Category Archives: Congress
Retractable Debt Ceiling
The House voted to retract the debt ceiling with no restrictions and the Senate approved about 5 minutes later.
Smidgen of Corruption
Usually when a politician is asked about a particular scandal he stonewalls and says he’d love to set the record straight but he just can’t because an investigation is ongoing. In a refreshing change of pace President Obama told Bill O’Reilly there’s “not a smidgen of corruption” at the IRS.
George Will has said the IRS scandal should be treated like Watergate.
Lois Lerner was the head of the IRS division that grants tax exemptions to non profit groups. During a speech to the American Bar Association she arranged for a planted question so that she could account for increased scrutiny the IRS was giving to conservative groups, compared to liberal groups, seeking tax exempt status.
When asked about this by Congress Lerner pleaded the fifth.
Well, Maybe a Smidgen of Corruption
Cleta Mitchell, a respected attorney representing grass roots conservative groups, says the IRS contuse to target them to this day.
Bipartisan Farm Bill
Congress got something done last week. It passed a bipartisan, 10 year, trillion dollar farm bill.
The farm bill includes insurance against “adverse price movements”. Isn’t that what the credit default swaps were supposed to do for subprime loans before the great recession?
Bipartisanship on Farm Bill
It’s all too much for the editors of National Review who note that:
Many crop prices are near all-time highs, and if they drop as expected, new loss-protection programs could — likely will — cost billions more than the CBO calculates.
In an even rarer case of bipartisanship the Washington Post editorial board agrees:
Supposedly necessary to secure the nation’s food supply at a time of record farm income and epidemic obesity, this federal largess flows almost regardless of how much money its recipients already have.
The Post then calls on President Obama to use his pen to veto the bill.
More Bipartisan Farm Bill Update:
Bloomberg reports the Senate threw out a requirement that members of Congress would have to publicly report if they receive federally subsidized crop insurance.
Separation of Powers
During his State of the Union speech the president again emphasized his intention to go it alone. He’s his own separation of powers. He’s got a phone and a pen and he doesn’t need no stinking Congress.
Update:
Back in December Law professor Jonathan Turley said that President Obama is “becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid”.
Update 6/5/14:
Professor Turley now says Obama is the president Nixon always wanted to be.
Big Stack of Affordable Care Act
The Affordable Care Act has 20,000 pages of regulations. Nebraska senate candidate Ben Saase uses the thing in a 9 foot high stack as a prop. It’s held together by a pipe right jammed down the middle. He would like to impale it permanently.
