Deal to Avoid Shutting Down the Government

Evidently the House has come up with a plan to avoid a Christmas Shutdown.  Leaders of the House and Senate agreed to allow a vote today on bill that will fund the government through September 2012. No more dramatics, no more games until after the 2012 elections. OOPS, wrong. Elections aren’t until November 2012, so we’ll be facing another government shutdown up until Election Day. Mark my words.

Having said that, this is the best Christmas present that legislators could give the nation—a break from all of their silly posturing. Of course, the vote isn’t in yet, and nobody knows if congress loves Follow the Leader as much as they love Brinksmanship. We should know by the end of the day today.

From reports I’ve read, the DEMS caved again, and gave up the idea of paying for extended unemployment benefits and a FICA tax holiday with a surcharge on the upper 1% of taxpayers. And Obama has dropped his threat to veto any bill that contains language about the Keystone XL Pipeline. I keep thinking back to Howard Dean who said that DEMS needed to grow a backbone.

Is 13 the Lucky Number?

Evidently the Republicans held their 13th debate last night. I gave up watching after the third one, so I don’t have much to say other than talking heads think that Newt was uncomfortable having to defend the $1.6-million he took from Fannie and Freddie.  My favorite Denver Post columnist (linked below) seems to think that there is nothing Zany about Newt.

City Manager Fired

Evidently Grand Junction’s city council asked its city manager to step down. Teresa Coons has publicly stated that she was the lone voice not voting to ask Laurie Kadrich to resign. I’m not sure what irritated the rest of the council so much, but it may have been that she announced to city staff that their pay would be restored before the city council voted on the budget. If that is the case, she certainly DID overstep her bounds. The city manager proposes budgets, but it does require council approval before it can be implemented.

Homework

Deal to Avoid Shutdown

LATimes Report on Tentative Deal

Littwin Opines on Zany

City Council Asks City Manager to Step Down

Tis the season to be jolly! I’m jolly-well irritated at the gamesmanship in Washington, D.C. There is another government shutdown looming and it is all because of political gamesmanship.

Late yesterday the House approved a bill that would extend unemployment benefits, extend the payroll tax holiday for another year, and force approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. What does the pipeline have to do with extending tax cuts for the middle class, one might ask? Republicans will tell you that it is because the pipeline is going to create jobs.

Millions of people are out of work, 160-million workers could use the extension of the payroll tax cut, and all of that is being held hostage to about 5,000 temporary jobs? This isn’t a jobs bill; it is a Screw Obama bill. What Republicans haven’t seemed to figure out is that screwing Obama is also screwing America, and they just might back themselves into a corner that will cost them elections in 2012. (For the record, some Democrats voted for this bill.)

The State Department has said that the pipeline conditions in the bill could kill the pipeline all together, because it is not possible for them to do all the environmental studies in the required 60 days. Reid has promised to kill the bill in the Senate. Obama has promised to veto it if it ever hits his desk.

Imagine if you are running a business and your employees dilly-dally around all year, then when the books are about to be closed at year-end, they figure out that they can’t get the job done because they haven’t figured out how to work together. Wouldn’t you fire the whole lot of them? If you didn’t, you’d go bankrupt.

I’m ready to fire all of the politicians. They will never get along, so what is the solution? One party rule? Get rid of parties all together? Invest in strong alternative parties? Democracy is blooming all over the Middle East and failing right here in America because of a bunch of bone-headed ideologues who can’t figure out the art of compromise.

Bah Humbug.

Homework

CBS News Story About Potential Shut Down

No Labels

TGIF was cancelled in Washington yesterday. Nobody was celebrating the end of the work week on Friday afternoon; instead legislators were negotiating an eleventh hour stop gap funding bill that would avoid an expensive shutdown of the federal government. John Boehner may be the ultimate winner in this legislative dance. He managed to get two things done: Democrats moved beyond the Republican starting point for cuts; and he got the GOP freshmen to see the reality that they have to compromise if they want to get anything done. They only control one of the levers of government.

TGIF was replaced by a wake in Denver yesterday, because on Thursday, the GOP voted to deny people living together, without benefit of marriage, some of the legal rights of married couples.  After listening to eight hours of testimony, Colorado Senate Bill 11-172 was killed, with the GOP voting against and the DEMs voting for a civil unions bill. The GBLT community is still a community of second class citizens. Read the link below to see some of the passion that was exhibited in the eight hours of hearings.

Meanwhile, back in Wisconsin, election officials are investigating the sudden appearance of just enough votes to give a conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice another term on the court without a vote recount. What I can’t figure out is why the county clerk in Waukesha County stays in office. It seems that she makes huge human errors frequently, and is always having to apologize for getting the initial results wrong. She was even once granted immunity in a criminal case. She sure sounds like the kind of person I want responsible for counting my votes. NOT.

Who needs soap operas when one can just watch politicians tie themselves in knots? If it weren’t so early, I think I’d pour myself a drink…

Homework

No Shut Down

Colorado Civil Unions Bill Dies

Wisconsin Election

The people we sent to Washington can’t seem to get the job done. It is amazing to me that congress is still arguing about a budget that should have been passed before the fiscal year started back in September 2010. It is increasingly looking as though the government will shut down on Friday. Some on the right are excited about the prospect of a shutdown. I’m starting to think that it might be a good thing if they got what they are clamoring for. Call it tough love. If they shut down the federal government, they might find the consequences are not what they are expecting.

According to a Denver Post story, Dianne DeGette’s office has been swamped with calls from people worried about their Social Security and Medicare checks. Paychecks for military personnel will also be delayed. How do the blockheads clamoring for a shutdown think that the families of soldiers are going to continue to live indoors and eat regularly if they don’t get their monthly paycheck? I remember stories about how many military families need food stamps in order to make ends meet. Missing a paycheck, even if it is eventually received, is disastrous for families already on the edge.

Mesa Verde and Rocky Mountain National Park will shutdown at a time when lots of families have Spring Break. So, merchants selling souvenirs, lodging, and meals to visitors to these parks, during a traditionally peak time, are going to see a drop in sales instead of the increases they had planned for. It is a bit ironic that the Representative from Congressional District 3, Scott Tipton, is one of those merchants. His business relies on tourism at Mesa Verde.

If you are one of those merchants, you won’t be able to get any loans to carry you over this unexpected bump in the road, because banks rely on SBA guarantees for a lot of small business loans, and the SBA will be shut down. Don’t expect to get your income tax refund from the federal government, either. The IRS will be shut down.

Tipton agrees with a strategy to shutdown the government. I don’t think he has considered the consequences, unless he planned to be a one term congressman all along. Looking forward to the next budget crisis, a little birdie told me that a call to Tipton’s office yesterday resulted in a Tipton staffer saying that he would not touch Medicare. Minutes later the Democratic Central Committee sent out a fundraising plea, using Tipton’s support of the Paul Ryan plan to destroy Medicare during the 2011/2012 budgeting process as a reason to donate. Tipton is so caught up in “doing what he was elected to do” that he can’t see the freight train coming at him.

Homework

How a Government Shutdown Would Impact Colorado

Story About Soldier's Increased Usage of Food Stamps

Pence Wants to Shut It Down

Obama: A Shutdown Would Be Inexcusable

Some stories coming out of Washington said that the GOP caucus gave Speaker Boehner a standing cheer when he tried to explain that the government would shutdown if there wasn’t a budget deal by the time the latest Continuing Resolution (CR) expires on Friday. So, clearly, when Boehner stands in front of a microphone and says that they don’t want a shutdown, he’s busy spinning the facts. The fact is that the Republicans in the House want a shutdown. They campaigned on it. They stood up in front of Tea Party activists and said that they would shutdown government, and they are about to do so.

This all started with the absurd notion that government is bad. If government is bad then nobody will miss it, right? Wrong. There is one nation on this planet with no government and that is Somalia.  Seriously, when you go to the CIA Fact Book and look at the section called “Government,” the information says, “no permanent national government.” When you look up their system of law, it says, “no national system; a mixture of English common law, Italian law, Islamic sharia, and Somali customary law.”  Their economy is mostly made up of nomadic livestock herders. The country is past due on its payments to the World Bank. Because security is lacking, even humanitarian groups that feed the hungry have suspended operations in Somalia. I’m sure you’ve seen stories about the pirates of Somalia. That’s big business.

Americans aren’t interested in living in a nation like Somalia, and the alternative is government. It seems that we’ve lost sight of all the things that we need government to do for us. Of course, city, county, and state governments aren’t going to shutdown, only the Federal government is facing that. Well, except for the fact that a lot of cities, counties, and states depend on the federal government for the money that they spend.

If the government shuts down, and you are expecting a refund on your federal taxes, forget about it until the government is open for business again. There won’t be anybody to process the refund checks. If you are a private contractor with a federal contract, you’d better be prepared to shut down your construction project because you aren’t going to have the money to pay your contractors. This is a prescription for increasing unemployment. This is going to create a double dip recession. And the Republicans are cheering.

Why would any self respecting worker ever vote for such a bunch of boneheads? Congress should do their job, which is to make government work for the people, not for the lunatic fringe and/or the corporate puppet masters. After all, they get paid, even in a shutdown.

Homework

CIA Fact Book About Somalia

New York Times Opinion

Christian Science Monitor Reports on Impact of Government Shutdown

People who don’t believe in government shouldn’t try to govern. Eric Cantor, the Majority Leader, in the house is a walking talking April Fool. Two days ago he made an outrageous statement at a press conference, proving that he is clueless about the government that he is trying to lead.

Cantor isn’t just any fool who lucked out and got elected to office in an off year. He is a leader of the Republican Party in the House. And yet he actually said that if the House passes a bill it becomes law. Period. And now he’s trying to pass a bill that says that if the Senate doesn’t pass a bill by his deadline, then by default the House law will become the law of the land. You know for a Tea Party darling, he sure is clueless about the Constitution. Why does he think there are three separate, but equal, branches of government? Better yet, how did such a fool get elected by his own party into a leadership role?

This is the fool who insisted that the Constitution be read aloud in the House. Then they left out all the parts about slavery, which may explain why fellow Tea Party darling Michelle Bachman thinks that the founding fathers abolished slavery. Guess she missed the dates when she learned about the Revolution and then the Civil War. She thinks they happened at the same time, I guess.

These are the fools listening to the Tea Party about not compromising on a bill that would prevent the shutdown of the federal government. I’ve noticed that a lot of Tea Partiers are senior citizens. Most likely they are on Social Security and Medicare. Rumor has it that Cantor wants to kill both of them. And if the government shuts down a lot of seniors may find out what it means to live without one or more Social Security checks, especially since no bill has passed that would pay for the people who actually process the checks.

While it is April, and there are a lot of fools in this story, this is no joke.

Homework

Forbes Blog With Video of Cantor Being a Fool

Washington Post Story With Cartoon Teaching How a Bill Becomes Law

Blog With Story About Cantor Wanting to Kill Social Security

Yesterday the blog was about distractions. While we are distracted, the world keeps spinning, and there are things that should be the focus of our attention. Three come readily to mind: Civil Unions, Oil and Gas Commission, and a government shutdown.

The House District 54 Representative, Ray Scott, sponsored a bill that would take the agency that regulates Colorado’s oil and gas industry back to where it was before those pesky ranchers and environmentalists demanded a seat at the table. That bill will be heard in the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee today. Evidently enough people have gotten to Scott that he is willing to make some concessions, but since the commission was just restructured last year, the question needs to be asked why this bill is needed at all. Hopefully the committee will agree and just kill the bill.  (HB 11-1223.)

On Thursday, the Civil Unions bill will be heard by the House Judiciary Committee. Senate Bill 11-172 is finding some unusual support from editorial boards all across the state. They have been making the point that if the GOP really is about small government, then there is no place for government in the regulation of marriage.  The conservative Colorado Springs Gazette had this to say, "Society should head toward complete withdrawal of the State from the regulation of marriage, which is best left to the partners and their respective religions." Hopefully the committee will pass this bill so that it reaches the floor of the House, where some Republicans are ready to vote in favor of civil unions.

And finally the Tea Party is at war with the Republican Party. There still is no budget in place for the year that is now almost eight months old, and another budget fight is looming over the budget for the year that starts in September. The most recent continuing resolution expires on Friday, and the Tea Party is moving the Republican Party even further to the right. The Democrats caved, and now support the opening position originally proposed by Representative Ryan of Wisconsin. (Can’t seem to get away from Wisconsin these days, can we?) But the Republicans are no longer interested in their own opening bid; they want more. To complicate matters, Operation Odyssey Dawn just blew a hole in the budget. If the target keeps moving, there will never be a budget this year or next year, and the government just may shut down until we can elect some grown-ups.

I don’t know exactly how to react to this possibility. While I want seniors to keep getting their Social Security checks, I think that if they don’t, because of some boneheaded move by Republicans, Republicans won’t find elections quite so easy in the future. Seniors vote, and while their memories may be shot, they do know a lot about Social Security and who messes with it.

Homework

Colorado HB 11-1223

Colorado SB 11-172

Story About Pressure on GOP Lawmakers to Pass Civil Unions Bill

Cantor VS Boehner

Will the government shut down on March 4? And if it does, will 60-million seniors, including me, receive their Social Security checks in March?

Before dawn today the House approved a budget bill for the Fiscal year that actually started back in October 2010. It is important to keep this in mind: The House is working on the budget that should have been passed in the last congress. The government has been running on authority from a continuing resolution (CR), which kept all spending at levels appropriated in the fiscal year ending 9/30/2010.  As soon as they are done finalizing the budget for the fiscal year we are in the middle of, they will start trying to agree on a budget for the coming fiscal year.

For the government to continue running, the Senate has to pass a bill, which must then be reconciled with the House bill by March 4. On that date, the current continuing resolution expires. Absent a budget or a new continuing resolution, the government will shut down. The bill approved this morning in the House has little chance of being approved by the Senate. All Democrats in the House and three Republicans voted against the bill. The Senate is controlled by Democrats who are likely to vote the way the Democrats in the House voted. But if they don’t, President Obama has already promised a veto of any bill hitting his desk resembling the House bill.

Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi introduced a bill to temporarily extend spending appropriations, saying,“In light of the hundreds of amendments to the Continuing Resolution, the President’s Day week-long recess and the need for the House to establish priorities and reconcile this legislation with the Senate by March 4, we are proposing a short-term extension of the current CR until March 31.”

On February 17, the Social Security Administration discussed with the press plans the agency is making in the event of a shutdown. For starters the government would start negotiating with the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) to talk about employee furloughs during the shutdown. That’s a twist not many people in the press are talking about. If there is a shutdown will the 600,000 government employees represented by the union take to the streets the way that union workers in Wisconsin have been doing all week? AFGE represents employees in the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Justice. And they are one of the unions of the almost 15-million strong AFL-CIO.

So, now we’ve populated the streets of Washington with 600,000 federal union workers, and expanded into the streets of other American cities with 15-million AFL-CIO workers, but we still don’t know if Social Security checks will be in the mail. If they aren’t 60-million senior might be in the streets too. But, I digress.

I’ve read conflicting reports about what happens to Social Security checks in the event of a government shutdown. One says that the government can continue with “essential services,” and payments to America’s seniors are essential. Another says that payments, which have not been appropriated, may not be made (Antideficiency Act). So, are funds from the Social Security Trust Fund already appropriated? A September 2010 report by the Congressional Research Service to Congress says, “Programs that are funded by laws other than annual appropriations acts (e.g., entitlements like Social Security) also may be affected by a funding gap, if program execution relies on activities that receive annually appropriated funding.”

The report goes on to describe how money may be available to fund things like Social Security, but if the staff needed to process the payments is subject to annual appropriations, the payments may not be made-- because of lack of staff. In the 1996 government shutdown, about 5,000 employees were originally not furloughed in order to process payments. Social Security had to go back to congress and ask for almost 50,000 additional employees three days into the government shutdown and employee furlough, in order to process checks and new claims and things like address changes. Because of the debacle in 1996, government agencies are required to have written plans detailing how they would implement a government shutdown. It is unknown if these plans have been updated and/or are adequate to ensure that the nation’s seniors aren’t out in the cold protesting any shutdown.

Homework

House Votes to Cut $60-billion from 2010-2011 Budget

Who Are the Losers in a Government Shutdown?

American Federation of Government Employees

Unions of the AFL-CIO

September 2010 Report About What Happens in A Government Shutdown

Antideficiency Act

The big story on the horizon today will be Obama delivering his 2012 budget to Congress. They still haven’t passed a 2011 budget, so I’d say they are a bit behind. If they don’t pass a budget by March 4, for the fiscal year that began October 1, 2010, the federal government will shut down. Republicans on the Sunday talk shows were careful not to say that they would shut down government, but if they don’t pass a continuing resolution by that date, it will happen. The last time the Republicans shut down government was for six days, and then for 21 days when Newt Gingrich was in charge. Look what that got them: Clinton was reelected and for some reason Gingrich announced he would not take retake his seat in congress, even though he had been reelected.

What happens if a continuing resolution isn’t passed by March 4? Well for starters, it gives Obama an opportunity to talk about how the Republican led House has been working on everything but the business of the nation. He’ll talk about how they have been spinning their wheels passing legislation that will never get past the Senate or past the veto pen he wields. And people will be listening precisely because a government shutdown is so unusual and full of drama. According to Ezra Klein, he might even make the health care reform bill popular when he takes the bully pulpit.

The bigger thing that happens is that all non-essential services are put on hold. Several hundred thousand federal employees will be put on furlough. In the Gingrich shutdown 800,000 employees were told to go home. Agency heads who keep working could be subject to criminal fines, or termination of employment, unless the services provided are essential to the “safety of human life or protection of property,” or required in order to implement an orderly shutdown. (Every agency must have a written plan detailing how they will implement an orderly shutdown.)

The 1996 shutdown is a good predictor of what could happen this round:

·         The Center for Disease Control would stop monitoring diseases.

·         Bankruptcy cases would be in limbo.

·         Border Patrol could not hire any replacement or new workers.

·         Delinquent child support cases would be in limbo.

·         National Parks, Museums, and Monument would close.

·         No passport applications would be processed.

·         No new claims for Social Security benefits would be processed.

·         No new Social Security cards would be issued.

·         In theory, sufficient staff would be available to process Social Security payments.

Just a little something to chew on along with your Valentine’s Day candy.

Homework

1995 Government Shut Down

Upstart Rand Paul is Upstaging King-Maker-Wannabe Jim DeMint

What Happens if the Republicans Shut Down Government in 2011?

What Stops in a Government Shut Down?

Federal Report on the Costs of a Government Shutdown