Remember the partial FAA shutdown? Harry Reid had blamed House Republicans for not passing an extension that funded the agency — er, wait, for not passing an extension Reid liked. The House did pass an extension that trimmed pork spending on the Essential Air Service, and more importantly reversed an Obama administration rule change that was nothing more than a payoff to Obama’s union allies. When Reid realized that even the mainstream media wasn’t buying his spin, he threw in the towel:
House and Senate leaders on Thursday brokered a “bipartisan compromise” over Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization, ending — if only temporarily — a two-week standoff that had sidelined 4,000 FAA employees as well as 70,000 construction workers involved in airport improvement projects and cost the government tens of millions of dollars in uncollected revenue from the airline industry.
So what was the “bipartisan compromise”? The Senate will adopt the House bill by unanimous consent, which will allow it to go to President Obama for his signature. Obama’s Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood, will then have to waive the subsidy cuts under his legal authority, which will put the onus for pork spending squarely on the White House:
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood could then use his authority to grant waivers to any rural airports faced with losing the subsidy, which helps them entice air carriers to provide service. If the airport authorities make a convincing case, LaHood would allow them to keep receiving the money, a Transportation Department aide said.
The subsidy cuts had been approved by the House but had become a sticking point for Senate Democrats, who saw them as a Republican tactic in service of a larger goal: forcing Democrats to accept anti-union language that had been included in a long-term FAA reauthorization bill the House had approved weeks ago.
Politico describes this as a “Hobson’s choice”:
Things changed, however, when the GOP-controlled House passed a long-term extension bill in April that neutralized a National Mediation Board ruling allowing airline industry workplaces to form unions with a simple majority vote.
Democrats cried foul, but Republicans, led by Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chair of the House transportation committee, answered with a short-term extension bill that cut the essential air services budget, forcing Democrats into a Hobson’s choice: accept the anti-union provision, vote for cuts to airport subsidies in some key members’ districts, or allow the FAA to go without reauthorization and shut down.
Well, there was a third option. The Senate could have passed their own version of the FAA funding authorization extension, which would have created the need for a conference committee to resolve the differences between the chambers. That’s exactly what the process had been for the 200-plus years that the Senate existed before Harry Reid became Majority Leader.
House republicans were willing to add over $1 billion to the federal deficit during their 5 week recess in order to “save” $14 million by closing a handful of subsidized airports. (The airports mainly served areas represented by democrats.) They were also willing to put 74,000 people out of work in the process–70,000 in the private sector.
Ed Morrissey apparently believes there’s some sort of “onus” conferred upon democrats for preventing this from happening. Maybe he should check which way the wind is blowing before making comments about the stink
@Greg:
Greg, try not to be obtuse here.
The House passed legislation taking care of the FAA matter.
Once it got to the Senate it stalled. The Dims didn’t take care of the problem. They didn’t take any action on the House legislation, thus the problem that you’ve got your panties in a twist over.
Your guys, the Dims in the Senate, they are the ones willing to add over $1 billion to the federal deficit during their 5 week recess in order to “save” $14 million by closing a handful of subsidized airports. The Dims in the Senate were also the ones willing to put 74,000 people out of work in the process–70,000 in the private sector.
The House passed legislation handling the issue. The Dim controlled Senate sat on it.
Poor senile Harry Reid.
It’s a good thing Senators can ”revise and extend” their remarks.
But this time he was speaking on the radio, the NPR to be exact.
Reid mistakenly said on NPR that Delta won’t give in to new rules that the National Labor Relations Board passed under the Obama administration. Those new rules make it easier for labor unions to organize workers.
Actually, the labor board that oversees airline workers’ unionization is the National Mediation Board. Reid’s error is leading some Big Labor critics to question his ability to fully understand union politics and policy.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/08/04/reid-cant-keep-labor-bureaucracies-straight/#ixzz1UB9cnCrY
How old is Harry Reid?
Reid was born in 1939.
He is 72.
Senility and even Alzheimer’s could be in play.
@Nan G:
That would merely be an excuse.
My vote is that he is just plain stupid.
Hopefully, we can vote enough Republican senators in and relive poor ol’ Harry of his job! He should have been gone in the last election… another hearty ‘thank you’ to the unions for keeping this moron in office!
@Aye, #2:
The House passed legislation that republicans knew wouldn’t get through the Senate. That’s the equivalent of doing nothing at all. It’s nothing more than posturing. Pretending to govern. The current republican majority House is surely among the most worthless, ineffective, and irresponsible national governing bodies in living memory. All they seem to be good at is crisis creation. They certainly haven’t done squat to deal with recession or to ameliorate the distress it’s caused for working class and middle class American families. They’re too busy trying to figure out how to cut high-end taxes even further, how to shift blame and negative consequences to somebody else, and how to take back control of the nation.
If Reid manages to avoid the loss of over $1 billion and 74,000 jobs, that falls under the category of positive results. If he doesn’t, we’ll get more consequences of republican irresponsibility–no doubt accompanied by endless explanations of how it’s all the fault of democrats. Meanwhile, a few airline CEOs will be smiling over where the lost billion has gone.
@Greg:
Whether or not that is true makes no difference, Greg. The House passed legislation on the matter. The Senate failed to. Who is at fault?
Perspective, Greg. I keep repeating that, I know, but it must needs be pointed out to you time and time again that your perspective is what leads you to those conclusions. It’s not that you are right about the issue, only that your perspective is what it is.
See my above comment. You only state this because your perspective is from the liberal/progressive standpoint, and as that is the case, any time the liberal/progressives, or Democrats, do not get everything they want, they shut things down, and you blame the other side for whatever the problem is. Nice and convenient for you. But not the truth.
Oh, but please tell us how Obama, with both houses of congress willing to enact whatever he fancied, has done anything of substance about the recession during Obama’s first two years. What’s that? You can’t? But you just continue to blame the other side for the problem, and not allow that the liberal/progressives have any responsibility, or culpability, in the whole mess. Convenient, but again, not the truth.
-One, posit for me exactly how they are trying to cut “high-end” taxes even further.
-Two, the only person shifting blame anywhere is Obama, who never takes responsibility for his actions, or inaction. It’s always someone else’s fault.
-Three, both parties want control of the country. That is nothing new. What is new is that there is a group of people who want the liberal/progressives in both parties, the real culprits in getting us where we are today, to get the hell out of government. What is really funny is that you argue for the liberal/progressives in the Democratic Party and their ideas, when the ideas of the liberal/progressives in the GOP are similar, if not quite as drastic. Yet, you label them as conservatives. Apparently, you do not understand the concept of a conservative.
For example, you wish to continue with the outrageous spending on “entitlements” to people, but only those you favor. The GOP leadership wishes to continue spending on entitlements to people, but only those they favor. Conservatives wish to stop spending on entitlements all-together, or at least curb them severely. To EVERYONE.
Your whole post there in #6 was a misguided rant on Republicans, and all because the Democrats didn’t get everything they wanted and refused to pass a bill that the House did. You shift blame to the GOP in the House, and place no blame or culpability of the mess on the Democrats in the Senate. Partisan much?
Reid is losing it.
Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade the nation’s credit rating reinforces Democrats’ call for increasing tax revenue, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Friday.
In a statement, Reid said:
I-yi-yi!
“Balanced approach?”
The reality is our downgrade is because of profligate spending, not that we don’t tax people enough.
So, who’s rich?
How about those earning more than $500,000 income/year.
What tax rate on them would lift us out of this present problem?
A 100% tax rate would not be enough.
We have IRS numbers from 2009, when we were all earning better than now.
There were 717,932 filings for $500,000 and over.
(According to the chart, these taxpayers are already paying ~25%)
This amounts to $1,029,256,075.
That’s NOT ENOUGH!
So, who else, Harry Reid?
Who else is ”rich?”
If we say it is everyone bringing home over $200,000, it would be $1,941,462,807 which exceeds the current deficit.
But it kills that goose that laid that golden egg, don’t forget that.
Then what?
Oh!
I know.
Stop the spending!
So, why not stop the spending NOW?
@ Greg
Did you take a civics class at all? Do you have any idea how the legislative branch even works? The senate could have passed its own bill and sent it to conference with the house bill. The senate didn’t pass a bill. The senate can’t do anything. The senate is lead by a moron.
By the way…where is the democrat budget? You still looking for that? How many days has it been since a democrat has even proposed a budget? Can they spell budget?
@Aqua:
From Harry Reid’s POV this Debt Ceiling bill is the best thing since sliced bread!
WHY?
Because it DEEMS the Senate to have created the next two annual budgets!
Whew!
Harry Reid’s work here is ”done!”
Well, it is deemed done.
LOL!
So, don’t expect to see another US annual budget until after the election.
@Aqua, #9:
Yes, apparently they can. The word budget, correctly spelled, appears a number of times in the Fiscal Year 2012 Democratic Budget – Summary & Text, which was released on April 13, 2011.
Obama released his FY 2012 budget proposal on February 14, 2010.
Many people on the right evidently don’t believe in the existence of anything that their right-wing propaganda outlets haven’t seen fit to make mention of. They commonly believe that Obama and democrats of the House and the Senate failed to put forward a federal budget for FY 2010. That’s also hogwash.
@Greg, it’s kinda embarrassing you have to have people come from behind and clean up your misrepresentations.
The Van Hollen amendment was one of three Dem counters – out of a total of four all together – offered to H. Res Con 34, sponsored by Ron Paul, with no co-sponsors, and introduced back on April 11th. Van Hollen’s amendment failed with 23 Dems voting against it, voting with the full GOP body.
The other two Dem offered amendments also failed. Rep Cleaver’s amendment had 75 Dems standing with the GOP against the amendment in the vote. And AZ’s Rep. Grijalva amendment had 108 Dems voting with the GOP full body against the amendment.
Ultimately, H Con Res 34 passed the House with nary one Dem in support of the budget, and four GOP voting against it. There was a NC rep, the usual from MT, WVs and, as a lesson to those PaulBots out there, Ron Paul voted against his own proposed Continuing Res. Yes, he was one of the four opposing GOP members on that vote. To make it even more abundantly clear to the Paul’faithful, there wasn’t one amendment changing his originally introduced bill. All four amendments failed. Therefore Ron Paul sponsored a budget, it was unchanged, and then voted against it.
Duh on Ron Paul, but predicatable as this is a nasty habit of his.
Like has been asked of you, Greg… where’s the Dem budget?
Now perhaps you don’t get it. An offered amendment isn’t a proposed budget, but alterations to a budget that was already proposed by Ron Paul.. clearly not a Democrat. But the three attempts by your party were all shot down… with the aid of other members in your party.
So let’s repeat the question asked of you…. where is that Dem budget again?
As for the WH budget… there’s another laugh. Obama’s budget was indeed released Feb 14th. Of course, like you, Obama is also math challenged, and the CBO said the budget figures used underestimated the 10 year deficits on Mar 18th.
By the time CBO had scored it on Mar 21st, the outlook wasn’t good. Even including precollecting money for O’healthcare that wouldn’t be spent until four years later (in other words, another way to rob Peter to pay Paul and not pay out anything at first, banking the cash), that by 2021, the public debt wouuld be 87% of the GDP, and interest alone would consume 1/5th of the revenues.
From the CBO 3/21/11 analysis:
And you wonder why the credit rating agencies are more than a tad wary?
When you see what the CBO was using for anticipate GDP annual figures, it even becomes more of a bad joke… Guess the CBO was buying into the theory that “recovery summer” really was happening. Reality has since come crashing down around their ears.
Now, considering that we’d be using Obama’s budget as the centerpiece for the debt ceiling debate, you’ll figure out why most everyone was livid at the idea of a $4T “cut” off of Obama $9T was absurd to begin with… only spending $5T more instead of what Obama wanted to spend at $9T. But at least that would have been enough for the S&P to hold the status quo.
But no…. not your POTUS and not your Sen Dem majority.
And yet they have the umitigated gall to call this a “tea party downgrade”. Now if that ain’t playing on “stupid”, I don’t know what is. But then, it’s apparently working on you, isn’t it?
Oh yes, Greg. One more thing INRE your comment:
What’s hogwash is your knowledge of civics and reading. No one ever said that Obama didn’t put forth a budget. What the heck do you think all the numbers battling was all about? However that is because a POTUS is required, by federal law, (31 U.S.C. 1105(a), to submit a budget between the first Monday in January and the first Monday in February. Even at that, Obama was johnny-come-lately.
No one ever said Obama didn’t submit a budget. Had he not, he would have been in violation of law… not that he doesn’t do that regularly anyway, mind you.
What has been repeatedly said is that the Dems have never proposed a budget of their own for 2012. In fact, they have a pesky habit of not proposing budgets for a few years now. Therefore all the hogwash is running in one ear, thru the vast expanse of your cranium, and out the other.
Maybe the budget stalemate will continue through the remainder of the year, in which case the automatic cuts that were part of the debt ceiling compromise will kick in and the Bush tax cuts will expire.
@ Greg, #14
Let ’em. Credit downgrade, record spending, over regulation, national healthcare, rampant unemployment, an unstable economy, and across the board tax increases. If that is how you would like Obama to go into the 2012 elections, so be it.
Just tell us, where is the democrat budget. Not an amendment, or some other summary statement, we want to see the numbers.
Oh, come on!
The debt ceiling bill, now signed into law, deems a budget for 2012.
At one point in the negotiations, the 2012 budget was to be slashed by $36 billion.
But the final number of cuts was just $7 billion.
So to ensure there wasn’t another government shutdown fight over cuts in September, the deal deems and passes the 2012 budget.
Sometimes ”deem and pass” is called the Slaughter Solution.
Back when ObamaCare was being fought over Obama, a former constitutional law professor, said he would sign a bill if it is passed by the controversial “Slaughter Solution.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/87675-gibbs-healthcare-bill-by-deem-and-pass-will-meet-constitutional-muster