23 March 2009

Feingold, Ryan promote line item veto plan - JSOnline

"The Congressional Accountability and Line-item Veto Act would allow the president to propose removing earmarks from legislation that lands on his desk and send them back to Congress in one package for quick votes. The House and Senate would have 12 days to bring the package of line item vetoes for a vote with a simple majority voting in favor of keeping them in or deleting them from the budget."

http://is.gd/oABL

Feingold's plan sounds great to me. Except that it says: "Congress can't do it's job, so maybe the President can do it for them".

It's Congress' job to legislate, but they can't control the destructive behavior of earmarks. There was a lot of talk about it in the last year, but nothing's been done. It's understandable why not. It's the MoC's bread-and-butter. They get and maintain their support at home by slipping in payouts to pet constituent's projects. They get other MoC's to accept it because they'll trade votes for their bills and amendments.

"It's the way things get done," they say. One of my own state's reps, Obey, has said that nothing can be done about it. At least Feingold and Ryan are trying (even if it's just symbolic, 'cause, let's face it, how many MoC's really want to give legislative power away to the President?).

Until people get pissed enough to vote out their own representatives and Senators for this crap, we're stuck with it. Thanks to Feingold and Ryan for pointing out that our lawmakers aren't doing their job.

16 March 2009

Suck it up, conservatives!

A lot of conservatives and business-minded folks are loudly claiming that Obama and the Democrats are trying to kill American capitalism. Quite frankly, I'm worried about the debt and the dependence on the government that the stimulus and other initiatives could create. And at the same time, I'm a little happy that the folks who have been trying to game the system for the past 20 years and been the driving force behind the outrageous consumption and the creation of non-productive industries (like the mortgage market and futures market) are the ones being hardest hit. Cry all you want bankers and brokers, but you generated the wealth of the past 20 years on a foundation of myth and lies. If you want to play by laissez-faire rules, adopt one rule better: "Don't be a dick". Stop trying to screw the other guy out of a dollar or game the system. If you can't be honest, then screw you and bring on the regulation.

And I'd like my 401K money back, please. Hope you had a fun time with it.

11 March 2009

Twitter / SenJohnMcCain and earmarks

Senator John McCain twittered last night: "did you know in 1991 there were 546 earmarks in appropriations bills - today, nearly 9,000"

The last couple of years saw the height of anti-earmark rhetoric in the public and the press, and it seemed with both sides arguing for reform in the 2008 elections that we might see some changes.

While I support many of the programs that would be funded by federal earmarks, I'm quite sure there would be a better way to fund them than this process.

It seems like bills should be voted on according to a defined set of initiatives and principles, rather than a hodgepodge of tacked-on amendments to specific pet projects of MoCs and their constituents. Then a MoC could be held accountable for their vote on a bill that allowed, say, tens of thousands to a gang-prevention program in South Carolina, rather than being able to have the excuse that it was part of a larger bill and that's what they felt they were voting on.

Also, it would seem more efficient if the State or Local authority could tax and spend on some projects that are primarily local in scope, rather than funneling money to the federal government and then back out to local needs.

There's a lot more to be said on this, and I hope Obama and others who pledged a reformation of the federal processes holds true to their promises and works with MoCs like McCain to make the system work better.

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