GOP ponders earmarks

Remember “earmarks“?

Tacking a favorite project on to another bill sort of went away three years ago when too many members of Congress said it wasted taxpayer dollars.

It never really disappeared, it’s just being done some other ways.

But now Republicans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee are starting to quietly defend earmarks.

Chairman Republican Bill Shuster agrees the bad reputation that earmarks have earned in years past.

But while is isn’t saying earmarks have a legitimate role in Congress, or that the House should drop the ban – he’s saying the practice could be helpful to legitimate projects.

We agree.

Complain all you want but Senator Dan Inouye brought a lot federal money to Hawaii over the years through earmarks.

Things got done that probably wouldn’t have without them.

Looking at next year

We’re staying away from this whole PRISM thing for now and wait for it to play out a bit.
It’s obvious the big internet companies are fibbing, so let’s see what the next of days brings.

Meanwhile, politics remains our sandbox of choice.

Let’s look ahead to the 2014 mid-term elections.

Republicans have a problem with young voters.

Democrats have a problem with young nonvoters.

This applies also to minority voters, and that helps explain why Republicans could have another strong midterm election without solving any of the many problems that threaten them in the 2016 presidential race.

Next year’s election will probably mislead Republicans by giving them hope they have overcome the trends that allowed Democrats to win the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections.

It could also point out one of the forces that is making it difficult for either party to gain and hold control over Washington.

Don’t tell me what to do

The Washington Post had an interesting article on how the Republican Party has broken into factions.

It says it’s so bad – nothing can get done.

We think it’s a good article because we agree with it.

We’re easy to please and here’s our take:

It was New Year’s Day and a lot of angry Republicans were crammed in a small room in the Capitol basement.

Democrats had out maneuvered them and they found themselves pushed into a corner.

Just about every American would be hit with a massive tax increase unless the House agreed to block the hikes for everyone but the wealthy.

The Republican leadership was split.

Speaker John Boehner was saying he’d vote yes and his top two lieutenants were saying they’d vote no.

Hours later, Democrats helped Boehner pass the measure over the opposition of more than 60 percent of GOP House members.

That vote, to avert the “fiscal cliff,” was a breaking point for House Republicans.

It had now disintegrated into squabbling factions, no longer able to agree on some of the most basic government functions.

File under: WTF?

President Obama continues making nice with House Republicans over lunch.

He’s pushing for a “grand bargain”, an immigration overhaul and the rest of the stuff he wants to get done.

He supposedly offered to back $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax revenue.

GOP leaders immediately slammed the door on anything that had to do with new taxes.

Here’s the part that almost made us spit our milk out our nose:

Obama also told them balancing the budget over the next 10 years is not on his priority list.

We understand the federal deficit is so large most of us can’t count that high.

But you have to start somewhere in knocking it down, don’t you?

The Republicans thanked the president for lunch and immediately held a news conference.

Once again they said, “If the president wants to let our unwillingness to raise taxes get in the way, then we are not gonna be able to set differences aside and focus on what we agree on.”

Speaker John A. Boehner, “Republicans want to balance the budget, the president doesn’t. Republicans want to solve our long-term debt problem. The president doesn’t.”

That sure sounds like that’s what the President said to us too.

Meanwhile the lunches continue daily.

The sky is falling, again

Both sides in the Senate seem to be on the same page when it comes to spending: once unthinkable, impossible cuts designed to force a more reasonable compromise may be much harder to undo than anyone ever thought.

If you need a refresher on why this silliness exists, take a look here.

For Republicans, the automatic, across-the-board spending cuts are an increasingly wonderful option with deficit hounds.

Of course their party’s defense hawks, who strongly are against the deep cuts to military spending disagree.

Democrats, on the other hand, would rather replace some of the spending cuts with new revenues (IE taxes) – an idea that isn’t going anywhere with the GOP.

And to finish this merry-go-round, Democrats refuse to even think about the Republican preference of replacing the military decreases with cuts to other programs.

This should give you an idea just how deeply divided Washington is.

The so-called sequester, which was designed to be so bad that neither side would let it take effect, could very well end up taking effect.

The fiscal-cliff deal that passed earlier this month delayed the cuts until March 1st.

Democrats say they think the sequester will be delayed again to give the House and Senate time to write their budgets.

Okay, Washington has a history of taking thing right to the absolute edge before working things out.

Maybe not this time.