We can all hit our knees in joyful, rejoicing prayer now that Jim DeMint has eliminated earmarks in the Senate. Now that the deficit is solved, the Senate can move on to the important work of repealing Obamacare and Medicaid.
All Better Now
by $8 blue check mistermix| 46 Comments
This post is in: Good News For Conservatives
balconesfault
What I really love is the conservatives all rushing to congratulate themselves on giving more power over to faceless, nameless professional bureaucrats in Washington to decide how Federal Money should be spent, stripping decision power from elected officials …
Kryptik
Funny, you’d think that the GOP ran the senate, the way this article comes off. Oh wait, they do. Pesky 47-seat majority and all that.
Of course, Obama ardently still believes he, personally, is what’s wrong with Washington for not compromising with folks like DeMint enough.
Alex S.
McConnell is a pitiful creature. I wonder how often he had to say “No, even though we had record gains in the House we didn’t take the Senate, so I’m still only Minority Leader”. He thought he had won that earmark battle when his new nemesis Rand Paul changed his mind, but Jim DeMint beat him in the end. It’s probably the loss of all authority he had left.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Now we’ll never know if our Senators are spayed or not.
.
JAHILL10
Fine by me. This means Obama will have more power to decide how money is spent. Maybe without earmarks we can put some of that money where it will do the most good instead of propping up some Bubba’s re-election bid.
homerhk
Oh fer fucks sake. He was talking about the tone rather than substantive policy. He says we should look forward to philosophical debates around the time of the next election, he has not retreated on any of the laws he has helped enact; what else would you expect him to say? You can’t have it both ways, wanting your politicians to be adults unlike the teatards and then rip them for actually behaving like adults.
Blue Neponset
How long before the Senate creates “Freedom Stipends” that do exactly the same thing as earmarks? My guess is they already have, and that is how they got the votes to outlaw earmarks.
Napoleon
I think this is a good thing because it makes it harder for Senators and Congresspeople to “monetize” budget decisions. A lot of these earmarks end up tied to campaign contributions, but when the same money gets spent as part of the regular budget process it becomes a lot tougher to identify someone as the “angel” who got you the money, so why line anyone’s coffers with campaign contributions.
This really is a good government reform and props to Demint for forcing it.
Ash Can
These people are not, never were, and never will be, serious about the deficit. Seeing how many voters, time and time again, think they are makes me want to bang my head against the wall.
Nick
I bet no one notices this
4tehlulz
WAIT WHAT DO YOU MEAN THIS APPLIES TO MY STATE’S EARMARKS?
DEMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNT!!!!!
Kryptik
@homerhk:
But even given this interpretation, it still utterly cedes away all ground to the GOP, by making their ‘tone’ the standard, the acceptable. It makes the Teabaggers the ‘responsible’ ones for setting the ‘proper tone’, and that’s in no fucking way conducive to actually pushing for the laws he wants. Not when he has to self-flagellate himself for things the GOP is already flagellating him for. Not when the tone he speaks of is ‘No, we want you to fucking fail, eat shit, and die’.
What do I expect him to say? I expect him to at least have some kind of pushback against the tone, considering he’s been acting far too goddamn deferent, and it allows the GOP to get away with fucking everything. Even when the ‘tone’ doesn’t match what he’s going after legislatively, it still allows the GOP to walk all over him because they get to paint him as the arch-tyrannical Isla-Homo-Secular menace that has to be stopped at all cost, and they not only don’t pay a price for that, they get fucking rewarded, because Obama sits back, and then publicly wonders ‘Maybe they have a point’.
And “acting like adults”? Obama could do so much in pointing out, precisely and pointedly, where there is no “acting like adults”, but instead the whole of the Dems, from the top down, seem to have ceded the ‘Grown-Ups’ label to the GOP.
Please, please, please, someone give me some kind of fucking indication that the next 2 years won’t be just straight self-hippie punching by our Dems?
Nick
@Kryptik:
No, the media thinks he’s what’s wrong with Washington
Kryptik
@Napoleon:
The problem, much the same as the problem with the Erskine/Simpson thing, is that it’s not part of a serious solution for the deficit they’re so pantsshittingly worried about, and yet they get to push it like it’s the greatest grandest solution EVAR. It’s kabuki, takes away any incentive to push any real measures to help the budget, and hey, it makes DeMint look more and more like he’s running the show! Good times!
Nnghh…fuck all, I feel like I’m starting to become a firebagger.
Nick
@Kryptik:
Maybe he should go in front of Republicans and say they should stop demonizing him.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/obama-to-house-republicans-demonizing-me-does-the-nation-no-good/
Scott P.
These guys are painfully stupid. If they’ve really decided to eliminate all earmarks (it’s unclear from the article whether this is a freeze, or an agreement to get rid of them all), they’ve just cancelled all aid to Israel. Expect this to be reversed in, oh…. five minutes or so.
Linda Featheringill
A power struggle featuring DeMint and whoever. Probably not the last one.
If DeMint builds up enough of a following, McConnell won’t be able to hold onto his Leader office unless he tries to appease DeMint.
I suspect that DeMint cannot be permanently appeased.
debit
So, why isn’t it being reported that the money is still there, is still going to be spent. It’s just that the Republicans (supposedly) have given away their say in where or how.
4tehlulz
@Linda Featheringill: You know who else couldn’t be permanently appeased…
RalfW
And thanks to this brilliance, a $980 million light rail line in the Twin Cities is possibly in danger, because $45 million of it is in yet-to-be-appropraited earmarks. The other $935 million (including a 30% local contribution) is in place, but without a full funding arrangement the deal could be delayed. And if it’s delayed, the price goes up. And if the price goes up, the deal is off.
So the GOP will be – yet again – destroying real, quality, local construction jobs because only blacks, poor people and DFHs & libruls ride transit.
Asswipes.
homerhk
Krpytik, I literally don’t know where to start. Perhaps the last bit of your post where we again see a reference to ‘hippie-punching’. My God how I hate that phrase; in particular the way it is used as an imaginary inoculation to the situation where people on the left can say all sorts of shit about Obama and his administration but any counter to that criticism is dismissed as mere “hippie punching” and therefore not to be taken seriously.
In terms of the rest of what you say, Obama’s party has just suffered a pretty crappy election so I think it’s unrealistic to expect him to come out guns blazing one week afterwards. It is theatrical mea culpa and I for one am glad he is focussed on ‘tone’ rather than policy, which is altogether more important than tone.
As to him deferring to the republicans, this is such a shit little myth that does the rounds amongst the progressive blogosphere. This is the way I see it. He wanted to get things done as President; if he could get republicans onboard that would be great, if not he would push through what he could. He didn’t get any republicans to vote for healthcare, but he didn’t defer to them and withdraw it. He didn’t get any republicans to vote for wall street reform, but he didn’t withdraw it (or indeed withdraw the consumer protection agency, something which might have gained him a republican or two). He got only three republicans to vote for stimulus – one of whom switched parties.
Where he made a mistake was in thinking that his genuine attempt to seek consensus and the extreme obstruction of the republican party would have consequences for the republicans, in that people would think less of them. That, to me, was not an unrealistic expectation but the US public has proved even more dense than previously thought.
Linda Featheringill
@4tehlulz:
[#19]
Actually, yes, that is what I had in mind.
I don’t think that the US is in particular danger from DeMint but I suspect that McConnell is.
Napoleon
@Kryptik:
I agree, but so what.
I know the teapartiers hold it out as a deficit reduction plan but in and of itself it is a good government reform and for that reason is worthy of support. I don’t want my representatives to have an easier time proving to corporate interest that they are worthy of their largesse because they are doing their bidding.
Scuffletuffle
@JGabriel: FTW
Culture of Truth
Republicans take over and a royal wedding is announced. Coincidence?
A new day dawns.
Napoleon
@Scott P.:
There is nothing stopping the Congress from writing this in as a line item in the budget through the regular fashion (I assume), which is what they will end up doing, I suspect.
debit
@Napoleon: But don’t we elect representatives to, like, represent us? I expect my rep to go to Washington and get money for things like light rail transit and bridge repair. If we’re just handing the reins over to whatever administration is in charge then we’re going to be screwed the next time some peckerwood from Texas gets elected. Unless we live in Texas, that is.
rikyrah
I never had a problem with folks voting AGAINST earmarks.
My thing was – their asses then shouldn’t be allowed to send letters to the Government Agencies asking for some once the vote was over.
fuck that. you vote against them, you get none. That leaves more money for those willing to put a vote to record on it.
Kryptik
For those who don’t know where I’m coming from Re: Obama:
NYT: Obama Blames Himself for Tone in Washington.
And as a followup, digby’s take on the whole thing.
I’ll be back for some replies after I tamp down this growing migraine and try to cool my head off…
curious
take that, bear dna.
chopper
@Kryptik:
sure. it’ll be about 10% hippie-punching from the dems, and about 90% obama-punching from both the dems and goopers.
curious
@curious: fruit fly dna and something called “volcano monitoring” are also on notice.
Corner Stone
@RalfW:
In my ongoing argument with a winger friend on the stupidity of R Gov’s canceling HSR in their states he keeps using the phrase “no more payback for your union buddies”.
So, ISTM that for wingers not only do government jobs not count as real jobs but union jobs are also not real jobs.
It looks like these people don’t pay taxes or buy gas or groceries, send their kids to school, etc.
JKR
Rand Paul never changed his mind on earmarks, his statements were misrepresented by the WSJ which WANTED him to change his mind on earmarks. They later released the transcript which said exactly what he has said all along. Which is why Paul was a cosponsor of the De Mint earmark moratorium.
liberal
@chopper:
If he continues to say incredibly idiotic things like “I neglected some things that matter a lot to people, and rightly so: maintaining a bipartisan tone in Washington,” as quoted in the NYT article, then any punching he gets from Democrats will be well-deserved. (Idiotic, because (a) only the Villagers care about the “tone,” and (b) you’d have to be a complete imbecile to think you can maintain civil relations with the thugs in the Republican Party.)
Napoleon
@debit:
Then fine have Congress pass by majority vote that project X is in the budget. The way I understand it this is not what is going on. Instead they pass a budget which avoids the arguement over whether project x is in it and after the fact they attach what is effectively a note that says “by the way, the line item that says Light Rail Repairs is to have $X come out of it for project x”.
El Cid
Given the eleventy-trillion times McCain decried earmarks in the 2008 campaign, you’d think he’d be screaming in ecstasy right now.
Suck It Up!
@Kryptik:
Am I the only one that’s noticed that the left curls up in a ball and calls it quits every time a Republican opens their mouth or gets a crumb of anything?
cedes away all ground to the GOP? give me a break.
Suck It Up!
@homerhk:
All of it. 100% correct.
cmorenc
@Blue NePonset:
Yes, exactly. With as mendaciously slippery and corrupt a politician as Mitch McConnell still technically holding the Senate Minority leadership position, it won’t be long at all before deeply established habits and pressures merely transfer the earmark process, more or less intact, into another legislative vessel that accomplishes the identical end effect. EVEN IF Jim DeMint somehow succeeded in deposing McConnell as the titular GOP leader in the Senate, and remained determinedly sincere in his efforts to end earmarks, he’d have enormous difficulty keeping that ship watertight against all the worms and rats eating at the hull from the inside, some bearing electric powertools.
As much as I detest Jim DeMint as one of the craziest, least wise TeaTards in existence, I do give him credit for his efforts and sincerity on the matter of earmark corruption, quixotic though the quest is.
chopper
@liberal:
on the other hand, if the hippies continue to act like morons, they’ll deserve 10 times the punching they get.
chopper
@homerhk:
the thing is, everyone in lefty progressosphere seems to be running with this idea that obama keeps watering down his agenda to appease the GOP who just up and vote against anything he tries. hey look, he’s such a sad sack who keeps trying the same bipartisan game and failing.
the reality is obama isn’t really watering down his agenda to appease the GOP, he’s doing it to appease the more conservative side of his own party. we went over and over again about how the public option didn’t have the votes in spite of a dem majority. and the blue dogs and new democrats were the main reason for that. trying to get the various democratic caucuses on the hill together is frustratingly hard and when one of them is the center of attention they know it and they use it.
i hear conservatives talking about how the power struggle going on between establishment goopers and the teabagger types typified by the clash between mcconnell and demint is going to make it harder for the GOP as a whole to accomplish anything due to constant infighting and disagreement. and i’m all ‘now you know what it’s like to be a democrat for the last 15 years’.
Mnemosyne
@Suck It Up!:
Yep. They see a headline and they freak the hell out, even though Obama doesn’t use the word “blame” once in the article and never talks about anything except “tone.”
In fact, the biggest thing he seems to regret is not selling his policies forcefully enough, so that should make some firebaggers happy:
homerhk
Chopper, I tend to agree save for the word “appease” which has negative connotations. As I said, I just think he wants to get things done and has a list of priorities. If, in order to get priorities 1 – 10 done, he has to give up on priority 11, he’ll do that because to fight for all 11 and lose on all just isn’t helping anyone.
I think, for example, that this is what he meant when he famously said “I didn’t campaign on the public option”. He meant that the core of his healthcare campaign promises were to get expanded coverage and do something about healthcare costs.
FunkyOdor
As a resident of a net tax exporting state (MN), I want earmarks to help bring some of that cash back here. I won’t take DeMint seriously until he starts advocating the end of tax welfare to the (mostly southern, red) states that take more fed tax money than they give.
cleek
Michelle Bachmann says her earmarks aren’t earmarks.
i’m the opposite of shocked.