Washington vs. America–D.C. doesn’t doesn’t act like there’s a deficit problem: If you worry that the federal government can’t afford $38 billion in cuts, please read Chris Moody’s article from two weeks ago. There’s a $1.6 trillion deficit but the feds are still hiring. As of March 23 they were hiring someone to run a Facebook page for the Deparment of the Interior (at up to $115,000 a year). They were hiring equal opportunity compliance officers at the Peace Corps and Department of Interior for $150,000 to $180,000 a pop. They were hiring deputy speechwriters for officials at relatively obscure agencies. …P.S.: The point isn’t so much that these federal employees are overpaid, though they are. The point is that if there were any actual sense of a deficit crisis in Washington these are jobs that would not be filled at all. … Well, maybe the Facebook editor. I think that’s a critical investment necessary to win the future, don’t you? … P.P.S.: That’s what’s so annoying about all the calls from respectable Beltwayish opinion leaders to stop cutting the non-defense discretionary budget and focus on entitlements, because ‘that’s where the big money is.’ From one perspective, this is a rational argument. That is where the big money is. From another perspective, it looks like a tacit conspiracy of Washingtonians not to sacrifice the jobs of any of their friends, or the local economy, by any kind of actual slimming down (of the sort a private company in similar straits would have undertaken years ago). … In effect, the respectable ”pivot to entitlements” position says,”we’re going to cut Social Security checks and Medicare for mid-income old people to save the jobs of $180K equal opportunity officers at the DOT.” … Why not wring the fat out of government first? … Update: Here’s the current list of jobs the government is still filling. … (more)
Last year it was about safety and innovation. This year it’s about jobs. But it’s the same bill. (more)
1.) FCIC dissenters defend bailing out Wall Street — Two reports will come out of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission today. The one written by the panel’s liberal majority will blame lax regulation and the banking industry for the collapse of the housing industry. The other, written by commissioners Bill Thomas, a former Republican congressman from California, Keith Hennessey, former chairman of the White House National Economic Council under President George W. Bush, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, spreads the blame more broadly among “investors, creditors, regulators, homebuyers, and politicians,” all of whom must take “personal responsibility.” The dissenters also defended bailing out Wall Street: “For a policymaker, the calculus is simple: if you bail out AIG and you’re wrong, you will have wasted taxpayer money and provoked public outrage,” the paper reads. “If you don’t bail out AIG and you’re wrong, the global financial system collapses. It should be easy to see why policymakers favored action–there was a chance of being wrong either way, and the costs of being wrong without action were far greater than the costs of being wrong with action.” Thank goodness we didn’t destabilize the global financial system, which might have led to really scary stuff, like high unemployment. (more)
As part of what appeared to be a desperate cry for help with their addiction to spending other people’s money, a group of Senate Republicans requested Wednesday that Congress assist them in kicking the habit by passing a strict balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. (more)
1.) Deficit commission gets no respect during SOTU address — “Wait for the deficit commission.” That’s what the White House told Reuters’ James Pethokoukis whenever he asked about Pres. Obama’s strategy for dealing with America’s debt problem. “Obama’s panel has come and gone,” Pethokoukis wrote after the SOTU address. “And in his speech last night, he failed to explicitly endorse any of its budget-cutting recommendations.” After 10 months of deliberation and town halls across the country to the tune of $500,000, and a contentious fight over which commission faction’s proposal was the best proposal, Obama has essentially scrapped the whole thing. “I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress,” Obama said last night. “To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations.” Never mind that Obama has endorsed exactly zero of the commission’s ideas, but as Pethokoukis points out: “Did Obama not check his in-box? His bipartisan commission gave him a Social Security fix.” (more)
— “It is unlikely that House Republicans will take the vote to repeal the health care law, shrug their shoulders when it doesn’t reach the Senate, and move on,” writes The Daily Caller’s Chris Moody. “We aren’t going to just check the box off and say that we had one vote and we’re going to move on to other topics,” Rep. Michele Bachmann said Tuesday. Rep. Steve King echoed Bachmann’s sentiments, saying, “This is going to be a debate that goes on not just today and tomorrow and next week. It’s going to go on for the next year or two. It’s probably going to go on until we elect a president that will sign a final repeal of Obamacare. So this is an ongoing debate.” The GOP will fight, just like the Spartans fought at Thermopylae, until they are all dead of old age/exasperation, or until Americans return both the legislative branch and the executive branch to the second worst party in the country. In the meantime, House Republicans will build their own health care bill, starting with the key accomplishment of Obamacare: “A measure to restrict insurance companies from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions.” (more)
1.) Remember: The five worst reactions to the Loughner shooting — Washington never fails to disappoint. While normal people cry in response to tragedy, the buttinskys on Capitol Hill are attempting to legislate away the pain. The Daily Caller’s Chris Moody rounds up the dumbest of the dumb, from a plan to “encase the entire House and Senate floor with Plexiglass so the tourists can’t throw things at members of Congress,” to a Republican-proposed law that would make it illegal to carry a firearm within 1/5 of a mile “of any ‘high-profile’ public official.” In a lapse of judgment that will go unpublished by his base, Democratic Rep. James Clyburn argued that the FCC–on which his daughter is a commissioner–should bring back the Fairness Doctrine. “You cannot yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.” And people say Congress doesn’t listen… (more)
Apart from a somewhat rough start and a minor disruption by a “birther” who yelled from the public gallery, the reading of the Constitution on the House floor by U.S. Representatives on the second day of Congress went fairly smoothly. (more)
For Tim Berry, a top Republican lobbyist for Time Warner, the timing couldn’t have been worse. (more)
There is little Christmas cheer on Capitol Hill this week, as Republicans and Democrats prepare for another showdown, this time involving a $1.1 trillion Omnibus spending bill loaded to the brim with pork that would keep the government funded until the next fiscal year. (more)
In reaction to the Senate Democrats’ release of a 1,900 page, $1.1 trillion budget proposal, Republican leaders announced they will not support the measure if it is brought to the floor this year, citing concerns with the size, cost and limited time for debate. (more)
A proposal to extend the Bush-era tax rates for two years will pass in the House despite unease among Democrats, House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer said Monday. (more)
Refusing to give into the Republicans’ terms for the lame-duck session, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is working to score a few last minute political points against the GOP before holding a vote on the Bush-era tax rate extension, and he’s doing a very good job of it. (more)
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Wednesday that there was zero chance Republicans would budge on the estate tax portion of the deal with President Obama to extend the Bush-era tax rates, and blasted Obama for “whining” in his speech Tuesday. (more)
President Obama hastily scheduled an afternoon press conference at the White House Tuesday, seeking to head off growing anger in his own party over compromises to Republicans in a tax cut deal announced Monday. (more)
The Senate today approved the Food Safety Modernization Act, a bill that expands the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to regulate the quality of food and expand the agency’s powers to inspect food production facilities. (more)
Standing in front of the committee room where her postponed hearing was to be held this morning, California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, who has been accused of providing aid to a bank her husband had a financial stake in, demanded a trial for alleged ethics violations before the end of the year. (more)
Perhaps foreseeing a showdown between new Republican members of Congress and party leadership, Speaker-elect John Boehner said Thursday that despite commitments from many freshman lawmakers not to raise the national debt limit, the House will have to take action early next year. (more)
The National Public Radio Board of Directors held a public meeting Thursday in part to discuss the company’s decision to fire news analyst Juan Williams, giving listeners a chance to voice their concerns directly to board members. (more)
Maybe he likes the peanuts. (more)
