Sense Of Proportion

So the technical glitch on the farm bill was cleaned up, and Bush's veto officially overriden. The intent of the Congress and the President is obvious, but due to Constitutional procedure they might actually have to vote on this turkey AGAIN. Can we move ahead a couple hundred years at this point? Bill text is already available online. Can't that be the text the Congress "sends" over to the President, and can't the President do what he wants with it? If you want to keep having bill-signing ceremonies, that's fine, but why do we have to act like we're still using quills and horseback here? A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

Meanwhile, is it at all possible to take John Boehner seriously?

Democrats said the matter stemmed from a clerical error. But Republicans pounced on the "fiasco," which they said would require a temporary extension of the current farm bill.

"What's happened here raises serious constitutional questions -- very serious," said Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. "I don't see how we can proceed with the override as it occurred."

Yes, some clerk forgetting to insert Title III of the bill is a "serious constitutional question." The President nullifying federal laws through signing statements, torturing prisoners in violation of international law, rendition, indefinite detention, spying on Americans without a warrant in contrvention of the 4th Amendment, eliminating habeas corpus, planting military propagandists in the press and lying about the WMD threat used to take the nation to war... these are mere technicalities.

Puh-leeze.

Farm Bill Follies

Apparently the House f'ed up and left a big piece out of the farm bill when the President signed it. While at some level it's annoying that we're still applying an 18th-century standard of signing a piece of paper and all of the attendant papers having to be in a bundle, it's circumstances like this that led to Don Young slipping the Coconut Road earmark into the highway bill without it ever being voted upon. I'm sure they'll sort this out, but Republicans are using it as a way to cause mischief.

Meanwhile, I see a lot of liberal bloggers like Ezra Klein praising John McCain for his resistance to the pork-laden farm bill. And I agree to an extent, but the 2002 farm bill was much worse, and the consequence of not passing this one means that the funding levels of the old one remain in place. So McCain is essentially advocating for worse subsidies and a worse bill. In addition I don't believe that McCain's vision of agricultural policy is some sort of organic food-heavy, no-GM, end to all agribusiness kind of nirvana. He actually doesn't much care about agricultural policy, but he likes to bluster about any "wasteful spending" that isn't military spending so he can rail against the farm bill without articulating any broader strategy.

The farm bill sucks, and it is an example of power politics trumping sensible policy, but let's not kid ourselves that John McCain has some larger principle about agriculture - or anything at all about it - in his back pocket.

The Last Bastion of Sausage Making

The farm bill is still a joke. Commodity prices have skyrocketed so farmers, particularly agribusiness, is profiting in a big way, but the subsidies have remained in the bill. It's a five-year bill so it ought to have some flexibility, but married couples making $1.5 million dollars don't need an extra incentive to grow. The bill isn't as horrible as in previous years, but it still ought to have some balance to it. Of course, this is one of the ultimate pork-barrel bills, where lawmakers of both parties reward the farmers in their states and the commodities they make. It's very hard to get any kind of reform in there.

Nobody Likes A Whiner

You know you're trying to bluff with a really bad hand when the AP opens its story with this lede:

President Bush put politics ahead of the facts Tuesday as he sought to blame Congress for high energy prices, saying foreign suppliers are pumping just about all the oil they can and accusing lawmakers of blocking new refineries.

Even I'm embarrassed for Bush trying to pull this switcheroo. But he didn't stop with gas prices, he blamed Congress for the farm bill, stopping nuclear power plants, foreclosures, the economy, and I think Miley Cyrus' photo spread. If Truman said "The buck stops here," then Bush's mantra must be "Who wants this buck?"

It goes without saying that his remedies for the nation's domestic ills are ill-chosen and ridiculous, but the AP went ahead and nicely summarized them.

Bush renewed his call for drilling in an Arctic wildlife refuge, but his own Energy Department says that would have little impact on gasoline prices [...]

Blaming "the lack of refinery capacity" for high energy prices, [Bush] said Congress has rejected his proposal to use shuttered military bases for refinery sites.

FACT: Global oil supplies are tight, in part because OPEC nations including Saudi Arabia are refusing to open their spigots. But Saudi Arabia has considerable additional production capacity. It's pumping a little over 8.5 million barrels a day, compared to about 9.5 million barrels a day two years ago and has acknowledged the ability to produce as much as 11 million barrels a day.

On refineries, Congress has ignored Bush's proposal to use closed military bases. But the oil companies haven't shown much interest in building refineries either and have dismissed suggestions that military bases might be of use [...] When top executives of the country's five largest oil companies earlier this month were asked at a House hearing whether they wanted to build a new refinery, each said no.

And it just got worse from there. I hate to even give these little temper tantrum press conferences even the most minor notice, since they all come down to a series of wild charges with no basis in fact, and the country has tuned this guy out already and can't wait for him to leave, anyway. But the thing is that the Republican Party is desperate to get out from under the impression that they broke the economy, and are starting to raise this whole "Democrats in Congress did it" approach, so it's important to get out in front of the spin.

Now on the farm bill, I don't totally disagree with the President in theory about subsidies, and Congress is responding, though I can't help but think that Bush doesn't really want to stop payments to wealthy farmers so much as to transfer them to agribusiness.

The Sausage Factory

There seems to be a lot of legislation being spitballed in Congress right now, let's do a rundown:

• The House voted to ban all permanent bases in Iraq. There's enough funding, of course, to already build these installations, but it's somewhat significant to the next Administration coming in that the House is on record for this, and that talk of Iraq being the new Korea is being fully rejected. Hopefully the Senate will join them.

• After a farm bill that retained multibillion dollar subsidies to farmers, but lowered the ceiling for payment eligibility and also tried to tighten offshore tax haven loopholes, suddenly faces a veto threat from the President and Republicans who don't want anything bad to happen to those persecuted rich people.

Democrats said the tax proposal would merely close a loophole that the Bush administration itself has decried in the past. "Who is surprised that the administration takes the side of CEOs who hold beachside board meetings at the expense of programs to feed the least fortunate here at home?" asked Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee [...]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has defended the legislation as an important step toward reform. In addition to paying for traditional farm programs, the bill would provide billions of dollars over the next decade for conservation, biofuel research and nutrition programs such as food stamps. There is new money for organic farmers, rural development and fruit-and-vegetable snacks for schoolchildren.

The farm bill is one of those pieces of Congressional sausage that doesn't get a lot of attention, but really sets the priorities for who we are as a society. The Republicans have set theirs, certainly. But this is always a compromise bill where the interests of farm-state lawmakers are foregrounded and a lot of pork is maintained. Democrats probably did the best they could do on this one, and still Republicans can't allow rich people to have to pay their taxes.

• After the report from a Presidential panel on veteran's care, reforms to the system are being recommended. Maybe we won't see the kind of shocking situation that leads Iraq veterans to sue the VA. What's so depressing is that this plan is cheap:

The commission said fully carrying out its recommendations would cost $500 million a year for the time being, and $1 billion annually years from now as the current crop of fresh veterans and active military members ages and new personnel is in place.

Many of the recommendations of the commission were included in a bill that passed the Senate yesterday.

• Looks like the homeland security bill is finally moving forward.

House and Senate negotiators reached accord yesterday on legislation to implement most of the recommendations of the bipartisan commission that studied the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The deal could be enacted as early as this week. Agreement on a package of lobbying and ethics rules changes should be done by early next week. And congressional leaders hope to pass a significant expansion of the 10-year-old program to provide health insurance for children of the working poor.

They're finally starting to break the deadlocks on some of this stuff, as Republicans may have understood that low disapproval ratings for Congress means EVERY incumbent is threatened, not just Democrats. And with far more Republicans up in the Senate, I'm sure they are getting nervous. And the Democrats are starting to put moderates in a vice in a smart way. To wit:

But against such philosophical stands, there is a stark political problem: How many Republicans are really going to oppose legislation expanding insurance coverage for children, tightening ethics rules and bolstering homeland security?

"They've had a pretty strong quarter," said Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), who praised the insurance bill as "creative" and suggested the homeland security bill would pass overwhelmingly. "The first quarter was not so good, and that's why they're not looking so good in the polls, but this quarter is looking very good for them. They can send their members home crowing about their accomplishments, and they've done it in a bipartisan way, which is exactly what they promised to do," LaHood said.

I don't know if people are paying enough attention; really only Iraq matters in the big picture. But Democrats are starting to expose the obstructionists and break through the media filter.