# Istook: All your tax returns are belong to the GOP **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [November 21, 2004, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/istook-all-your-tax-returns-are-belong-to-the-gop/275942 "2004-11-21T11:59:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2004, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/istook-all-your-tax-returns-are-belong-to-the-gop/275942/21 "2004-11-23T15:06:35Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I’m not gonna tar the entire GOP with this. If Istook is permitted to retain any position above the rank of Sub-Committee Chairman for Paper Clips and Toilet Paper after pulling this stunt, then blame does attach to the GOP leadership generally. ---
**Author:** ![World\_Eater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f04885/32.png) [@World\_Eater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/World_Eater)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2004, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/istook-all-your-tax-returns-are-belong-to-the-gop/275942/22 "2004-11-23T15:15:26Z")
> [@Steve MB](#): > > If Istook is permitted to retain any position above the rank of Sub-Committee Chairman for Paper Clips and Toilet Paper after pulling this stunt, then blame does attach to the GOP leadership generally. Of course if he does something good, then it was the entire GOP. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2004, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/istook-all-your-tax-returns-are-belong-to-the-gop/275942/23 "2004-11-23T22:08:57Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Suppose? One of the line items in this budget is $225,000 for catfish research. That’s less than 1 millionth of the entire spending bill, yet it’s apparently important enough to merit being called out specifically for review. That’s like having the CEO of IBM reviewing the purchase of one midrange server as part of the annual budget. When you’re allowed to insert riders for things this ridiculously small, nobody can manage it effectively. Two things: 1. this sort of slipping of trivial pork into appropriation bills has been going on longer than I’ve been alive, and I’m 50 years old. But slipping a thousand such doohickeys into a $2 trillion budget doesn’t indicate that anything’s out of control; you’re still talking only 1/100 of 1% of the budget. Real money to you and me, but not enough to make a nontrivial dent in the deficit if you cleared them all out of there. 2. The ‘out of control’ part that I was pointing to (or trying to, anyway; I may have failed to be clear) was the possibility that there may have been no act by a congressperson required to get the language into the bill. And based on my understanding of how things used to work, and how things work nowadays, here’s my WAG as to how that might differ from The Way Things Were (not to be confused with The Good Old Days, even if they were better than now): - How it was, I think:\* Congresspersons stuck pork into bills via amendments submitted from particular Congresspersons to the bill’s sponsor, or the committee chair, or the House or Senate leadership, or whatever. But staffers didn’t have a whole lot of access to the bill, except in Congressional committee. That wasn’t usually too much of a problem, since after that, a bill including the language had to be voted on in committee, pass both houses of Congress, be part of the bill that was agreed on in conference committee, then pass both houses of Congress again. Lots of pork got in, but everyone was used to that. However, there were multiple opportunities for staffers reading bills on behalf of their Congresspersons to catch any weird riders, so there wasn’t much point in trying to include them to begin with. (There was a celebrated incident, thirty or forty years ago, where a Congressperson submitted a resolution honoring the Boston Strangler (by his actual name, which I’ve forgotten) for his efforts at population control. He did this just to show how bills frequently don’t get read, but the main reason he was able to sneak it through was that it was a resolution with no real effect, like declaring National Broccoli Week, and there was no _need_ to scrutinize it.) _How it is now, I think:_ today, bills get major rewrites in conference committee, after their substance has already been reviewed and passed by both houses of Congress. This seems to be happening because the conference committee has effectively become a one-party event, and is being used to put things in that were in neither house’s bill, and take things out that were passed by both houses. I’m assuming that the more major the rewrite, the greater the need for staff involvement. If staffers have access to the text of the bill at this point, it’s quite possible that they can insert things at this very late point in the game, without any gatekeeping by any actual members of Congress. After this point, each house of Congress has only one chance at catching any bizarre amendments, and if the leadership is rushing a vote, that chance might not suffice. I don’t know that that’s what’s happening; this really is a bit of a guess and an extrapolation from the handful of facts I **do** know. But it would provide a routinely available way for unusual language to be slipped into substantive legislation by staffers without any attribution, without any gatekeeper, and with little chance for review. And if that’s happening, the process is much more broken than it has been up until recently, despite the “catfish research”-type pork that has always been part of the game. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2004, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/istook-all-your-tax-returns-are-belong-to-the-gop/275942/24 "2004-11-23T22:11:27Z")
> [@Steve MB](#): > > If Istook is permitted to retain any position above the rank of Sub-Committee Chairman for Paper Clips and Toilet Paper after pulling this stunt, then blame does attach to the GOP leadership generally. I agree. But it looks like they’re letting him get away with belatedly disowning any association to the language. Which gets them off the hook, for PR purposes. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2004, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/istook-all-your-tax-returns-are-belong-to-the-gop/275942/25 "2004-11-23T22:44:05Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > I agree. But it looks like they’re letting him get away with belatedly disowning any association to the language. Which gets them off the hook, for PR purposes. Pubbie partisans may swallow that bilge. The rest of us know better. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2004, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/istook-all-your-tax-returns-are-belong-to-the-gop/275942/26 "2004-11-24T05:32:43Z")
> [@](#): > > House Republican leaders were forced yesterday to summon lawmakers back into session next month to quell an uproar over a belatedly discovered provision in a huge spending bill that would have given Appropriations Committee chairmen access to Americans’ tax returns. > … > House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) issued a statement yesterday saying Democrats would not go along with a vote today unless Republicans agreed to stop rushing bills through Congress. … dispensing with a rule requiring a three-day wait between the filing of a House-Senate conference report and a vote on the floor. > > “The assault on taxpayer privacy was not a simple mistake, and Democrats will not let Republicans sweep it under the rug,” Pelosi said. “It was a ‘Saturday night massacre’ on Americans’ privacy made possible only by the Republicans’ willingness to abuse the rules of the people’s house,” she added. [😁](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8576-2004Nov23.html) ---
**Author:** ![thursday\_next](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8797f3/32.png) [@thursday\_next](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thursday_next)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2004, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/istook-all-your-tax-returns-are-belong-to-the-gop/275942/27 "2004-11-24T07:51:42Z")
> [@](#): > > There was a celebrated incident, thirty or forty years ago, where a Congressperson submitted a resolution honoring the Boston Strangler (by his actual name, which I’ve forgotten) for his efforts at population control. He did this just to show how bills frequently don’t get read, but the main reason he was able to sneak it through was that it was a resolution with no real effect, like declaring National Broccoli Week, and there was no need to scrutinize it. I was curious about this, so I looked it up on snopes. It happened in [Texas](http://www.snopes.com/legal/desalvo.htm) in 1971. I think I need to go hide in shame now. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2004, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/istook-all-your-tax-returns-are-belong-to-the-gop/275942/28 "2004-11-24T17:15:39Z")
> [@thursday next](#): > > I was curious about this, so I looked it up on snopes. It happened in [Texas](http://www.snopes.com/legal/desalvo.htm) in 1971. I think I need to go hide in shame now. Hell, **I** should be the one to hang my head in shame. I coulda _sworn_ the venue was the U.S. Congress; I had no idea it was the Texas Lege. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2004, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/istook-all-your-tax-returns-are-belong-to-the-gop/275942/29 "2004-11-24T17:24:52Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > [😁](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8576-2004Nov23.html) > [@](#): > > Republicans accused Democrats of inconveniencing all members to “get some political hay out of this whole thing,” in the words of John Feehery, spokesman for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Feehery said Pelosi was seeking an “empty promise” because “we cannot bind what future congresses do . . . and she knows that.” > > But Democrats contended that voting on bills before lawmakers have had time to read them invites embarrassing and potentially dangerous mistakes. The more-than-3,000-page spending bill was passed within hours of approval by House-Senate negotiators. Y’know, I bet the House leadership of the outgoing 108th Congress could make a commitment on behalf of their leadership in the incoming 109th if they wanted to, considering that it’s the same leadership group, and with very few changes in the House Republican Caucus as a whole. Hustling bills through Congress too quickly for Congressional staffs to review them (we _know_ very few Congresspersons actually read the entirety of the legislation they pass; that’s what staffs are for) stunk when Democrats used to do it, and it stinks now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/istook-all-your-tax-returns-are-belong-to-the-gop/275942.md?page=1)