What, like warrantless wiretapping or TARP or increasing troop levels? Way ahead of you, buddy.
Sure it has Sam. I’m sure you chose the phrase for that very meaninglessness.
If you’ve got nothing, vacuum must serve, ehhh?
For the majority, regular old non-nuclear reconciliation will serve just fine.
You’re just concern trolling. Fact-free concern trolling, that’s what you do here. When you’re debated on the facts you run away.
Yes, it’s amazing that there was no political media machine criticizing the President before they came along.
What level of media crticism is appropriate for a man who’s arrogance and stupidity have killed thousands?
You better get your facts straight first. Reconciliation is specifically for budget issues. It was originally passed to prevent budgets from being held up in Congress, in the hope that it would help with deficit reduction. The use of it to pass budget-related items is not only permissible, it’s what it was designed for. It was never intended to be used to enact social policy, create new agencies, or to extend the scope and reach of the government.
Bush’s use of reconciliation fits within those parameters, although you could argue that the student loan program was stretching it. Democrats are shoehorning health care into the reconciliation process by claiming that it needs to pass in order to bring the Medicare budget into line, thus making it primarily a fiscal matter and therefore a candidate for the reconciliation process. This is about as big a stretch as you can make without giggling, but it’s probably technically legal, so they can do it.
From Wikipedia:
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I chose the phrase because I have heard it repeatedly used in the context of this particular debate. For example, on CNN.
Care to retract your snark now?
Sure, because here in America we always defer to obscure British usage of the phrase. What could be more natural for fellow subjects of the queen, than to inject her english?
Too bad we’re not subjects of the queen, and use our own terms with their own distinct meanings.
If you wanted to get all Britishy on us, you should have pointed that out, instead of simply employing a turn of phrase in a manner not common in the United States. You could have avoided using it altogether, instead you’d have us believe you ‘accidently’ tossed in a charged right-wing buzz-phrase because Canada is a member of the Commonwealth? That’s unlikely.
Sam you have zero credibility as a reasonable observer. You have been anti-Obama since he looked electable. You have become Fox Newts for this board. All you do is bitch about the dems as the repubs have acted like babies saying they would stop any and all programs the dems offer. If that is your idea of governance , i will pass. Not one repub is on board to fix a broken health care system. Not one. Please tell me what the republicans have offered to fix the problem. i must have missed it.
You said Bush never used reconciliation to pass legislation. You are wrong. Demonstrably wrong. I think you’re even admitting you are wrong, but can’t bring yourself to actually say the words.
And the idea that reconciliation was originally a pure as the driven snow budget matter before Republicans polluted it with policy matters in 1996 is also nonsense. COBRA health benefits – what workers depend on to continue private health benefits after being laid off – was created by a reconciliation bill passed in 1986. In addition, the welfare reform bill was passed in 1996 under reconciliation, and then reauthorized in 2005 also using reconciliation. New retirement investments were authorized in 2001. The idea that GWB didn’t use reconciliation to pass anything is wrong, and your revision of your argument that he didn’t pass any significant legislation under reconciliation is wrong, too. Shit, he even tried to get ANWR in under reconciliation procedures, and was foiled only at the eleventh hour.
Sam, you have made a number of compelling arguments on a variety of topics. Your recent arguments against Cash for Clunkers was compelling. But when it comes to attacking Obama, you have on a number of occasions taken serious liberties with straightforward (though perhaps esoteric) facts. This is one of those occasions where you are wrong and have been called on it. Either admit it or just simply drop this and move on to the next subject.
Good lord, I forgot to comment on this. If you really think reconciliation is supposed to be about deficit reduction, how dare you call Bush’s tax cuts a good use of reconciliation.
They were such an abomination to the budget process that they couldn’t be made permanent beyond the ten-year window (due to the Byrd Rule) because they made the deficit explode.
Do not accuse other posters of trolling, (nor even “concern trolling,” whatever that is), outside of the BBQ Pit and expressly not in Great Debates.
[ /Moderating ]
No, to be honest I had forgotten about those uses of reconciliation. But I guess I forgot about it because it wasn’t that big a deal at the time, because his uses of it were within the context of fiscal policy (again, arguably not the student loan program). It just didn’t make much of an impact on me at the time, I guess. If it was a big deal at the time, then unfortunately I still don’t remember it. Maybe it was a big issue on the left, and not talked about much on the right at all.
But once again, I have to point out that I’m not an apologist for Bush. I didn’t remember his expansion of student loans, either. I thought his 10-year tax cut was a gimmick - he knew that ten years down the line, failing to renew them would be seen as a tax hike, and therefore the tax would get extended. It’s a perfect example of the kind of shenanigans politicians play with numbers, which would be illegal in the private sector.
Exactly how do the tax cuts or the unfunded 2003 Medicare bill fit within the paramenters of deficit reduction? You make post after post of total rubbish. Are you sure you’re not doing this intentionally to get a reaction from the board, it’s hard to believe you can be so consistently comprehensively wrong, misleading etc. without it being on purpose.
Revisiting this in case you needed more of the rhetoric not matching the reality:
Now consider this:
Even more damning stuff in that last link. I encourage you to go read it and am interested in how to spin it that I am missing what he really meant and matching it to his actions.
I’m not spinning anything. In the speech he’s talking about preventing corporate abuses and excessive compensation, and just the other day it was announced that companies that took bailout money - including AIG - will have limits placed on the money they pay their executives. He needs to do more here and I make no excuses for that.
From here, it looks like Obama wants to work with Wall Street in regulating Wall Street. Is that the only way to do it? No. Is that the way it’s usually done, and one that’s in keeping with his stance on compromise? Yes. All of this is wrong but typical.
Well, he is the President. He sets the tone. He tells his people how he wants things to proceed. Again, his rhetoric is far different than the reality in his administration. Read the transcript again then point to where his administration is remotely living up to that. Stop bonuses at a relative few companies is one. A bone thrown to appease the masses. Beyond that? Let’s see…
^^There is the work the administration is actually doing. How about the Faustian deal made with Big Pharma?
I am beating this drum because I feel the apologists are, well, overly apologetic in light of the reality. Many are being bamboozled by the rhetoric and completely missing it is empty words.
I realize that Obama just does not wave a magic wand and get his way. I realize no matter what Wall Street and Pharma and Insurance will make themselves part of the discussion. Obama however seems to be capitulating across the board.
That is not cool.
I didn’t say they are living up to it.
It’s not the way it’s usually done. Even Reagan managed to send a few hundred people to jail during the Savings and Loans crisis, one which cost the taxpayer a tiny fraction of the bill for the curent meltdown. In the 1930s they took things even more seriously. Here’s what the guy who FDR put in charge of investigating the 1929 meltdown had to say about things :
Under the surface of the governmental regulation of the securities market, the same forces that produced the riotous speculative excesses of the “wild bull market” of 1929 still give evidences of their existence and influence. Though repressed for the present, it cannot be doubted that, given a suitable opportunity, they would spring back into pernicious activity. Frequently we are told that this regulation has been throttling the country’s prosperity. Bitterly hostile was Wall Street to the enactment of the regulatory legislation. It now looks forward to the day when it shall, as it hopes, reassume the reins of its former power.
That its leaders are eminently fitted to guide our nation, and that they would make a much better job of it than any other body of men, Wall Street does not for a moment doubt. Indeed, if you now hearken to the oracles of The Street, you will hear now and then that the money-changers have been much maligned. You will be told that a whole group of high-minded men, innocent of social or economic wrongdoing, were expelled from the temple because of the excesses of a few. You will be assured that they had nothing to do with the misfortunes that overtook the country in 1929-33; that they were simply scapegoats, sacrificed on the altar of unreasoning public opinion to satisfy the wrath of a howling mob blindly seeking victims.
These disingenuous protestations are, in the crisp legal phrase, “without merit.” The case against the money-changers does not rest upon hearsay or surmise. It is based upon a mass of evidence, given publicly and under oath before the Banking and Currency Committee of the United States Senate in 1933-1934, by The Street’s mightiest and best-informed men. . .
After five short years, we may now need to be reminded what Wall Street was like before Uncle Sam stationed a policeman at its corner, lest, in time to come, some attempt be made to abolish that post.
Here’s how the bankers reacted to being investigated, from Time magazine :
*. . . bankers high & low throughout the land, while not condoning the acts of 1929, loudly proclaimed that last week the greater villains were U. S. Senators who would risk the credit of the U. S. by putting scandal into the headlines when Confidence had already received body-blows at St. Louis, New Orleans, Michigan and in many another state. But the Senate Committee had succeeded in getting its man. On Monday morning at 9 a. m. Charles Edwin Mitchell, 66, resigned . . . hours later the directors of National City Co. accepted the resignation of President Hugh Baker. Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Baker returned to Washington for further grilling.
More from the chief investigator :
The investigation was not completed until June, 1934. But long before that date the defects it had laid bare in our financial structure had already led to the institution of a sweeping program of reforms. The old regime of unlimited license may be said to have definitely come to an end. [DD: Ha!] The testimony had brought to light a shocking corruption in our banking system, a widespread repudiation of old fashioned standards of honesty and fair dealing in the creation and sale of securities, and a merciless exploitation of the vicious possibilities of intricate corporate chicanery. The public had been deeply aroused by the spectacle of cynical disregard of fiduciary duty on the part of many of its most respected leaders; of directors, who conveniently subordinated their official obligations to an avid pursuit of personal gain; of great banks, which combined the functions of a bank with those of a stock jobber; of supposedly impartial public markets for the sale of securities, actually operated as private clubs for the individual benefit of their members.”
He then goes on to explain the major Acts of reform:
The Banking Act of 1933, which separated commercial banking from “security flotation and market plunging”;
The Securities Act of 1933-“the so-called ‘Truth in Securities’ bill”;
The Securities Exchange Act of 1934; and
The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935.[…]The more business recovered, however, and the stronger it felt, the more openly and bitterly did Wall Street oppose any sound program of reform. In place of the humble disclaimers of omniscience of March, 1933, the titans of finance developed once again an arrogant self-confidence and a dogmatic assurance that any attempt to restrain their own activities must inevitably mean the ruin of the country. Even so mild a measure as the creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation became a target of vehement resentment. . . .
The ‘Truth in Securities’ bill was condemned as a measure which would ‘hinder legitimate business without accomplishing any essential purpose.’ To the Merchants’ Association of New York ‘it was almost self-evident’ that practically no individual dealer or banking house would assume the personal liability provided for in the Act.
[…]
. . . The real center of warfare, so to speak, remained the New York Stock Exchange. . .
“In one field after another, the necessity for some measure of public control, where private ownership failed to meet its social responsibilities, has been recognized. Public utilities-railroads-“business affected with a public interest”-banks-industry generally, all came to regard public supervision as normal and beneficial. But there was one important outpost that resisted the tide of progress-the New York Stock Exchange, the last citadel of ‘rugged individualism.’ Since its foundation in 1791, it exercised complete control over its own practices and jealously guarded its self bestowed privileges. Despite the fact that it was intimately intertwined at a thousand point with vital interests of the public, it knew no law but its own will. . .
The disclosures of the shocking practices and base uses to which the Exchange was customarily put, stripped it of its mystery and sanctity, and dissipated the awe with which it had been regarded. Fighting at every step, it finally went the way of all flesh. Like the humblest of us all, even the might Stock Exchange must now recognize the existence and authority of the United States Government. . .
. . . It is certainly well that Wall Street now professes repentance. But it would be most unwise, nevertheless, to underestimate the strength of hostile elements. When open mass resistance fails, there is still the opportunity for traps, stratagems, intrigues, undermining-all the resources of guerilla warfare. These laws are no panacea; nor are they self-executing. More than ever, we must maintain our vigilance. If we do not, Wall Street may yet prove to be not unlike that land, of which it has been said that no country is easier to overrun, or harder to subdue.*
We’ve already been through this thing once. We handled it exactly right last time, gradually deregulated our way back to 1928, and are now bailing out the banks at par with taxpayer money, not prosecuting anybody, not re-regulatin anything. Obama is guaranteeing a much bigger meltdown down the road, probably sooner rather than later. Imagine if Bush was still in power and was doing what Obama is currently doing. He’d be crucified by the left and rightly so. Obama should be held to the same standard.
Our Democracy
R
E
E
L
S
from crisis
to “CRISIS”
like a
punch-drunk
palooka.
Dig it.