CRomnibus is just a taste of what’s to come with Republican majority

The House tonight passed the CRomnibus, a $1.1 trillion dollar spending bill. Now, some conservatives voted against it because it didn’t de-fund Obamacare or Obama’s new immigration policy. It seems like nobody likes this bill – yet, Obama was rubbing elbows with Boehner trying to whip up the votes to get it passed. And here we are again, waiting til the last second to pass a spending bill, so the bill that we get is crap. While it’s true if they don’t pass a spending bill, the government will shut down at midnight, there were some really stinky provisions added to this bill. (Gerry Connolly, D-Virginia., even called it a “hold your nose vote.”)

A post by “Blue Virginia” basically sums it up.

1. It sucks for the environment and clean energy. For instance: it cuts the EPA’s budget by $60 million, when we should be cranking UP the EPA’s budget; it blocks regulation of lead ammunition which is deadly to wildlife; and it “would allow the Ex-Im Bank and OPIC to finance coal-fired power plants abroad, despite the fact that the Ex-Im Bank adopted guidelines last year that prohibited the financing of most coal-fired power plants, unless they used carbon capture technology.”

2. It gives “Wall Street two early Christmas presents”. The biggest problem is that it “repeals the swaps pushout rule,” which “put new limits on how banks that receive taxpayer backing can use high-risk financial instruments known as a swaps, which were a key driver of the last financial crisis.”

3. It’s also a big Christmas present – for tax evaders. “The Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) enforcement division budget is being cut to under $4.9 billion for 2015.”

4. It worsens the role of money in politics and continues the selling of our “democracy” – or whatever is left of it – to the wealthy, corporations, etc.. “The cromnibus moves the decimal point on that cap, allowing annual contributions of up to $324,000 to the Republican or Democratic national committees. An expert who helped draft that landmark campaign finance reform law told Bloomberg the deal is ‘an unholy alliance to emasculate the national party contribution limits that were enacted to prevent corruption.'”

5. It’s long past time for Democrats to stand up to right-wing bullies. As our friend Kindler tweets, “Dear Democrats: the way to deal with bullies is not to let them beat you up a little bit.  It’s to fight back until they lay off.” I’d just add that we’ve seen this over and over again throughout Barack Obama’s presidency, and I’m not convinced it’s ever really ended well (e.g., sequestration anyone? letting just a small percentage of the idiotic Bush tax cuts expire?).

And perhaps one of the more disturbing actions was Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, personally visiting Congress himself to lobby them – TWICE – for relaxation of the regulations on derivatives trading. For those of you not familiar with derivatives trading – well, it’s basically the more risky kind of “wrap up all the bad mortgages in a package and re-sell them to unsuspecting markets” that helped crash the economy in 2008. Dimon lobbied Congress to basically complain that it “isn’t practical” to have to separate derivatives trading from other forms of trading.

“It really is outrageous,” said a former senior Obama Treasury official, who asked for anonymity to preserve business relationships. “This was the epicenter of the crisis. This is what brought AIG down, what brought Lehman Brothers down.”

Elizabeth Warren has spent the last few days railing against this and has collected a lot of Senators and House members in opposition. Warren has said:

“This was a provision added by CitiGroup lobbyists,” Warren told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. “I mean, they literally wrote it. They took it back, re-edited it and made sure it said exactly what they wanted it to say.”

Despite the opposition of these measures, the bill is expected to pass, if only narrowly. The Senate will take it up in the next two days (they have approved a short term spending measure so they have more time to look at the bill.) Some Democrats even want this bill to pass, for fear of a government shutdown, obviously, but also a looming fear that the GOP could pass something even more sinister in January when they take charge of both branches of Congress.

All there is to say is this is only the beginning. Republicans continue to chip away at campaign finance laws and have so far been successful with the Supreme Court right in their pocket on the issue. The sad part is that, the watered-down reforms on Wall Street with Dodd-Frank, and healthcare/Obamacare or provisions thereof, could be whittled down by the Supreme Court or future spending bills. We will have literally traveled back in time and undone the somewhat progressive reforms we’d achieved in the last six years.

Brace yourselves, it’s coming.

For now, if you haven’t checked out #Cromnibus and #Cromnibuscarols on Twitter, better get to it!

As predicted, Senate GOP blocks Citizens United Amendment

Today, as predicted, Republicans in the Senate voted down party lines to reject an amendment to the constitution to repeal Citizens United. Policies like Citizens United and McCutcheon allow unprecedented amounts of dark money to flow through politics, gives wealthy people more power than poor people when it comes to voting and, presumably, tips the scales in favor of GOP candidates. Resident Senate Turtle Mitch McConnell said, “I have to say it’s a little disconcerting to see the Democrat-led Senate focusing on things like reducing free speech protections for the American people. This is what they chose to make their top legislative priority this week? Taking an eraser to the First Amendment.”

Of course, McConnell will never clarify that by “free speech” he means “lots of money,” and by “taking an eraser to the First Amendment” he means “limiting the amount wealthy people and groups can donate to my campaign,” because people with lots of money tend to vote for Republicans, and, WHY, that would cut into his market share!

Independent Senator, Bernie Sanders, was deeply frustrated on the issue, but conceded that it was a “long shot.” Although, he wanted people to see that he is trying to take action on the issue:

“The most important domestic issue facing the country is turning over Citizens United,” Sanders said, because the court ruling “creates an open door … to pour unlimited sums of money into the political process.”

“It’s a real undermining of American democracy and will undermine every aspect of our lives, because the candidates they support will help the rich and powerful and will ignore the needs of the middle class and working families,” he added later.

Sanders was especially strident in his criticism of the Koch brothers, who — along with other conservative donors — back a network of tax-exempt groups that have run an estimated 44,000 election-related ads this year.

Failing to pass the constitutional amendment this week “means that the average American has one vote and the Koch Brothers have one vote plus the ability to put tens and tens of thousands of ads on the air. That is not democracy,” Sanders said.

Like I said in a previous post, this is one issue that the parties stand in stark contrast on, an issue that truly progressive politicians and candidates should embrace. That should be a key platform stance in 2014 and 2016, repealing Citizens United and McCutcheon. Lefties should want to repeal these two things as much as right-wingers want to repeal Obamacare. And yes, I do hope that Democrats use it as a campaign issue leading up to the November elections. Money isn’t speech, and it shouldn’t be labeled as such. The fact that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of these things shows we have a lot of things to reform besides campaign finance.