Tag Archives: spending bill

national news

That was close; POTUS signs bill after all

That ridiculous, confusing and chaotic individual who serves as president of the United States had some of our heads spinning.

Donald Trump had said he would sign the omnibus spending bill despite its shortcomings; then he threatened to veto it because it didn’t spend enough on illegal immigration reform and border security.

Then he signs it! While bitching about all that is wrong with it.

The president announced a “news conference” to accompany its signing. Then he rambled on and on — and on some more! — for more than 30 minutes. He blamed Democrats for gutting the military, for stalling on immigration reform while ignoring the reality that the bill he signed is a bipartisan measure with plenty of Democratic votes in favor of it.

I struggle to listen to Trump’s remarks entirely. His repetitiveness is mind-numbing in the extreme, not to mention his astonishing use of non-specific terminology that reveals utter ignorance of the subject matter at hand. How many times did this guy use the term “other things” to delineate supposed specificity?

Whatever.

The signature moment — please pardon the pun — came when he admitted he hadn’t read the 2,220-page bill. “Neither had anyone else,” he said.

So, he signed a $1.3 trillion spending bill that keeps the government running until September without knowing what’s in it. He said that. Correct? He signed it believing that its defense expenditure superseded the shortcomings he said the bill contained.

Oh, and one more thing. The president still refuses to take ownership of any of the failings he hangs on some members of Congress. I long have thought that effective governing was a team sport, with the executive branch working in tandem with the legislative branch of government.

I am quite certain that is what the nation’s founders had in mind.

So, the chaos continues.

national news

First he’d sign it, now threatens a veto

I cannot take credit for this observation, so I’ll give it to my friend David Stevens, a true-blue political libertarian and a newspaper editor in eastern New Mexico.

Stevens wondered on social media why Donald J. Trump is threatening to veto an omnibus spending bill that pours money into a budget, while at the same time he extols the virtues of a big tax cut. The president wants to spend even more money on Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals and, of course, on the wall he wants to build along our southern border.

Just for the record, I agree with Trump on DACA funding, but disagree strongly with him on the wall matter.

Still, my pal David is perplexed at how a so-called “conservative Republican” can make such threats. I agree with my friend.

I’ll just offer this observation: Trump can make these veto threats because he is a classic RINO, a Republican In Name Only. He isn’t an actual Republican, with an actual political philosophy, with a rock-solid ideological base. He governs on whims and on who is the last person to have his attention.

Trump said earlier in the week that he would sign the spending bill to prevent a government shutdown, even with his misgivings about it. Now, in a tweet (sheesh!), he threatens to veto the whole thing because it doesn’t spend enough money.

The other big mystery? How is it that Republican “base” voters continue to stand behind this clown?

political news

It's getting even messier on Capitol Hill

Winston Churchill had it exactly right when he sought to describe a democratic form of government.

He lamented its messiness and inefficiency when he said: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

I wish he was here today to see what’s transpiring on Capitol Hill. Republicans are fighting among themselves in a TEA party vs. establishment conflict. Now the Democrats have begun cannibalizing each other in a progressive vs. centrist fight.

At the center of it all is a $1.1 trillion spending bill that extremists in either party don’t like, for differing reasons, obviously.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/elizabeth-warren-budget-cromnibus-2016-elections-113561.html?hp=t4_r

Just as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas has become the face of the TEA party insurgency within the Republican Party, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has assumed the Democratic mantle of gadfly in chief.

They both have at least one thing in common. They’re freshmen legislators. Neither of them has much Capitol Hill seasoning under the belts. Cruz is more of a loudmouth. Warren doesn’t bellow her dislike of Democratic comprises, but she’s becoming a tiger in the Senate.

Warren has become the liberals’ latest best hope for a possible challenge to prohibitive Democratic presidential favorite Hillary Rodham Clinton. They see Warren as a spokeswoman for the common man and woman who distrusts the power brokers who are lining up behind Clinton’s still-unannounced presidential candidacy.

Cruz, meanwhile, has become the darling of the conservative movement within his own party. Will he challenge, say, Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination?

Let’s think about this for a moment: Cruz and Warren both catch fire enough to snatch their parties’ nomination from the favorites. Clinton lost in 2008 to a young senator with zero name ID nationally. Barack Obama went on to win the presidency in a near-landslide and then score a decisive re-election victory four years later. Will history repeat itself? I doubt it — for now.

As for Cruz, the GOP establishment will fight him tooth and nail if he keeps roiling the waters, demanding government shutdowns and insisting on outcomes that won’t occur.

Our form of representative democracy, Sir Winston, is about to get a whole lot messier.