The Power of the Purse

I find it very hard to understand anyone who thinks we have a crisis or emergency at our southern border.

Yes some migrants try to cross illegally, generally to then claim asylum after they surrender.

No documented terrorists have been found to cross that way, although of course the possibility can't be ignored.  Still we don't have instances of terrorist acts committed by people crossing that border illegally.

There have been some crimes, and sometimes violent crimes committed by undocumented aliens, but these are actually pretty rare and the fact that they people were undocumented aliens is not much of a factor.

We have plenty of news coverage of what is going on at the border and the main issues concern the safety of people trying to seek asylum and a better life in this country.

The problem is that we have a chief executive who was searching for some excuse to grab some money to build a useless wall and is misusing an act meant to facilitate action in real emergencies.

This needs to be fixed, because that is Pandora's box once it is opened.

The constitution requires appropriations to be made by the congress, because the power of the purse strings is the best way to control a wayward executive.

If that line is crossed we may find ourselves going further and further into tyranny.

It has happened, unfortunately, many time throughout history and we need to nip it in the bud.

There are simple solutions that would allow quick response in real emergencies and still preserve the constitution.  Simply requiring any such declaration to be ratified by congress within a reasonable time would do the trick.

It obviously isn't something they can pass right now, but it needs to happen.

Is it working?

When the Democrats won control of the House, many people thought this is going to make congress even more dysfunctional. 

It would make sense, one party controlling the House, the Senate and the Presidency, versus two.

However early results indicate mote seems to be getting done rather than less.

Yes we did have a long Government shutdown, but the agreement was actually negotiated in the time allotted and we are likely to avoid another.

I noticed that an environmental bill and land management bill passed with near unanimity when they could come close last session.

It is of course too early to be certain, but it makes sense when you think about it.

When the Republicans controlled both houses, they didn't feel the need to include Democrats in the early process, only presenting them with a take it or leave it proposition.  They generally didn't take it and because of Senate rules you had to get at least some of them on-board.

Now, they have joined the process and by inputting into the process actually help create a negotiated agreement.

Even in cases where that agreement is about the same as the one that a single party would have developed, it is more likely to pass since they participated.  

Its how the process is supposed to work.

Embedded Government

One theme that recurs with the current administration is how they like to portray themselves as victims .
This plays well with their base which also considers themselves victimized by the powers that be, apparently themselves.
Ignoring the theme of denied self entitlement, this administration faces the same checks and balances as every other administration has.
Government doesn't reboot itself when a new administration gets elected.  First we have 235 years of previous history where laws and the constitution guarantee certain behaviors by Government employees.
Some things can be changed by Executive Orders, but, that is limited by the division of powers.
To think anything about this is unique is of course part of their victim mentality.
The business of government is by its very nature a bureaucratic thing and it requires planning, hard work, and compromise, all areas not strong points with this group.
They think that they can push things through by public announcements and attacking this with different opinions
It has led to a lot of public bluster but few actual lasting changes.
Considering the  policies they tried to enact that's not the worst thing.

Voting Thougts

As we enter our first ever lame duck ala orange period, it will be interesting what the approach is.

For the next seven weeks the republicans still control both houses of congress but traditionally, when we were more civil, the outgoing congress did not so things they know the incoming congress would oppose.

However we are not in an era of actual animosity where its more likely that common courtesy is a forgotten thing.

Maybe civility will actually return.

One of the things the last few elections showed us is that races can be lost before any voting takes place.

Looking at the 2016 election and the mid-terms certain races were decided by less votes than the votes suppressed by restrictive measures.

In North Dakota, they tried to suppress native American votes by requiring a street address, something many of them don't have, although in the election it probably didn't impact the outcome.

In many states, including Georgia and Florida, voter suppression efforts may have actually changed the election outcome.  It's hard to actually count those who don't vote because of these efforts, but when the elections are so close, you know every vote mattered.

It seems like the sort of thing we should be able to agree on, giving every citizen the ability to exercise the franchise, but for some that is a path to defeat and they will do what they can to avoid it.

We have two years to make sure the next election is more democratic, its important.

Partisanship is Winning

Well sometime today it looks like someone who was a bit of a sexual predator and excess drinker in his younger days will be confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Maybe more disturbing than either of those things is the clear partisanship that he exhibits and has exhibited throughout his career.

Until fairly recently filibusters used to prevent nominees so obviously biased from being confirmed.

It wasn't a foolproof system but when you need 60 votes to move a nomination forward, you had to find someone who appealed at least a bit to the other party.

It was considered too important to let people like this get a lifetime appointment to the court that rules on issues that while clearly political in nature should be decided based on the Constitution and the law.

However the politicization of the Court has been going on for a while now and we see a lot of decisions come down to 5-4 votes, clearly indicating that the law is vague and the decision is driven by other considerations.

Its pretty clear that the constitution as written has a lot of areas that are challenged by modern life since it was originally written for a country that was primarily rural and developing.

Its held up pretty well but I'm pretty sure that the founders weren't thinking about assault rifles, abortion or gay rights when they wrote it.

Applying such a document to modern life shouldn't really be up to the courts, it should be done by the people or their representatives, but having an out of date document govern many decisions works to the advantage of some.

It has generally done a good job but it clearly could be improved in things like the electoral college among others.  Of course I'm not sure we have agreement on how to fix it so we probably have to deal with a Supreme Court continuing to make policy because the Congress is unable to do so.

Character

I watched some of the badgering of Peter Strzok as they tried to turn what was essentially pillow talk into a conspiracy.

Now he shouldn't have use his government issued phone for these communications and on a different level maybe he should have honored his marriage vows, but these two failings do not a conspiracy make.

Its pretty ludicrous to watch these elected representatives try to spin this into something that will either help the dontard or help their party in the mid-terms.

They just couldn't do it.

I'm sure they will try to act like they got something, but they just didn't.

There wasn't anything to be got.

As Mr. Strzok pointed out at one point, the FBI is hardly a den of democratic operatives, it is in general a very conservative organization.

These are law enforcement professionals who deal with issue of national security and terrorism.

They are dedicated professionals but of course they aren't required to drop personal convictions at the door.

They don't conspire as a group to influence politics and apparently unknow to our reps, they are governed by the Hatch act which restrict political activity in your official capacity.

As I said the texts that should have been on private cell phones are simply idle talk between two people in a personal relationship, who viewed an individual candidate negatively, not his party or his voters.

A natural reaction to a sexist, homophobe who exhibits bias towards many and respect for none.

Spending Roulette

The deadline for a spending extension or actual budget bill is midnight tonight and while the Senate seems to have got an agreement, the House hasn't.

Now its quite likely that it will accept the Senate deal, almost certainly if it goes to a floor vote where the fiscal conservatives can vote against it but it will still pass with the votes of the democrats.

It effectively ends sequestration in the manner sequestration intended, by passing a budget.

Sequestration was intended to be so harsh that it would force the congress to make a deal.

It failed for quite a while.

The spending increases in this deal may seem like a lot, but remember they have been postponed for a number of years now.

Of course we still need to address serious issues like immigration and dreamers, the deficit, the environment, entitlement programs, but it is at least a start.

With the mid-term elections now on everyone's mind and of course primary challenges to worry about we are probably in a period where little will actually happen.

But lets put down the spending revolver for now at least and try to get to work.

Missed Deadlines

In the Alice in Wonderland world of Washington DC, apparently people believe that an issue that has been contentious for years can be solved in a couple of weeks if you create a deadline.

These are our employees after all and they keep giving themselves short term extensions to do their jobs.

Clearly the public and most of the elected officials think Dreamers should be allowed to stay.  A few don't but if they held a vote to permanently extend DACA or something like it, it seems like it would pass overwhelmingly.  I also think the president would sign it although that might be less certain.

It isn't going to get voted on because of the procedural rules that govern in both chambers.

So will the solution be worked out before the next self imposed deadline?

I wouldn't bet on it.

Will they shut the Government down again?

Doesn't seem likely considering the risk, although some in the Democratic party are ready to man the ramparts, so to speak.

Still I doubt it, it could hurt the mid-term elections.

So probably another short term spending bill and another deadline will follow.

I guess November is the real deadline here.

Taxes and the Economy

The argument for cutting taxes and increasing the debt is that the economy will grow so much that in the end the taxes collected from everybody working will reduce outflows and increase inflows, actually reducing the debt.

Take a simple example.  If someone is getting unemployment insurance and not paying taxes but because the economy grows so much he gets off unemployment and starts paying taxes, he offsets some of the reductions.

Two things are required for this to happen though, there have to be people who are getting benefits who will go back to work when jobs are available.

There is no real evidence to support this considering the unemployment rate is so low and companies are complaining about the lack of skilled workers.

The other thing that has to happen is that the tax breaks result in more jobs.

This is pretty clearly not the case for large well established businesses which have excess capital already and are not increasing production, at least no in any great degree.

There could be a certain number of jobs that get created here if the math makes it more profitable to build here because of the cuts.

The question isn't about a few jobs here and there but about a number of jobs to reduce our unemployment rate.

That is a problem since we are already at full employment.

Small businesses on the other hand might expand but the problem is still that the excess workers aren't there.

We are seeing the baby boomers reach retirement age and beginning to draw social security and Medicare.  Tax cuts aren't going to make them younger and once they can actually afford to retire unlikely to send them back into the workforce.

So unless we allow substantial immigration, there aren't enough workers, and I don't need to discuss the immigration thing here.

So tax cuts will help some people buy groceries or pay for health care but most of it will benefit people who already have savings and investments.

They can donate some to their favorite monkey..

Blood Money

In response to a question today about actions the Senate might take to control bump stocks, the accessory used to convert the semi-automatic weapon used in Vegas to automatic the majority leader said he wanted to wait until the investigation was complete.

Well, guess maybe the weapon was really a knife or possibly some of the injured (over 500) might die changing the number killed.

We may even discover that the person who did this was unhappy about something.

Of course he has to stall hoping the public outrage can be assuaged by the blood money the NRA will pump out saying guns didn't do it, a person did.

Of course they certainly enabled it.

Our speaker of the house deflected by saying he thought they might look into mental health issues?

Last time they allowed mentally ill people to buy guns, guess they could expand that a bit.

Nothing will happen except the donations will flow a bit more freely, the advertising will increase and in a few months we'll have another tragedy.

Maybe they should issue everyone body armor.

At least it would be something.

Does Evrything Have to be Politics?

If you consider things like helping someone after a Hurricane, the idea is simply to provide assistance and get the job done, not talk about what a wonderful job you are doing or who is complementing who.

Get the job done.

Its an idea that seems lacking in this administration where trying to sway public opinion is more important than keeping people alive.

Now I am in no position to judge the administration's efforts but I know that arguing about it isn't the way to help.

Its not just hurricane relief, its pretty much everything where we now are defining everything as winning or losing.

Take the recent health care fiasco's.

The general idea is to insure more Americans, improve coverage offered and reduce cost.

None of those three things are political in nature and the Affordable Care Act helped in all three situations, although it had some flaws.

Now if we had a non partisan discussion of how to improve one or more of those things we might be able to get somewhere.

I read a recent analysis which quoted one of the authors of the latest plan as saying he didn't really know much about health care at all, but thought others did, only to find out they were as ignorant as he was.

Maybe learning about the issues is something that should be a priority, rather than simply echoing some position that you can use for political purposes.

Its sort of amazing how gullible our representatives are.  They get told the plans do something but aren't told that in the "fine" print you can get out of it (pre-existing condition coverage).  I think we should demand real analysis and action and less politics by both sides.

I think we have a situation where all they care about is getting re-elected and just need a "story" to help that happen.

How about a story that happens to be fact based about how you tried to do your best for your constituents and all Americans at the same time?

Maybe they would like that.

Responsibility

As a society we seem to have a lot of trouble with deciding who is responsible for things.  In fact we seem determined to blame someone else when something goes wrong even if it most likely it was no ones fault except our own.

Maybe it was always like this and the only difference is that we hear more and more about the frivolous stuff because there is so much more instant coverage.  I can't be sure, it just seems that we spend eternities trying to place blame to the net result that most of our public figures get smeared at some point of another.

Certainly people who are responsible should own up to it, but there are so many things that happen that may be because of a particular policy or a particular prior event which are not really caused by the policy or event, simply and outgrowth of it, maybe.  Take gun ownership.  Our gun policies put more guns in circulation.  However people who use these guns to commit crimes or commit suicide did it for other reasons.  The guns were the instrument they used and whether we should increase background checks or not is really unrelated.  However if it is your gun that was used, even if it was stolen, the responsibility falls on you for failing to safeguard it.

Of course some things are clearly related like increased greenhouse gases and climate change.  That is clearly demonstrated by science but of course we have people unwilling to accept science reality.  Who is responsible is another question but I would like to point out that just because someone else also generates dangerous pollutants doesn't make it OK for me to do so.

Deciding someone else is responsible for the ills that befall you is a symptom of failure to recognize or accept responsibility.  Take smokers who have had plenty of warnings over the years about the dangers of smoking.  Yes we continued to allow these dangerous products to be grown, produced and sold because of special interests but there's been plenty of warnings about the effects.  Deciding to roll the dice and smoke ultimately makes you responsible not anyone else.  Similarly, failing to prepare yourself for the future and having little or no retirement savings is ultimately your fault.  I do understand that certain people had little or no disposable income so they may have had not options, but all of those who spent money on indulgent things could have saved more.

Ultimately we seem to want to place blame in someone else, often the Government for our individual failures.  Remember in this country we get to vote so the Government is what we make it.

Promises

Making promises is easy, delivering on those promises can be hard.

Politicians make promises, its what they do to quote a current commercial.  Being able to deliver is quite another thing.  This is true for all politicians and while you clearly want to elect the one that promises the things you want as opposed to one who promises things you don't want, its also important to understand if they are real or empty promises.

In politics two things are required to deliver on a promise in this country.  The desire and power to do it.  One of the things that has led to the current distrust of Government are all the promises made by candidates that they couldn't deliver on, mostly because they didn't have the power, but sometimes they didn't have the desire either.

It is an infrequent event when one party has enough support in both houses of Congress to make fundamental changes One such scenario was after the election of 2008 when the Democrats were able to pass the Affordable Care Act.  An act that is attacked so very much but which has done so much good.

But that is a rare event since the senate rules require a majority of 60 to push through legislation.  Few remember that because we lost a senate sear the only way to pass the Affordable Care Act in the Senate was to accept the latest House version without revisions since the Democrats had only 59 votes.  A few known issues had to be left in.

However, making promises you can't keep is a time honored political tradition and one that shows no sign of ending.  Media coverage really tends to fail here since they repeat the promises without the proper analysis.  To the extent the promises simply represent goals to be pursued that's fine, but certain people actually believe these promises.  When the promises aren't delivered its because the Government is corrupt or untrustworthy.

I don't know if its always been this way.  It seems to me that we used to understand that campaign promises were goals and not guaranteed.  I think a lot of us still do understand that but sadly, it seems that when I talk to people, or see what they post on social media, they buy in to the idea that politicians are corrupt and untrustworthy.  Of course some are, but the vast majority on both sides aren't.  Maybe its the fact that everything is now instantaneous.  Further, we live in an age where irresponsible reporting is rampant.  Look at how much media was spent on where Obama was born when it wasn't even really an issue.  Partisan politics is actually tame compared to the partisan media we now have, but that is another topic.

I wish we could see more facts and less empty promises in our elections, but I'd also like to win the lottery.

Silly Shutdown

When you play poker, you have to "know when to hold them and know when to fold them"  and if you don't you will get taken to the cleaners. 

Certain Republicans thought that the cards they held, shutting down the government, were worth holding and that they could get concessions.  Well they didn't and I think they will get taken to the cleaners.

The scary part is that they are simply too ignorant to realize that the Affordable Care Act is not going away and to shut down the government or too create a default will end up causing a lot of unnecessary grief.

I think they are terrified by the fact that the dire predictions they made about the law are not going to come true.  The exchanges are up and the premiums are actually reasonably affordable.  There are some glitches, but mainly because of the tremendous amount of interest.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the law, but it is going to become better understood now that it is going live and the Republicans are terrified by that.  It really is a pretty good law once you get to know it, not perfect, but still pretty good.