It only gets worse. - Page 1

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GSD Admin (admin)

by GSD Admin on 10 December 2014 - 17:12

Just what we need. Read it and weep.

 

 

WASHINGTON — The $1.1 trillion spending agreement reached by House and Senate negotiators on Tuesday night would triple the amount of money that contributors could give to political conventions and to real estate projects owned by the political parties, possibly strengthening the influence of big donors but also redirecting money from largely unregulated outside groups to the Democratic and Republican Parties.

Limits on individual contributions to national parties would leap to $324,000 a year from $32,400.

The campaign finance changes are among dozens of compromises reached behind closed doors that have cheered industries from coal and gas to agriculture and finance, while infuriating campaign finance watchdogs and environmental groups.

“The new increased caps on contributions to the parties represent nothing more than a rent increase for K Street lobbyists who organize and direct the flow of money from those Americans with the deepest pockets,” said Meredith McGehee, the head of the watchdog Campaign Legal Center.

Representative Harold Rogers, Republican of Kentucky and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, included a measure preventing the Obama administration from directing agencies like the Export-Import Bank to oppose coal-fired power plants abroad, even after President Obama secured agreements from foreign countries like China to do the same.

“This rider harms U.S. foreign policy interests and throws climate change priorities and local communities in developing countries under the bus,” said Erich Pica, the president of Friends of the Earth.

Another provision would ease rules of the Dodd-Frank securities regulation law of 2010 on some of the most exotic financial instruments that helped cause the most recent financial crisis. Republicans pushing the issue say such regulations were hitting community banks and small businesses that had nothing to do with the crisis.

“Rolling back derivatives rules in Dodd-Frank would be reckless,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, who helped write several of those regulations. “Middle-class families are still paying a heavy price for the decisions to weaken the financial cops, leaving Wall Street free to load up on risk. Congress should not chip away at important reforms.”

The District of Columbia’s referendum to legalize and regulate marijuana was nullified in the agreement, but possession of the drug was decriminalized.

Republicans also flexed their muscles on funding decisions, especially on the military. Many of Mr. Obama’s efforts to trim military spending were reversed. Appropriators added four F-35 Joint Strike Fighters that the Pentagon had not requested. The defense procurement program will cost an additional $479 million. Communities around military bases will get $32 million more than Congress had intended to give just months ago in lieu of property taxes.

Still, Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill said they held their ground on the most fundamental issues. The bill does nothing to limit the carrying out of the Affordable Care Act. Funding increases secured last year for Mr. Obama’s early childhood education push were maintained. The president’s proposed funding to fight the Ebola outbreak survived. And Democrats secured funding increases for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to police Wall Street regulations in the Dodd-Frank law.

“In today’s era of slam-down politics, we were able to set aside our differences,” said Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland and chairwoman of the Senate Approrpriations Committee. “Working across the aisle and across the dome, we created compromise without capitulation.”

But because negotiations on the package dragged over policy details, House lawmakers also prepared to move on a short-term spending measure that would avert a government shutdown if Congress cannot pass the larger bill by Thursday, when the current funding expires.

Even with nettlesome last-minute issues, leaders in both parties expressed confidence that they would be able to keep the government running.

The House is expected to vote on the package on Thursday before sending it to the Senate. The short-term measure would provide the Senate cover and avoid a government shutdown if the Senate is unable to also pass the bill that day.

The spending bill would fund nearly all of the federal government through September 2015, except for the Department of Homeland Security, which it would fund only through February, in retaliation for Mr. Obama’s unilateral action to defer the deportation of as many as five million undocumented immigrants. Congressional Republicans plan to take up funding for the agency — which has primary responsibility for carrying out the president’s immigration directive — early next year, when they will control both chambers of Congress and believe they will have more leverage.

The rush Tuesday to post the legislation underscored the 113th Congress’s dubious record as one of the least productive in modern history — governing by deadlines and cliffs of its own making, and struggling to pass even some of the most pro forma pieces of legislation.

“There is something about legislative institutions that don’t function until there is a hard deadline, and usually around here that hard deadline is Christmas Day,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, a member of the Republican leadership. “Things don’t get done until there’s a crisis, and that crisis is upon us.”

Mr. Thune added that while he did not expect a government shutdown, Congress had again let a deadline slip: “Does it get done by Thursday night?” he asked, referring to the original target for passage. “It’s looking increasingly bleak for that to happen, but I think it gets done.”


GSD Admin (admin)

by GSD Admin on 13 December 2014 - 09:12

Here we go, again. Want to bet who the real losers will be? More welfare for the rich. Love how the republicans work, screw the poor, working poor and middle class to give away a blank check to the rich. Gotta love it.

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/critics-say-spending-bill-includes-bonanza-wall-street-n267211






 


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