Tag: senate

I think we should retain the same [filibuster] policies that we have instead of lowering it…. I think it has been working.

Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii)
Better Democrats™ please.

Mysterious Una(ni)mi(ty)

Bernie Sanders’ “Audit the Fed” amendment passed today:

The 96-0 vote came after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) modified an earlier version of the audit legislation that was strongly opposed by the White House and Federal Reserve. They argued the amendment would compromise the independence of U.S. monetary policy.

By this margin, even noted fucktard Orrin Hatch can declare himself “satisfied” that it is “good for the country.”
Likewise Ben Nelson, who was irrevocably aboard way back at 70 votes. The era of partisan bickering must be over.

The Talking Cure

NYT reports:

Senate Republicans ended three days of resistance on Wednesday and said they were ready to allow debate of legislation to overhaul regulation of the nation’s financial system. The Republicans, who were gathering to make their formal decision, appeared to back down after Democrats threatened to keep the Senate in session through the night to dramatize the the standoff.

It’s almost as though making them talk is a strateegery that might, you know, work.
But, of course, we’ll face the same exact obstructionist horse-shit whenever debate is declared “over” and a move to end it is taken. What then? Won’t somebody tell me what to do then?!?

Make them vote against the bill. No compromises, no walk-backs, no changes.
I’ll say it again, there are TWO CHOICES here. You vote for cloture or you talk about why you are not voting for cloture. Forever. Or until you vote for cloture. Your choice.
You then are rewarded with two similar choices: you vote for the bill or you vote against it. Period.
We have nothing else to do until November of 2010. We plan to make you eat shit every day until then either way. No breaks. Oh, Senator Bunning, you say you need to take a shit? Well, we’re pretty likely to move at that point too.

Of course, it must be noted that the prior paragraph has absolutely no meaning to the Democrat.

Two Choices

Mitch McConnell reports that he’s “heartened to hear that bipartisan talks have resumed in earnest” and, in response, Harry Reid says “I’m happy to hear my counterpart, my friend, Senator McConnell talk about the need for more negotiations. We don’t stand in the way of that.”

Now they’ll just repair to the negotiating table and make some laws! Finally, everyone will stop with the brazen lies about the financial reforms package! Truly it is a new day!

Or not.

Honestly, how many fucking times does this have to happen? The GOP as currently constituted is against it. “It” being anything the Democrat wants to do. Period. They love the idea of “negotiations.” It extends the sausage-making indefinitely. The American people hate the sausage-making. Anything that avoids bringing the bill to the floor in a decisive manner is a win for the GOP. This is why they keep on with the “back to the drawing board” jibber jabber. They want everything back at the drawing board. Forever.

Make them vote against the bill. No compromises, no negotiations, no changes, no fixes. Make them vote against the bill. To do that, you’ll also need to make them filibuster the bill. To do that, you’ll need to make them talk 24/7 about filibustering the bill. That is how you hurt the GOP. Make them stand up there and talk about the need to save Wall Street from scary scary regulations when all they ever did to us was drive the global fucking economy into the ditch and are aiming to do so again, posthaste. Make them talk, if necessary from now until the 2010 midterms. That, or they file a vote against cloture and we try again. More talking about how great Wall Street art. Two choices, no waiting.

Resolution 9

Mark Warner (D-Va.) discusses the early talking points surrounding the financial reform package:

If you haven’t spent time with these issues,“ Warner sighed, "it’s easy to pop off with sound-bite solutions that don’t work.”

Indeed it is. And that’s exactly what the GOP plans to do. And they’re already doing it; they have likely already won the framing war. Compare and contrast these statements from GOP fucktard in chief, Mitch McConnell

“We cannot allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks. And that’s why we must not pass the financial reform bill that’s about to hit the floor.”

-and-

“[The Dodd bill] gives the government a new backdoor mechanism for propping up failing or failed institutions…. We won’t solve this problem until the biggest banks are allowed to fail.”

with these (all from Warner):

“It appears that the Republican leader either doesn’t understand or chooses not to understand the basic underlying premise of what this bill puts in place.”

“Resolution will be so painful for any company. No rational management team would ever choose resolution. It means shareholders wiped out. Management wiped out. Your firm is going away. At least in bankruptcy, there was some chance that some of your equity would’ve been retained and you could come out in some form on the other side of the process. The resolution that [GOP Sen Bob] Corker and I have tried to create means the death of the company. The institution is gone.

Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, refers to the resolution authority as:

a "slush fund”

-and-

“the mere existence of this [slush] fund will make it all too easy to choose a bailout over bankruptcy.”

Warner counters:

“Again, it’s either that they don’t understand or they choose not to understand. There’s nobody in the financial sector who believes this. They’d laugh at the proposition that $50 billion is enough to get you through the resolution process if a couple of firms go down. What we’ve heard time and again is that the challenge in a crisis is to buy enough time to keep the lights on for a few days till you get the FDIC in here. You could make it smaller. Corker and I spoke about $25 billion. But this is funded by the industry.”

“And here’s the hypocrisy of the Republican leader’s comments, I can guarantee you that if there had not been some pre-funding, the critique would’ve been: ‘Look at these guys! They’ve left the taxpayers exposed! What’s going to keep the lights on for these few days? It’s going to be Treasury funds or Federal Reserve funds. The taxpayer will be exposed!’ ”

You are goddamned right they would. But that’s not the point. As usual, the Democrat has a nuanced, sober take on the way forward. The GOP has a short, meaningless slogan that offers no policy insight or suggestion whatever. It’s just "go die in the streets” pointed at their corporate paymasters. Of course, both parties know such an event would never be allowed to transpire, so all’s well.

What the Democrat should be saying:

The GOP wants to help these fatcats to the punchbowl. Again

The GOP is lining the pockets of the bankers and guaranteeing future bailouts

Why is the GOP against prosecuting the worst of the Wall Street offenses? Why do they want to perpetuate the boom/bust cycle that benefits only the richest few?

And etc… Rest assured you’ll hear none of those in the run-up to 2010. Attempts at financial reform will fail. The next economic meltdown will happen sooner rather than later and find an American government that’s financially unable to do anything about it. Depression II will make the current recession seem like the good old days. And will be blamed on Obama. Wait and see.

STARTing to sink in

I suppose this qualifies as PAM; Spencer Ackerman over to the Washington Independent has finally noted that even if you manage to keep Dick Lugar aboard the START train, you still have to find seven other GOPers willing to vote with the President on anything:

that acrimonious tenor is likely to flip some of the [relatively few GOP] yes votes [on arms reduction under W Bush for fuck’s sake] to either no votes or abstentions, however striking the hypocrisy.

Indeed it is. Now, of course, this isn’t considered to be the result of faulty logic or lousy governance on the part of the GOP, mind you. Oh no, definitely not that. They’re just playing the game and trying to win the day, politically. All that matters is what happened five minutes ago, and that’s only for the next 15. What we have here is plainly, plainly a failure on the part of The Democrat:

It’s just not clear yet [if the GOP votes will be there]. If not, it won’t just be an indictment of the Obama administration’s legislative acumen.

I guess we’re supposed to celebrate the “won’t just be” part of that. Strikingly bad construction. Rest assured that we shall never, ever see an article that systematically attacks the GOP’s stunning and repeated hypocrisy and categorizes the brazen lies, all of which is made worse by being lies and hypocrisy in service of nothing; they have no policy ideas to offer that go beyond a four word, rhyming phrase, and they never do. Because they aren’t required to. Nihilism works because it’s allowed to work by the Washington media establishment. At least it is when it’s coming from the GOP. And, in this case, it’s a brazen hypocrisy that threatens us all, directly and existentially. This ain’t kids with dirtbikes, these are actual fucking hydrogen bombs. And it’s a brazen violation of what was supposed to be a long-respected construct that “politics ends at the waters edge” when it comes to granting the President reasonably wide leeway on foreign policy, and especially when it comes to nuclear foreign policy.

START is a dead letter under a Democrat. Period. May not even get out of committee. That’s what the MSM should be looking at, day after day, 24/7: how can the country’s governance be this fundamentally broken? Instead, we’ll get plucky dogs and Clinton’s penis.
The Democrat should be hollering today and every day about the thousands, thousands of potentially loose nukes that are now going to be sitting around, just waiting to find a use. And putting it all on the GOP’s doorstep. We’ll see none of that. Instead, Obama will just stroll into the messaging buzz-saw. Again.

Whether a loss of, say, 19 House seats and 3 Senate seats [by the Democrat in 2010] would be regarded as a “win” by the media is hard to say

Nate Silver, funniest man alive.
What is hard to say is: if The Democrat were to somehow post a net win of 19 House and 3 Senate seats, would that be regarded as a “win” by the media. I think the answer is pretty clear.

The Democrat has spent (at least) two full days “scrambling” over what to do about this. Here’s an idea: make him talk. Relentlessly. 36, 72, 176 hours: whatever it takes until he collapses. Then hold the fucking vote by asking for unanimous consent to do so. Dare Republicans to let it “marinate.” Dare them. This is how you earn respect.

All the while, you scream on microphones outside the Senate chambers about how this is all 100% indicative of the Party of No.

Is this so hard to understand? Apparently it is.

Thus by my admittedly simple classification scheme, this would suggest that 14 of the 19 times reconciliation was used between FY1981 – FY2005, it was used to advance Republican interests. Or, to put this more precisely, it was used to advance bills that were signed by Republican presidents or vetoed by Democratic presidents.

Joshua Tucker

Jobs are PAMtastic

What a surprise:

The Senate easily passed a $15 billion jobs bill on Wednesday morning amid hope that the measure could provide a blueprint for other items on President Obama’s agenda.

The measure passed 70 to 28, with 13 Republicans joining 57 Democrats in support of the package. One Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voted against it.

Stunning that so many in the GOP who so very recently were so opposed to this bill that they wouldn’t even let it come to a vote changed their minds on it. Thank Christ Scott Brown so bravely crossed the lines and let this bill come to an up or down vote such that these teeming hordes of Republican Senators, who so very recently were mortally opposed to it even being considered, could rethink their positions on jobs-creation. A victory for independent thinking!

Or: how the GOP sticks a fig leaf onto its blanket opposition to any votes on any matter, large or small, by letting Brown appear to break ranks, knowing that serially shit-canning jobs bills is tantamount to political suicide.

We report, you decide.