My wife, who normally gives no fucks about politics, has been paying a lot of hate-focused attention on Trump. So, last night I overheard a good part of Trump’s speech. As Steve M notes, the press went with the $2k stimulus check as the lede and missed a lot of the context. Since my wife doesn’t pay attention to politics much, she’s blissfully unaware of the role of the omnibus bill in the degradation of our political system. Trump’s speech spent a good amount of time reeling off the different items in the omnibus bill linked to the stimulus, which taken individually ($25 billion to fight Asian carp, $1 billion for the Smithsonian) sound completely irrelevant to getting people money during the time of COVID. She hates Trump, but also ended up wondering why that shit was in a stimulus bill.
Good question, and one that the press really doesn’t cover much (so the job falls to people like AOC, who has a good Twitter thread on it, starting here). I take that back — the press covers it, but they use a “gridlock” both-sides template, which is almost worse than saying nothing at all. My answer is simply that legislators found that voting for individual funding bills, with all the debate and press coverage that it entails, got them too close to responsibility, and it turned out that if all the shit that they didn’t want anyone to know about was rolled into a giant turd that had to be passed in one sweaty, straining, unpleasant event, they would get less flack about it. She didn’t seem satisfied with that answer, for some odd reason, but it does have the merit of being simple and relatable.
KenK
Always go with Occam…
laura
Ya done been big footed.
joel hanes
the press covers it, but they use a “gridlock” both-sides template, which is almost worse than saying nothing at all.
It’s not *almost* worse — it is materially, substantially worse, in important ways that damage our politics and the nation.
Amir Khalid
Trump has internalised that the election is well and truly lost, and that nothing he does will keep him in the Oval Office. Now he is obviously taking the nuclear option: disrupting and undermining the incoming Biden administration every way he can think of. I wonder if these willful acts will amount to anything prosecutable; I certainly hope so.
Funding the fight aginst invasive species and the culturally significant Smithsonian seem like clearly worthwhile expenditures to me. Does anyone find either controversial?
I am looking forward to Boxing Day. I expect to treat myself to a half chicken with extra-hot sauce at Nando’s. I might never go back to Texas Chicken. (KFC has been dead to me for years.)
oatler.
Well, that was some vivid language. Sweaty, straining, and unpleasant!
Jinchi
In 2018, Trump had tantrum over his midterm election losses. He derailed a bipartisan agreement to fund the government, shutting it down and taking it hostage in the hopes of forcing Congress to bankroll his wall. The press made hay of his meeting with Pelosi and Schumer and their unwillingness to cut a deal with him, despite the fact that neither of them controlled either chamber at the time.
Trump objects to the part of this bill that funds the government. The $2K checks offer is a smokescreen that he will toss aside at the first opportunity. This stunt is just another excuse to for him to attack the federal workforce.
Roger Moore
I think the root cause of this is that the Republicans will happily pass funding for the parts of government they like- mostly the parts that punish and kill people- and stall everything else. The only way to fund the whole government is to combine everything into a single bill so the Republicans have to vote for everything in order to get the parts they want.
Barbara
Because Congress passes so little you have to try to put everything in one giant bill or risk never getting it done ever. It’s been this way since the late 80s.
West of the Rockies
@Amir Khalid:
I have a childhood recollection of KFC being good, but that was decades ago. I haven’t stopped by one in 20 years.
craigie
Not stimulus, disaster relief.
Sheesh.
Omnes Omnibus
@craigie: That ship has sailed.
J R in WV
Whew, extra-hot sauce in the wilds of urban Malaysia!?! That might just be some HOT dinner.
Years ago I ordered a lamb Vindaloo Indian-hot at the best Indian place in town. It was an amazing experience. I drank several more beers than usual, and had them bring me new dry napkins. The kitchen staff would peek around the door into their domain to see the white guy sweating. It was a large portion too, but no one wanted to share it with me for some reason, so I ate nearly the whole thing on my own.
I did put on quite a show for the boys in the kitchen, sweat was dripping off my ears! It was quite good, and I very much doubt that they gave it any extra heat over what they would have provided for an Indian customer who wanted it hot.
Now I order that dish less hot than Indian-hot, which is really hot. Same at the Thai place. Medium hot is plenty. Enjoy your Boxing Day chicken with extra hot sauce! Let us know how it was. it’s difficult to discuss comparative spicy flavors with no common references, which is why I mentioned my expedition in Indian-hot Vindaloo, which is a pretty hot version of Indian food to start with. And vinegary too, which is partly why I like it so much. I like a hot tangy plate of food.
And happy Winter Solstice festivals to everyone, today will be 5 seconds longer than yesterday was in eastern North America. A small improvement, with winter bearing down on us, but I will take what I can get this winter. Stay safe, wear a mask if you have to go out.
patroclus
First, I don’t consider funding the Smithsonian or studying the impact of invading fish species to be “shit” and framing it this way plays right into Trump and the Republicans’ hands. But big picture, it stems from dysfunction at many many levels, including: (1) divided government; (2) the Republicans’ long slow descent into crazyland in which all government is considered “bad”; (3) the utter failure by Republicans and many Democrats to comply with the Budget Act of 1974, which assumed governmental good faith by Members of Congress to do things within certain time deadlines; (4) the over-reliance on Continuing Resolutions to temporarily address/solve much of the above dysfunction; (5) the prohibition on earmarks; (6) the failure of journalism, in which government is almost never explained/discussed whereas “politics” is endlessly blathered about for little apparent reason; (7) the craven cowardice of many Members of Congress (mostly Republicans) to actually be held responsible for what they do or even actually do what they do in public; (8) bothsiderism; (9) the general stupidity of Americans about their/our government; and (10) insert your own reasons…
The only way to really address this would be to elect an overwhelmingly Democratic majority in each Chamber; together with a Democratic President. Democrats care about government and would make it work much better, as they did when we had stable Democratic majorities in much of the post-WWII era. But even if we did that, it would still take some time to get back to “normal.”
Robert Sneddon
The 1780s? It’s a feature of the Constitution that all Federal spending comes via Congressional bills, a few pennies here and a widow’s mite there. Once a bill, any bill gets green-lighted i.e. it’s likely to pass and not get vetoed then all sorts of otherwise uncontroversial and agreed spending gets added in to get it passed as the Founders envisioned.
If Congress had to pass each item of Federal spending as a separate bill they’d never be able to vote on the tens of thousands of such bills needed to be passed in a session since there are only so many hours in a day. The Founders never envisioned a continent-wide United States with over 300 million population and world-wide global military domination to pay for by funding one fighter aircraft at a time hence the archaic system of financial funding the US labours under today.
Pappenheimer
Long, long ago I took my wife to Malaysia for our honeymoon. We ate at a fancy restaurant I’d eaten at when I lived there even longer ago, and ordered beef rendang without mentioning the heat level. It was delicious – but I had always assumed that if your ears don’t turn cherry red and sweat doesn’t drip off your nose onto the plate, they’ve prepared beef rendang wrong.
My wife took one bite.
For years afterwards she accused me of trying to poison her.
sdhays
@patroclus: Indeed. I believe that 2009 was the first time in forever that an actual, honest to FSM, budget was created and passed into law, and it couldn’t be done again in 2010, despite Democrats having huge majorities in both houses of Congress, because of obstruction by Republicans. And we haven’t had one since, and won’t at least until Democrats control both chambers again and the 60-vote cloture rule is relegated to the dustbin of history, where it belongs.
jeffreyw
@J R in WV: When we used to frequent a Hunan leaning restaurant, I would rotate my choices but one of my favorites they called their Triple Delight because in had chicken, shrimp, and pork in a spicy brown sauce with dried red peppers. I usually asked for extra peppers. One night I asked for extra hot. There is a difference! The giggling wait staff had enormous fun watching me sweat.
Catherine D.
@patroclus: I haz Asian carp in this fight. A program I work on (FishTracker) is a school-based citizen science program tracking invasive fish species in NY state using eDNA.
Shoestring budget, though – a million or two would be nice ?
Barbara
@Robert Sneddon: I meant including seemingly disconnected items in a large bill. It’s not just funding bills, but since those are guaranteed to pass they are often the vehicle for much other legislation, or at least provisions here and there. For instance, the stimulus bill that passed in 2009 included provisions amending HIPAA. You get it done when you can. It didn’t used to be quite so fraught.
Bill Arnold
That’s in the transcript I read but it appears to be high by 3 orders of magnitude, in other words a lie.
Here’s a conservative outlet complaining about the 25 million:
https://tennesseeconservativenews.com/25-million-for-tennessee-river-fish-barriers-hinges-on-stimulus-bill/
This is purest bullshit, IOW. These little measures are dwarfed by the theft of stimulus funds by the wealthy in the first round of stimulus. The hundreds of billions in loans and money giveaways to the rich will fund right-wing propaganda for decades.
Keith P.
@Jinchi: I’ve figured this is Trump’s way around a veto override – fucks up what everyone came up at the last minute so that the bill (in his hopes) gets pulled for retooling and never succeeds in another passage through both chambers.
Brachiator
The text is often received late by the press. Sometimes legislators vote on the bill and obviously have not read it.
Tax and accounting sites usually get the tax related details right. This is a situation where you simply cannot rely on the general news media, but it is because they are overwhelmed and not specialists, not because they are lazy.
HinTN
@oatler.: Caught that, did you. It works so many ways that I actually laughed out loud. Vivid is a very nice word, too.
Anotherlurker
@Catherine D.: I just looked at Fish Tracker and I have to say, Good Job!
As a self described Fish Nerd, who nearly flunked out of S.U.N.Y Binghamton because of Walleye season, I love your organization and the info contained on your website.
I’m living in the SF Bay Area now and they are dealing with their own invasive species issues, but I follow fish news from my roots area.
Soprano2
I’ve already seen conservatives on my FB feed complaining about all the “unrelated” provisions in the relief bill, and how they don’t really help “Americans”. They don’t understand that this bill has all the funding for the government in it as well as COVID relief, and no one in the press is helping them understand it.
waspuppet
I was thinking the same thing. Essentially, Congress (thanks to the Republicans, let’s never forget that) has gone from “Let’s have some ideas, write bills and pass them” to “let’s take the two or three bills we have to pass every year and load them up with the other stuff we want and see what gets passed as amendments.” All so sixth-graders like Trump can go out and piss all over it. Which is evidently the most important thing to them.
DCA
Note that the increase to $2K would mean much larger checks with Trump’s name on them. So of course he wants that to be bigger. The rest was probably just fed to him to repeat.
Stuart Frasier
@Amir Khalid: There are Nando’s in the US now, but they are all in the DC and Chicago areas, for some reason. The only peri-peri place in Los Angeles closed, so I’m hoping they make it out west eventually.
Citizen_X
Where does that (great!) artwork up top come from? Credit the artist!
Kenneth Krasity
People like the ice cream, they can ignore the turd since only a few uninfluential wonks will know about it. Roll those logs! Reduce the HFCs, extend the clean energy credits, smarten the grid, fight the carp!
patroclus
@Catherine D.: Cool site! And a lot of info on Asian carp. Studying and trying to combat their invasion is exactly what the federal government should be doing and the Water Resources Act of 2020 looks like a good piece of legislation.
It looks like there’s a Brexit deal about to be announced. It’s too late for the EP to ratify it but both sides are going to “provisionally” implement it whilst they go through the legal processes. It’s probably a lot skinnier than imagined but any deal is better than no-deal.
Heywood J.
It’s almost as if the corporations who rent the politicians and own the media outlets have some sort of vested interest in making the entire process as ugly and abusive as possible, partly in order to drive as many people as possible away from observing and participating.
Catherine D.
@Anotherlurker: @patroclus: Thank you, we are proud of what we’ve been able to do on a tiny budget. We’ve had some teachers take students out this fall (outdoors with built-in physical distancing!) and hope for more in the spring.
Denali
@Anotherlurker,
Our local Wegman’s just started getting walleye occasionally this past year. Best fish eating ever!
Ken
Process aside, my view is that any money the government spends is stimulus. They aren’t chopping up $25 million in currency and dumping it into the water to kill the carp, they’re paying for the salaries and equipment of people who will be trying to manage the fish; and of course those people will be spending that money, creating a multiplier effect.
Groucho48
Reading the comments in AOCs feed, it’s sad that, even after AOCs explanation of how the COVID bill was tacked on to the spending bill and that most of the bad stuff was in the spending bill, and that lots of bad or unpopular stuff always gets added to must pass bills, a lot of the comments still showed no understanding of the process and many blamed her, personally, for the whole situation.