Well, the regular working families are the ones who take it in the neck, of course. Republicans grudgingly prepared to not shut down the government by bragging to their extremist fringe that they would still enforce plenty of pain on the poor people their party is perpetually at war with. As John Nichols wrote last week for The Nation, "the problem with bipartisanship as it is currently understood is that, for the most part, cooperation in Congress serves the elites that already are living large thanks to federal tax policies that redistribute wealth upward."As we pointed out, a handful of House progressives were among the 46 congressmen to vote against the GOP Tax Extenders bill, hailed as a glorious compromise, December 3. Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Keith Ellison (D-MN) and CPC First Vice Chairman Mark Pocan was two of them. Ellison says the bill "gives away too much to big business, while doing little to help working families make ends meet... The bill is full of deficit-financed corporate giveaways that won't stimulate the economy or help working Americans. The bill retroactively restores the bonus depreciation tax break, which doesn't increase economic growth because it helps companies pay for equipment they've already purchased. It also costs $1.49 billion. The active financing exemption allows companies to keep a huge amount of profits overseas and costs $5 billion. The bill also provides tax breaks for motorsports tracks such as NASCAR ($33 million) and racehorses ($45 million)."
Compromise-prone Democrats tried to argue that they had to back the measure because it extended some programs that benefit working Americans. However, Pocan explains, "almost all of the significant tax extenders were going to corporations, not to working people. And they were retroactive. You couldn't even argue that they would create jobs-- except in the last two weeks of the year."Ellison's assessment was that "the bad clearly outweighs the good in this bill.""The bill passed [December 3] does little for working families, but lots for corporations already booking big profits," added Ellison. "Too many Americans are working in jobs that don't sustain their families. Nearly 75% of the tax breaks in the package will make their struggle to attain the American Dream even tougher."
And that takes us to the bill Boehner and McCarthy are shepherding through Congress this week to keep funding the government. They hope to cause as much pain as they can for working families without making it impossible for enough Democrats to back it so that it passes despite Ted Cruz and the absolutists who want nothing less than a complete shutdown of the government (and impeachment of Barack Obama and a unicorn for every wing-nut).
Congress prepared on Monday to scale back Michelle Obama's school-lunch nutrition mandates and curtail some clean water regulations in a $1 trillion spending bill that would avert a government shutdown this week but extract a policy price from Democrats.Continued fighting over such policy changes threatened to delay a huge spending agreement that lawmakers hope to pass to keep the government funded past Thursday. The measure would keep domestic spending at current levels while increasing funding to fight crises abroad, from the war against the Islamic State in the Middle East to the threat of Ebola in West Africa.But in keeping with the broader theme of this 113th Congress, even reaching the finish line was proving harder than expected. Since Republicans took control of the House after the elections in 2010, the government has largely been funded by a series of short-term spending laws that held down overall government spending without shifting money to reflect Republican priorities.With the spending bill now in the works, Republican leaders hope to leave their imprint more firmly-- and signal the direction they will try to take the federal government starting next month, when Congress is in their complete control.Under the plan drafted by House and Senate Appropriations Committees, President Obama would get $5.4 billion in emergency funds to battle Ebola, Democratic and Republican aides say.More than half of the overall package-- about $554 billion-- would go to military spending. The deal would also allocate roughly $948 million to handle the surge of unaccompanied minor children who began pouring across the southern border this summer....Policy prescriptions, including those to ease standards on school lunch content and the Environmental Protection Agency's jurisdiction over some bodies of water, have been more contentious than the negotiations over money. Cultural conservatives in the House and Senate were also pressing to include a "conscience clause" for employers who say funding contraception violates their religious beliefs....Conservative groups like Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, were pressuring Republicans to vote against the measure, saying it did too little to combat Mr. Obama's increasingly bold use of executive authority. That, in turn, strengthened the Democrats' hands, since with Republican defections it will take Democratic votes to secure a majority to pass the bill."I remain cautiously optimistic that there will be sufficient votes," said Representative Charlie Dent, Republican of Pennsylvania, who added that his preference would have been to pass a broad spending bill to fund all of the government, including the Department of Homeland Security, through the current fiscal year. "Maybe in the new year we add some policy riders, but at the end of the day we're going to pass the Homeland Security bill, so why not do it now rather than wait."Speaker John A. Boehner may need several dozen Democratic votes to push the legislation through the Republican-controlled House, and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader, has signaled that she will provide the necessary votes only if Democrats and Republicans can find "common ground" on the policy provisions.
UPDATE: More Self-Serving Crap The Politicians Are Sneaking Into The OmnibusPublic Citizen just announced that they caught the transpartisan crooked politicians we just elected sneaking further institutionalization of corruption into the "must pass" omnibus bill. They've included provisions in the spending bill that authorize individuals to give $97,200 per donor per year to each of three separate committees set up by the national parties-- "to fund the national conventions, to pay for the building funds and to pay for recounts and other legal proceedings, in addition to the current $32,400 maximum a donor can currently give per year to each party. This includes giving separately to each of the three separate committees the parties set up. Depending how the Federal Election Commission interprets this change, a federal officeholder may be able to solicit, and an individual donor would be able to give, $777,600 per year to a national party or $1,555,200 per election cycle. A couple could give $3,110,400 to a national party in a two-year election cycle."
The deal that was struck as a part of the omnibus appropriations bill filed yesterday is a clear-cut step in the wrong direction for our democracy. Using the funding bill to increase party limits is a move back toward the days of corrupting soft-money contributions. Increasing these limits would only enable more dollars to pour into a system already flooded with cash and would encourage higher independent expenditures in the money arms race to counter them.This embarrassing deal sacrifices the interests of everyday Americans who want clean elections while elevating the concerns of politicians who want to raise more money.The answer to out-of-control and unlimited outside spending by the super-rich and giant corporations isn’t to enable virtually unlimited contributions to parties-- and, inevitably, candidates-- but to get outside spending under control. To do this, we need to begin by putting an end to dark money with full disclosure.
