Re: In which Christopher Christie obliterates the House Republicans
Most of these "bills" are filled with pork, it's the American Way. This P.O.S. has $60,000,000 alloted for NASCAR, $160,000,000 allotted for Alaskan wildlife fisheries for just two examples. This $60,000,000,000 monster is three times larger than the entire annual budget of several states!!!! Now even republicans are making fools of themselves crusading against Boehner. Why don't they READ THE BILL in public to show what all the super concerned dems are actually trying to pass through. Keep ion mind while these snakes were dumping pork in to this bill to aid the needy in freezing temperature they still have no relief. Like Obama's preacher says, "God Damn America"!!
Were the myriad supplemental military funding bills, many of which contained unrelated pork, for Iraq and Afghanistan blocked on account of the pork? Of course not. And they should not have been blocked. Neither should disaster relief to suffering people. At the end of the day, the disaster relief funding will be approved, probably piecemeal, and the "savings" when all is said and done will be exceptionally small.
Where the House could have made a stand for fiscal responsibility would have involved incorporating spending-related savings in the fiscal cliff legislation via amendment. But such a move, precisely because Congress wasted more than a year since the August 2011 deal before acting on the fiscal cliff, would have entailed political risk.
Let's take a look at that legislation that was approved. CBO says it will increase the nation's debt by nearly $4 trillion over 10 years. Were there parametric reforms to Social Security (like a change in the age of eligibility or indexing of benefits)? No. How about Medicare (dedictibles, copayments, age of eligibility, means-testing)? No. Were there offsetting discretionary spending reductions of any significance? No. Was the modest sequester left in place? No, it was delayed. Net result: A package that will increase, not reduce, the nation's debt. The House, including Speaker Boehner, voted to increase the nation's debt by nearly $4 trillion over 10 years. $4 trillion over 10 years is vastly greater than one-time savings of $60 billion (though perhaps not by the math employed by the Congress), which won't be realized, as disaster relief legislation will be ultimately approved.
The problem is that insisting on spending-related savings would have required political courage. Posturing over a disaster relief bill that is tiny relative to the debt increase that was just agreed and is not a contributor to the nation's structural deficits, requires almost none.
The political stunt over disaster relief backfired. Now the Speaker has reversed himself. In the whole scheme of things, the Congress has yet again found a way to further damage its already low standing and the Speaker has found yet another way in which to demonstrate weakness.