David Dayen thinks the Democrats got a terrible deal on the Cromnibus. Forget about the rollback on Dodd-Frank and the 10 fold increase in money that can be donated to the DNC and RNC. That's just the tip of the iceberg he tells us as he lists poison pill after poison pill.
"But there’s so much more to the CRomnibus than just those two riders. Under the bill, trustees would be enabled to cut pension benefits to current retirees, reversing a 40-year bond with workers who earned their retirement packages. Voters in the District of Columbia who approved legalized marijuana will see their initiative vaporized, with local government prohibited from taxing or regulating the drug’s sale. Trucking companies can make roads less safe by giving their employees 82-hour work weeks without sufficient rest breaks. Pell grants for college students will be cut, with the money diverted to private student loan contractors who have actively harmed borrowers. Government financiers of overseas projects will be prevented from stopping funding for coal-fired power plants. Blue Cross and Blue Shield will be allowed to count “quality improvement” measures toward their mandatory health spending under Obamacare’s “medical loss ratio” provision, a windfall saving them millions of dollars."
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/12/12/CRomnibus-Disaster-Signals-Sad-New-Normal-DC
I've quoted Dayen on detail but really even before I read it there was little doubt that Dayen would come to two conclusions:
1. It was a terrible deal
2. Obama deserves the lion's share of the blame.
I do kind of read him with a grain of salt: when has he every approved of anything Obama or the Democrats have done? When has there ever been legislation that he doesn't consider a disaster. He also seems to be critical that there wasn't gridlock. I don't get it, I thought that as Democrats we are against gridlock and shutting down the government. Yet Dayen thinks that the Dems should have done what? Let the bill die, get a short term funding bill then the GOP with a bigger House and the Senate in its pocket would have had less riders that Dayen finds appalling?
For me I see this as a good deal that at least a major weapon in the Tea Party's hands has been taken from them and put back in the drawer with the door now double locked: funding fights.
Firebaggers like Dayen and his friends over at Firegoglake never can get that there's a difference between activism and governing. Most of those riders he describes I would elect not to have either-in a perfect world. That's hardly where we are now. The GOP has a huge House majority that will grow even larger in January with the Senate also falling under its sway.
Just what kind of deal does he really think they could have gotten? Of course, he will demur here: as he isn't actually responsible for governing himself he can just take 1000 potshots and then go home and demand that the actual people who govern fix it to his specifications. Don't vex him with how. His roll is not solutions but pointing out problems. Like Jesse Jackson once said 'I'm a tree shaker not a jelly maker.'
Kevin Drum shows that one can certainly achieve a much more charitable analysis of the bill:
"Last night a reader sent a tweet to me: "Honest question: what do progressives get out of this? 'Govt not shutting down' not enough." I was stumped. I really had no idea whether Democrats had gotten anything in this bill, or if they were just caving in to a whole bunch of obnoxious Republican demands merely in exchange for keeping the government funded."
"But there’s so much more to the CRomnibus than just those two riders. Under the bill, trustees would be enabled to cut pension benefits to current retirees, reversing a 40-year bond with workers who earned their retirement packages. Voters in the District of Columbia who approved legalized marijuana will see their initiative vaporized, with local government prohibited from taxing or regulating the drug’s sale. Trucking companies can make roads less safe by giving their employees 82-hour work weeks without sufficient rest breaks. Pell grants for college students will be cut, with the money diverted to private student loan contractors who have actively harmed borrowers. Government financiers of overseas projects will be prevented from stopping funding for coal-fired power plants. Blue Cross and Blue Shield will be allowed to count “quality improvement” measures toward their mandatory health spending under Obamacare’s “medical loss ratio” provision, a windfall saving them millions of dollars."
"I’m not done. The bill eliminates a bipartisan measure to end “backdoor” searches by the NSA of Americans’ private communications. It blocks the EPA from regulating certain water sources for farmers. It adds an exception to allow the U.S. to continue to fund Egypt’s military leadership. In a giveaway to potato growers, it reduces nutrition standards in school lunches and the Women, Infant and Children food aid program. It halts the listing of new endangered species. It stops the regulation of lead in hunting ammunition or fishing equipment. It limits contributions to the Green Climate Fund to compensate poor countries ravaged by climate change. I could go on. And even if the offending measures on derivatives and campaign finance were removed, all of that dreck would remain. "
"Policy riders are an enduring feature of must-pass spending bills in divided government — you may remember President Obama telling House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) “I will give you D.C. abortion,” a reference to a prior budget deal that re-imposed a ban on local funding for abortions within the District of Columbia. But the flood of them in this bill, practically all of them benefiting one donor or another, offers a window into how Washington will operate in 2015 and beyond."
"Those who say that gridlock will persist in the next Congress should look at how this deal went down. Senate Appropriations Committee Democrats negotiated the bill and therefore signed off on all the aforementioned policy shifts. Not even Warren or her colleagues threatened a filibuster — that tool is unlikely to stop many Republican efforts, especially on must-pass bills. And the opposition centered on two riders, ignoring the harm caused by dozens of others."
"Worse, the White House, seen as the bulwark against the GOP’s imminent legislative dominance, never threatened a veto of the CRomnibus over these riders, and eventually supported the bill, presumably satisfied with the additional funding it received for ISIS war-fighting and efforts to control the Ebola outbreak. It actively whipped against its own party leadership in the House. Democrats complained of being “targeted and lobbied by the White House” on the legislation. This is sure to be a recurring policymaking feature of the next two years.:
- See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/12/12/CRomnibus-Disaster-Signals-Sad-New-Normal-DC#sthash.7q5cHuwx.dpufhttp://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/12/12/CRomnibus-Disaster-Signals-Sad-New-Normal-DC
I've quoted Dayen on detail but really even before I read it there was little doubt that Dayen would come to two conclusions:
1. It was a terrible deal
2. Obama deserves the lion's share of the blame.
I do kind of read him with a grain of salt: when has he every approved of anything Obama or the Democrats have done? When has there ever been legislation that he doesn't consider a disaster. He also seems to be critical that there wasn't gridlock. I don't get it, I thought that as Democrats we are against gridlock and shutting down the government. Yet Dayen thinks that the Dems should have done what? Let the bill die, get a short term funding bill then the GOP with a bigger House and the Senate in its pocket would have had less riders that Dayen finds appalling?
For me I see this as a good deal that at least a major weapon in the Tea Party's hands has been taken from them and put back in the drawer with the door now double locked: funding fights.
Firebaggers like Dayen and his friends over at Firegoglake never can get that there's a difference between activism and governing. Most of those riders he describes I would elect not to have either-in a perfect world. That's hardly where we are now. The GOP has a huge House majority that will grow even larger in January with the Senate also falling under its sway.
Just what kind of deal does he really think they could have gotten? Of course, he will demur here: as he isn't actually responsible for governing himself he can just take 1000 potshots and then go home and demand that the actual people who govern fix it to his specifications. Don't vex him with how. His roll is not solutions but pointing out problems. Like Jesse Jackson once said 'I'm a tree shaker not a jelly maker.'
Kevin Drum shows that one can certainly achieve a much more charitable analysis of the bill:
"Last night a reader sent a tweet to me: "Honest question: what do progressives get out of this? 'Govt not shutting down' not enough." I was stumped. I really had no idea whether Democrats had gotten anything in this bill, or if they were just caving in to a whole bunch of obnoxious Republican demands merely in exchange for keeping the government funded."
"But as it turns out, Democrats did get a bunch of stuff they wanted. And of course, that's in addition to getting the government funded before Republicans take over Congress in January, which is worthwhile all by itself. We can each decide for ourselves whether Democrats got enough, or if they should have held out for a better deal, but they weren't left empty-handed."
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2014/12/12/CRomnibus-Disaster-Signals-Sad-New-Normal-DC
Yet he too, decides that the Dem leadership failed in one area: selling it to the base.
"So what I'm curious about is this: why are virtually no Democrats talking about this? As near as I can tell, there was literally no attempt to sell this compromise to the base, or to anyone else. As a result, the general feeling among progressives is simple: this bill was an unqualified cave-in from gutless Democrats who, once again, refused to fight back against Republican hostage taking. And as usual, Republicans won."
"I understand that trying to defend a messy, backroom bill that trades some dull but responsible victories for a bunch of horrible little giveaways isn't very appealing to anyone. And who knows? Maybe Democrats were afraid that if they crowed too much about the concessions they'd won it would just provoke the tea party wing of the Republican party and scuttle the bill. The tea partiers were already plenty pissed off about the cromnibus, after all."
"Still, shouldn't someone have been in charge of quietly making the progressive case for this bill? It wouldn't have convinced everyone, but it might have reduced the grumbling within the base a little bit. Why was that not worth doing?"
Listen, at this point I don't know who the Dem base is. I might consider myself part of it but if David Dayen and the firebaggers are also part of the base then I maybe I'm not. The dirty little secret about the 'base' is that you can never please it-either the Dem or the GOP base. I mean, if you listen to the base, nothing will ever get done. They'd rather stand on pure principle and watch the government shutdown again I guess. You can never please the base-on the Left or Right.
As Drum points out surely at the very minimum to fund the government for 9 months now-before the new GOP Senate and larger GOP House-is greatly preferable to leaving it till February when the GOP controls all of Capitol Hill.
One reason I know this deal is not quite as awful as Dayen makes it out to be-besides the fact that every deal is always awful if you've read him through the years-is that the GOP base is just as disgusted. And I see their point. After all the big talk of McConnell of Obama's executive order as 'waving a flag in front of a bull' nothing at all was done-except some window dressing of only funding the Department of Homeland Security until February-which doesn't have any bearing on Obama's EO anyway.
Not surprisingly they see taking funding fights off the table of a major neutering of the Tea Party cause. From their stand point wouldn't it have been better to at least wait to fund the government long term until the GOP comes in stronger in January. As for the riders, that's part of actual governing, building coalitions, greasing the wheels for a deal. Compared to what we've seen the last 4 years, it's a major improvement.
In a better world we'd still have earmarks but as those have been put on ice-thanks to the idiotic Tea Party base-riders at least move the ball. I don't think the Dems could have gotten a better deal here. Because no matter how much your David Dayens think we're giving up here, the Dayens of the Right-Red State America, et. al-thinks the GOP has given up way too much. Could Boehner have really capitulated on the riders as well as the Tea Party already thinks it's a major mistake to pass a long term bill now rather than February?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2014/12/12/democrats-should-want-this-spending-deal-to-pass/
The dirty little secret about 'the base'-really both bases-is that they're never pleased. Meanwhile, actual politicians as opposed to activists who get to do nothing but demand everything and support nothing have to actually pass a bill. That we actually are doing so for once is a good thing. Even bad legislation is better than what we've had the last few years. In the next two years the President can veto anything truly odious. For the next 9 months there will be no more guns to the head over funding the government. How that's not obviously a victory for the Democrats I don't know.
P.S. What is never appreciated is that activism is one thing, campaigning is another, and governing is yet another. But activists just see it through their prism never factoring in that they are talking about particles when governing is about waves-to use an anology from Quantum Physics.
P.S.S. In reality, I don't know that you could really call Dayden base-not the Democratic base anyway. Maybe the base of the defunct Communist part of the Soviets-most firebaggers have very warm feelings about the defunct USSR-and many think that Putin has a lot to tell us as well.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2014/11/10/gorbachev-warns-of-us-triumphalism-and-new-cold-war-at-25th-anniversary-of-fall-of-soviet-union/
FDL must be the only place that actually mourns the end of the USSR and thinks that Putin is some kind of moral giant we should take notes from. I know Obama is a terrible guy but Putin who has eliminated democracy and is trying to conquer eastern Europe is a peach.
P.S.S. In reality, I don't know that you could really call Dayden base-not the Democratic base anyway. Maybe the base of the defunct Communist part of the Soviets-most firebaggers have very warm feelings about the defunct USSR-and many think that Putin has a lot to tell us as well.
http://news.firedoglake.com/2014/11/10/gorbachev-warns-of-us-triumphalism-and-new-cold-war-at-25th-anniversary-of-fall-of-soviet-union/
FDL must be the only place that actually mourns the end of the USSR and thinks that Putin is some kind of moral giant we should take notes from. I know Obama is a terrible guy but Putin who has eliminated democracy and is trying to conquer eastern Europe is a peach.
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