These Democrats are just plain idiots:
Congress must pass a stopgap spending bill by Sept. 30 to avert a government shutdown. Both the House and Senate are scheduled to be on recess next week, adding to the urgency of reaching an agreement by the weekend.
Democrats opposed the GOP bill en masse because it partially offsets $3.65 billion in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with a $1.5 billion cut to a separate Department of Energy manufacturing loan program.
“The bill the House will vote on tonight is not an honest effort at compromise. It fails to provide the relief that our fellow Americans need as they struggle to rebuild their lives in the wake of floods, wildfires and hurricanes, and it will be rejected by the Senate,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in a statement Thursday night before the House vote.
The House did indeed approve the bill after Boehner compromised, which will keep the government operating and disaster relief money flowing:
…The House early Friday narrowly approved a stopgap spending measure to keep the federal government running into October, as Republican leaders secured the votes of conservatives who rejected a similar bill a day earlier. The 219-203 vote sets up a confrontation with the Senate, where Democratic leaders have vowed to block the measure in a dispute over federal disaster aid… (only) six Democrats supported it.
So let me get this straight. With unemployment over 9%, with our economy in shambles, and the world starting to panic over their own economy, the brilliant plan by Reid and his cronies is to shut down the federal government?
Wow!
It gets better. All disaster money would be stopped if they oppose this bill:
Without a resolution, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund will run out of money early next week
As DrJohn wrote yesterday “There simply is no overstating the stupidity of democrats.”
They want to protect a 100 million dollars for their green energy boondoggle so bad they will risk another shut down confrontation over it. That worked out so well for them last time….sigh.
I notice a pattern. President Obama stages a high stakes showdown. President Obama backs down. The world sees a weak leader of the free world, and the nation is downgraded.
Obama and company have succeeded in making the United States look like damn eunuchs.
See author page
They will spin this by claiming the GOP is being cruel and hurting jobs. Just watch.
I am sick and tired of this. The house has given the senate many bills over the past few months and Harry won’t even look at them. And to make it worse he blames the republicans which of course the ignorant and unintelligent believe. Reid has cried wolf too many times. Either put up or shut up and quit holding federal workers ( not those on the hill – they are a different kind) military personnel and seniors (SSN) hostage. I blame the people of Nevada who voted to keep this jackass in office. Those people don’t really care though because they are either dead, illegal or a Disney character.
Calling on the voters in Nevada…when are you going to do something about Harry Reid? Do you not care that he is single-handedly throwing America under the bus?
Dems in the Senate have refused to put out any budget at all for – how long now?
Jeff Sessions is keeping track.
It has been, according to his web site, 875 days.
http://budget.senate.gov/republican/pressarchive/2011-09-23StopGapSpending.pdf
A budget in place would have prevented all this woe.
What stops Democrats?
Are they really too chicken to put in writing where they stand on priorities?
Apparently.
Let’s offset it by reducing corporate farm subsidies. The farm bill, up for renewal in 2012, includes $30 billion in agricultural subsidies–$5 billion of which are direct payments (aka “handouts”) to wealthy farm owners. Or how about cutting oil and gas industry tax subsidies, which are running around $4 billion per year?
Maybe Rick Perry should pay back the FEMA money he was whining about, if we can’t reach a rational bipartisan agreement on how to pay for it.
This is obviously another republican-contrived budget crisis. You folks must be consuming your own brand of Kool-Aid by the gallon at this point.
Hey, my advice is that you keep it up! It’s best to ignore that 83.3% Congressional disapproval rating! The voting public actually LOVES what Congress is doing!
We may be drinking koolaid, but you are higher than a kite. I can see it now, this is how the WH and the slobbering press will spin this… “another republican-contrived budget crisis.”
@MaryAnn, #6:
It’s not spin, it’s reality. The republican strategy has apparently come down to including a poison pill in every important bit of legislation, and then squawking loudly about the democrats’ reluctance to pass the important bit when they take note of the toxic additive.
Just how stupid do republicans believe the average American actually is?
Greg…. Not nearly as dumb as the demorats and Obama think we are!!
If you want to know what left is up to, watch what they accuse others of doing.
@Greg:
Since you can’t look it up I posted the definition for you of what you are doing.
Psychological Projection: is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people. Thus, projection involves imagining or projecting the belief that others originate those feelings.[1]
Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted unconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them.
Poison pill? Oooo, how horrible. They cut green energy subsidies. Oooooo. (roll eyes)
You’re also a raging hypocrite. Every time you post you help us that much more.
So, what about those farm subsidy handouts? (Which, among members of Congress, go disproportionately to wealthy republicans, by the way.) A few minor adjustments there would more than cover FEMA costs, wouldn’t they? What about the $4 billion a year for the oil and gas industry? Their record profits haven’t been incentive enough?
I won’t even bother taking the stupidity question further. After all, we’ve probably got people reading who haven’t figured out after nearly 3 years that Rocky the Flying Squirrel’s primary objective has been to extend a highly profitable speaking and book promotion tour for as long as possible.
DoE loans to Obama bundlers doesn’t stop with Solyndra.
Obama is planning to fund raise at a $20,000 – $35,000 a plate dinner with Missouri businessman and Obama Bundler Tom Carnahan.
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/political-fix/article_55606402-e611-11e0-9a20-001a4bcf6878.html
How much has Tom Carnahan asked for from the DOE for his wind farm that might never happen?
$90 million, to start.
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2009/10/26/daily7.html
(He ended up getting $107 million of OUR TAX DOLLARS.)
This farm was supposed to be finished by now, according to that article.
But it hasn’t begun.
The Osage Indian Tribe is suing over the threat of the destruction of their one-of-a-kind prarie ecosystem.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20110920_12_A8_PAWHUS962968
AND LOOKIE HERE!
Today, Ed Martin sent a letter to Congressman Russ Carnahan requesting he ask his brother, Tom Carnahan, to forfeit the $107 Million he received from the Stimulus bill for windmills.
“We should use the $107 million for job re-training here in St. Louis or to help small business startups instead of funding Carnahan family windmills.” said Ed Martin. “This is the very worst of Washington when one Carnahan pays off another – using other people’s hard earned tax dollars.”
Gee, Obama, what to do?
http://www.morpn.com/federal-offices/u-s-representative/call-on-carnahan-family-to-forfeit-stimulus-funds/2299/
Federal government shutdown? Bring it on!
@Nan G: Hopefully, in 2012 the DOJ of a new admunistration will get busy pursuing all the “Stimulus” scammers and raiding the offshore accounts where they’ve temporarily stashed the monies they’ve looted from the taxpayers. It should make Enron look like chump change.
@Disenchanted: #2
Sharron Angle is a complete flake, if the Tea Party had run somebody else they would have won. If she’d run a better campaign she’d still have won. Harry is just as hated in NV as he is else were in the US.
@MaryAnn: #3
Well, nothing for at least 6 years.
Harry got 361,655 votes or 50% and Sharron got 320,995 votes or 45% of the votes so a heck of alot of Nevadans voted for Sharron even though she’s a flake and she kept sticking her foot in her mouth.
@Greg: @ Greg, #11- You say that the majority of farmers are Republican, and I believe it, because they have to actually deal with real world situations, instead of having bong parties in their dorm, or drug- induced flashbacks of bong parties. Republicans do the real work on the ground. If you have eaten in the last 24 hours, thank a Republican.
As for the subsidies in the petro Industry, that was instituted during the years when oil was $9 dollars a barrel and the Oil Companies weren’t making much in the way of profits- I agree that the subsidy now resembles most of the laws regarding the Bureau of Indian Affairs- outdated and unnecessary, but just as the
Liberals,progressives, socialists love their Bureaucracies like the BIA, so do the Republicans love their oil subsidies- well, hell, that’s what they pay their lobbists with.So this kinda crap is done on both sides- we can sit here like ignorant arab ragheads and let this be a thousand year grudge where we throw stones at each other, or figure something out.
Now, the Bill that Boehner and the house passed didn’t have a “poison pill” in it, unless you were a
liberal,progressive, socialist- but if you were a Republican, it was but a single step towards fiscal sanity.If you don’t like it, too bad.
DOE made the front pages today with their $100,000 gift to each and every group that entered a ”solar building” into their Solar Decathlon which opened in pouring rain today in DC on the National Mall.
A 650 square foot place (w/Murphy bed) came in at $450,000 for parts and free labor.
The roof, on a good day will generate 8 kilowatts of energy per day…..but today it got zero.
(More facts plus photos here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/solar-decathlons-rainy-start_594112.html )
I’m in a 650 square foot very efficient condo (Earth Day winner 2008) but in the last three years I have used (for the month of August) 13.25 (2009) 11 (2010) and 12.25 (2011) daily.
So, 8 (on a good day) ain’t going to cut it!
One other thing: my place cost only $35,000 a good $410,000 less!
@Blake, #18:
What I said was that the majority of the members of Congress who personally benefit–or who have close family members that personally benefit– from farm subsidy handouts are wealthy republican. That has been true in the past. It continues to be so with the current Congress. It might suggest why the current republican House majority studiously dodged the topic when they were busy looking for “wasteful government spending” to cut earlier this year.
I suppose republican politicians occasionally do real work on the ground–assuming that posing with a microphone in one hand and a leg up on a hay bale qualifies as working. Being paid by the government not to grow certain crops doesn’t meet my own definition of working.
Marijuana farmers are probably working harder than the average “gentleman-farmer” politician to bring in the nation’s single largest cash crop each year, and they sure as hell aren’t getting any help from the government to do it. Maybe we should consider that a perfect model of a free-market operation, supplying a demand for a natural product that’s far less harmful than a couple of legal vices in the face of some of the stiffest unconstitutional government interference ever mounted. Billions of tax dollars have been squandered on an unconstitutional Prohibition, when regulation and taxation could have turned that into billions in positive revenue flow. This is what comes of electing idiots.
Blanket statements rarely work, Greg. Most especially when you deliver them sans historic content, links, and meant to glorify a party that doesn’t even come close to the heroes of the working man you’d like to think. Hate to be the one to burst your bubble with reality, but….
…take, for example, 2001 where seven members of Congress personally received farm subsidies… four Senators and three House members.
Marion Berry D, Arkansas – $649,750
Charles W. Stenholm D, Texas – $39,298
Blanche Lincoln D, Arkansas – $351,085
Richard G. Lugar R, Indiana – $48,464
Charles E. Grassley, R Iowa – $110,935
Sam Brownback, R Kansas – $16,913
Dennis J. Hastert, R Illinois – $13,000
Four GOP, three Dems. TTL subsidies to Dems, $1,040,133. Total to GOP: $176,372 . That’s an average of $346,711 to the Dem farmers, and $44,093 to the GOP farmers.
Oops…
In today’s Congress, 23 Congressional members, or their families have signed up for farm subsidies. 17 are Republicans and 6 are are Dems, according to Donald Carr’s Mar 2011 Huffpo column. This time the subsidy monies are favoring the bulk of the GOP and/or their family members (since they aren’t broken down via family member or elected official) – averaging $333,410 per GOP member or family, to $81,642 average to Dem member or family. Technically, this is less per member/family for the GOP than the Dems got in 2001, and the average for the Dems is almost twice as much as the GOP were getting back in 2001.
Carr notes part of the reason of the new large presence of GOP farmers in Congress is the lack of rural Democrats since they were swept out of office in the 2010 election. But farm subsidy support has never been limited to the GOP. In the Nov election “… at least 15 Democratic members of the House Agriculture Committee lost their seats, including ardent subsidy defenders Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota and Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota. Meanwhile, Democrats who voted against the Farm Bill were largely unscathed.”
To further muddy your claim that Dems are the good guys on farm subsidies, Greg… not to mention another dent in your blanket statement… the reference to the “farm bill” is the mammoth one the Pelosi House was just proud as punch to get thru in July 2007.. you know, the one you mentioned is expiring. Just who do you think originated it?
I’d like to also point out that, when HR 2419 hit POTUS Bush’s desk May of 2008, he vetoed it. The Veto was easily overridden in the Senate with 82 yeas to 13 nays. DeMint voted “present”, while a Sen Obama, along with Edwards, Kennedy and McCain abstained from voting. Of those 82, Dems were 46. Only two Dems voted no along with 11 GOPers.
That doesn’t fit comfortably with your narrative, does it Greg?
But the tide has been changing with the rising cries of some fiscal conservatism. So the freshmen GOP entries are among the rising number of GOP voices who are putting the subsidies on the table for cuts. That would include Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor. The Dems, once so proud of their farm subsidy support, are also starting to change their mind about the spending, including Dick Durbin and Debbie Stabenow.
Ironically, beneficiaries, Lugar and Grassley, have records arguing for reductions/reform in subsidies, favoring conservation programs instead.
Good for them all, altho I’ll bet it will be a up hill road thru established die hards of both parties. But, Greg, you sure can’t play the game that Dems don’t support (and engage in) subsidies, or that it has always been a GOP demanded perk. History proves you wrong.
How do you pin the fact that the GOP doesn’t want to pay for disaster relief on Obama?
How do you come up with the lie that the “GOP doesn’t want to pay for disaster relief” at all, liberalmann?
FACT: It was Senate Dems who vetoed the bill, not the GOP.
FACT: It was the Dems who didn’t want to “pay for the disaster relief” by refusing to cut their precious green energy waste.
Fish in a barrel…. we need a brighter light bulb in the lib/prog audience, Curt.
The one I would really like to see go away is the damn sugar subsidy, it wont make a personal difference but it should matter to the country as a whole.
@MataHarley, #23:
FACT: What we’re seeing again and again from House republicans is a transparent political maneuver that consists of adding something democrats will find totally unacceptable to an important legislative item that nearly everyone would otherwise readily agree upon.
Do they really believe they’ll get away with this sort of worse-than-useless bullshit for another 13 months and not have their butts nailed to the barn door in the 2012 elections? Do they think that their abysmal disapproval ratings signify nothing? Maybe they think there’s no relationship between weather vanes and the way the wind is blowing.
Greg, what is it with lib/progs that they respond to facts with some sort of emotional, vague argument based on nothing but your partisanship?
You seem to be perturbed that when spending is mentioned, the GOP is requiring some sort of reduction in spending to compensate. And this is, to you, a “transparent political maneuver”?
Funny… I look at it as fiscally responsible.
But it’s apparent there is nothing that exists that is not some sort of a sacred cow for you and your party. Thanks for that clarification.
Other than that, the facts remain the same. The Dems are refusing to “pay for disaster relief” – not only by not passing the bill, but by refusing to reduce spending equally somewhere else. Strikes me as the problem lies within the continued lib/prob nanny policies of more and more spending, based on more and more excuses.
Say Greg, what election outcome were you predicting last November?
Grassley-Issa letter to IG suggests obstruction
http://www.examiner.com/gun-rights-in-seattle/grassley-issa-letter-to-ig-suggests-obstruction
@Greg: FACT: the
liberal,progressive,Dem, socialists, from 2006-2008 had only ONE agenda- deny Bush ANYTHING.Since then, the
liberal,dem, progressive, socialistshave wantonly IGNORED the lack of jobs, choosing instead to ram the obammerscare health crap down the American people’s throats. Three Years! and still no budget, still no jobs bill, because theliberal,oh hell, you know who I mean-REFUSE to work with the Republicans here. Now I have some problems with the Republicanstoo, but they are trying to initiate a conversation here, and Baby Reid refuses to put it up for a vote. Why? Could it be because some of his buddies might just vote for it? The right put a bill forward, (actually four bills now), one that would actually begin to trim our debt and deficit, and theliberals,dems,progressives, socialists want to take their ball and go home whining, all because they can’t get their way.It’s kinda funny how these people say that the TEA Party is marginal at best, then expend sooooooo much of their efforts tryin in vain to ridicule them.
Sorry- the del button went nuts- but you can still read for content and comprehension