s that problem solved.
I really cannot read this as anything but an endorsement of STDs, and this is not The Onion.
H/t Booman Tribune.
It Won’t Pass, But I Support It
Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) has proposed a bill that would cap salary, bonuses and stock options at $400,000.00/year, the salary of the President of the United States, for any company that took federal bailout money.
It’s not gonna happen. It’s political grandstanding.
And I like it….A lot….
Rank and File House Dems Want Tax Cuts Out of Stimulus
After the stimulus proposal got no Republican votes at all, it appears that the rank and file house Democrats are telling their leaders that they have no interest at all in making nice:
Rank-and-file Congressional Democrats had been willing to give Republicans the business tax cuts and other provisions they wanted in the stimulus. That is, up until every single one voted against the bill on the House floor Wednesday.
Now, in both the House and the Senate, angry members are lobbying Democratic leaders to yank those tax breaks back.
I would agree. All that kowtowing to the ‘Phants does is make your policy prescriptions worse.
There is no common ground on which to negotiate. Republicans at the national level, particularly in the House of Representatives, have no interest in making things better while they are in the minority.
Senate Passes SCHIP Expansion
One interesting thing is that ‘Phant support for the bill has plummetted, because the prior times that they voted, they knew that Bush would veto, so there was no chance of it becoming law.
The Republican Party, opposing healthcare for children since 1945.
The GOP claimed that it was about providing healthcare to the children of legal immigrants, but really, it’s another case of their opposing a program because it will work, albeit imperfectly, as it will still leave about 5 million children without health insurance.
A similar measure has already passed the house.
Senators Levin and Grassley Move to Regulate Hedge Funds
The Hedge Fund Transparency Act would force hedge funds to register with regulators, file annual disclosures, and cooperate with SEC investigators.
It’s a start.
The most worrisome thing, Madoff not withstanding, is not how hedge funds can break the law, but how much of what they do is legal, since a lot of it appears to be market manipulation and insider trading to my untrained eye.
Not One Republican Vote
The stimulus package passes the house without even 1 ‘Phant vote. So much for bitartisanship.
One of the nice things is that the Nadler amendment passed, adding $3 billion to mass transit.
Politically Kosher: Don’t Mix Meat and Milk
Sometimes, the pork in the stimulus package is beef.
In this case it was an attempt by the Dairy industry to have the government purchase about 300,000 of milk cows and sell them to slaughter houses in order to arrest the recent declines in the cost of milk.
The dairy farmers wanted this, but the beef farmers did not, and when all was said and done, it ended up on the cutting room floor, but not before I made hay of the situation.
Don’t have a cow, man!