Tag Archives: The Senate

Yawn: another left-liberal critique of the US government but from an unusual source

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Who do you suppose put together this far left liberal critique of the American system of government under the heading, “Fig Leaf: Outrageous Facts About US Congress and Super Pacs”:

This is where the legal absence of institutional checks and balances allows lobby groups, politics and money to come together on a scale that is not imaginable in any other country in the world.

The Senate and Congress are packed with wealthy people that are very rapidly becoming even wealthier. Their collective net worth is now measured in the billions of dollars.

But it is not that easy to get elected to Congress. Candidates have to be heavily connected to lobby groups like Wall Street, National Rifle Association, AIPAC, Military-Industrial Complex and those that are very wealthy. It takes a lot of cash to win campaigns.

The following facts are very difficult to believe but they are actually true. They show that Congress is all about money and lobby politics:

1. The collective net worth of all members is reportedly over 2 billion dollars. But it could be higher, as more than 50 percent are millionaires.

2. This is during a time when the net worth of most American households has declined.

3. The average net worth for a member is $3.8 million and counting.

4. The average cost of winning a seat in Congress is $1.1 million, while in the Senate it is $6.5 million. Spending on political campaigns has gotten way out of control.

5. Insider trading is legal for members, and they refuse to pass a law that would change that.

6. The percentage of millionaires in Congress is 50 times higher than the percentage of millionaires in the country.

There are lots of ways these politicians are raking in the cash. One way is making investments in companies that will go up significantly if legislation that is being considered “goes the right way”. This happens constantly and nobody seems to get into any trouble for it.

For instance, when it comes to the National Rifle Association, climate change deniers, Israel, Big Oil, or Military-Industrial Complex, these “hired guns” waste no time to pass legislation that would support their “friends”. In return, they get all the cash they need for their election campaigns.

This is not new. The emperor is butt naked. Whoever Americans vote for, the money and the lobby groups get in. The law allows unlimited campaign contributions by lobby groups, corporations and unions. The organizations that are taking advantage of this law are known as Super Pacs and they can remain anonymous.

As is, money in American politics is the elephant in the room. In the interim, the White House tenants are asking us to ignore both the sight and the stench. They want us to believe no one is buying the candidates and access to power, and that there is no coordination between the compromised members of Congress and the Super Pac.

In reality, however, this is little more than a fig leaf. Any doubters should go through an unusual open letter from Republican senators, which was made public recently, cautioning Iran against a potential nuclear deal with President Obama. The letter shows us how class interests and the influence of money and lobby groups have visibly corrupted an entire political culture.

In no small part it also explains the depth of cynicism, alienation and mistrust the international community now has for America’s illusion of participatory democracy and sovereign foreign policy.

Why it’s none other than the FNA. And to find out who that is, you need to go here. It’s not just that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. For the left in the US, these are their friends.

[Via John Hinderaker at Powerline]

We need a Parliament Act of our own

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Let us take it as read that the Government has to get its budget in order, not because it is good for the Government, but because it is good for the country.

The level of public outlays is too large and the revenue base, as large as it is, is still too low to cover all expenditure. If we don’t fix it, as everyone knows, Australia will have a diminished future. All this is agreed by everyone (see W. Swan for confirmation).

So the Government brought down a budget that was designed to limit public spending and allow some fiscal repair. Since everyone might have gone about it in a different way, let us again state for the record that the one particular way chosen by the Treasurer is different from the one each of us might have chosen ourselves. But that is mere detail. It is the Government and it was elected to find a way to get these things right.

But we are blessed with the Senate from Hell. A series of people of such comprehensive economic ignorance matched with a bizarrely wilful malevolence will allow nothing through. And it will ruin us, let there be no doubt about that. Not fixing the budget will leave just about everyone less well off. The economy will shrink and take us down with it.

Since we are in the mood for constitutional amendments, let’s at least do something useful. What we need is a constitutional amendment that will prevent the Senate from rejecting money bills. Here is the story from the UK:

The Parliament Act 1911 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is constitutionally important and partly governs the relationship between the House of Commons and the House of Lords which make up the Houses of Parliament. This Act must be construed as one with the Parliament Act 1949. The two Acts may be cited together as the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949.[1]

Following the rejection of the 1909 budget, the House of Commons sought to establish its formal dominance over the House of Lords, who had broken convention in opposing the Bill. The budget was eventually passed by the Lords after the Commons’ democratic mandate was confirmed by holding elections in January 1910. The following Parliament Act, which looked to prevent a recurrence of the budget problems, was also widely opposed in the Lords and cross-party discussion failed, particularly because of the proposed Act’s applicability to passing an Irish home rule bill. After a second general election in December, the Act was passed with the support of the monarch, George V, who threatened to create sufficient Liberal peers to overcome the present Conservative majority.

The Act effectively removed the right of the Lords to veto money bills completely, and replaced a right of veto over other public bills with a maximum delay of two years.

The Senate is our House of Lords, although the name could not be more inappropriate given many of the present incumbents. Its ability to interfere with the proper management of the country is unacceptable. It should become, like the Canadian Senate, a house of review and advice, but the government should be run from the House of Reps.

This is the constitutional amendment we need. The Senate represents little more than egocentric grandstanding. Let us keep the Senate, by all means, but let us restrict the damage it can do to good governance and sound management of the economy.

The Australian Democrats once held the balance in the Senate for many years based on its promise not to block supply. This should now become an obligation imposed on the Senate by the Constitution.

The Mid-Term Elections in the US

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While we sleep, the United States votes. Come morning we will find out how far the Dems have fallen and whether they had managed to fall far enough for the Republicans to hold a majority in the Senate to go along with their majority in the House. To keep up with the results, there is Real Clear Politics to keep you up to date.

In the meantime, you can commiserate with Mark Steyn’s reflections on Election Day.

YOU CAN ALSO FOLLOW THE ELECTION HERE: There is also a live feed from PJ Media.

HOW IT’S GONE: Republicans Surge to Control of Senate.

Riding a powerful wave of voter discontent, resurgent Republicans captured control of the Senate and tightened their grip on the House Tuesday night in elections certain to complicate President Barack Obama’s final two years in office. . . .

A shift in control of the Senate will likely result in a strong GOP assault on budget deficits, additional pressure on Democrats to accept sweeping changes to the health care law that stands as Obama’s signal domestic accomplishment and a bid to reduce federal regulations.

Obama’s ability to win confirmation for lifetime Supreme Court and other judicial appointments could also suffer.

Far less than many of us hoped for but far better than what some had sought

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So where are we now? The President and his Democrat cohort have been put on notice so that negotiations must now take place. Since default was never an option there was going to be an agreement of sorts to get us into the new year when the process can begin again. The sequester cuts, which really burn the Democrats up, have not been reversed and are not going to be reversed under any circumstances. The air space is now clear so that more attention can be focused on the many other screw ups of the Obama administration, most particularly the Affordable Care Act which will burn its way into community consciousness as it burns its way through the incomes of many an American. How to fix it from here is their problem but there will be a lot more sick Americans unable to find medical care at affordable prices as time goes on. Bulk stupidity but if it can’t be stopped it can’t be stopped.

What seems to have been agreed looks in many ways like the maximal position the Republicans might ever have realistically hoped to achieve given that the presidency and the Senate are in the hands of others and the media are like one great big ABC of leftist bias. Big win to the Democrats. I don’t think so, and certainly not if you are thinking about the long-term future of the American economy.

This is from The New York Times relayed via Drudge who of course describe the ongoing economic mismanagement of the American economy as a great victory for those responsible for these disasters:

Speaker John A. Boehner, the leader of conservative House Republicans whose push to strip money for the health law led to the shuttering of much of the government on Oct. 1, said that the House would not block a bipartisan agreement reached in the Senate that yielded virtually no concessions to the Republicans.

‘We fought the good fight,’ Mr. Boehner said in an interview with the radio station WLW-AM in Cincinnati. ‘We just didn’t win.’

In a statement issued as the Senate and the House prepared to vote on the proposal, Mr. Boehner said: ‘The fight will continue. But blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us.’

The decision came about 24 hours before the Treasury was due to exhaust its borrowing authority, putting the nation on the brink of a default. Mr. Boehner had earlier told colleagues privately that he would not allow the nation to default.

These are the details as reported:

Under the agreement, the government would be funded through Jan. 15, and the debt ceiling would be raised until Feb. 7. The Senate will take up a separate motion to instruct House and Senate negotiators to reach accord by Dec. 13 on a long-term blueprint for tax and spending policies over the next decade.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, stressed that under the deal, which he negotiated with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, budget cuts extracted in the 2011 fiscal showdown were not reversed, as some Democrats had wanted, a slim reed that not even he claimed as a significant victory.

The deal, Mr. McConnell said, ‘is far less than many of us hoped for, quite frankly, but far better than what some had sought.’

That the American economy will continue its rapid decline is just one of those things.

UPDATE: An interesting take by Tim Stanley in the UK’s Telegraph. But what is particularly interesting is the comment thread that follows. Here, however, is his core point.

What has Obama really won? He keeps his precious healthcare reform and he gets government open again – but tomorrow morning he’ll still have the same gridlocked political system that he had the night before. The shutdown is a rare example of him winning, but remember that this lame duck president has not only had a very simple (and, frankly, inoffensive) gun control bill killed in the Senate but was so spooked by bad poll numbers that he tried to dump responsibility for military action in Syria onto the Congress – before quietly dropping the idea altogether. Any thought that the shutdown payoff will be that he can sail an immigration reform package comfortably through Congress is pure fantasy. This is a broken presidency living out its last few years either holding off Republican attacks or lazily cruising the country on some pointless, endless, fatuous campaign trail. Obama’s administration is politically bankrupt.