Congress Is Dead! Long Live Congress!

by Brent Mesick
The election is over. The holiday season has begun. (Yes, Bill O'Reilly, I didn't say "Christmas.")
We can put politics behind us and focus on that time-honored American tradition of self-gratification and spoiling our offspring -- if we can afford it. Yes, the New World Order is in disorder and the people have spoken truth to power.
Let's not have Dad carve the lame duck for the holiday celebration just yet (yeah, "Holiday" again. Screw you, Bill). Let's take a peek at the gifts left under the country's collective evergreen.
Five years after Enron, the U.S. is looking at easing the rules that govern corporations. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) joined New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to commission a study by McKinsey & Co. to see if regulations are causing the U.S. stock exchanges to lose listings to less-regulated overseas markets. They join Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen, late of Goldman-Sachs, one of the world's largest and most successful investment banks, in worrying that U.S. companies are being "over-regulated."
Business needs to be competitive, they cry. "Competitive" is code for what they don't say.
What they don't say is the businesses they support are already highly successful.
They don't say these businesses are so successful because they pass on to the "customer" (i.e. the people), the costs of environmental damage, deteriorating health due to unsafe and unhealthy products, the loss of retirement funds due to pirated pensions and other hidden costs.
Economists like to call this passing-on to others the harmful consequences of purely financial decisions "negative externalities." Business people don't like to call them anything at all.
Another neat little gift is the earmark. Earmarks aren't the "cut along dotted line" templates used by Van Gogh wannabes, they are the funds appropriated by Congress to be spent on specific projects. This is different from normal practice. You see, usually Congress allocates a lump sum to an agency to spend as it sees fit, according to the agency's internal budgeting process. Earmarks oblige agencies to spend a portion of the budge on special projects chosen by politicians. The most famous of these earmarks is Sen. Ted Stevens's (R-AK) earmark of $223 million to construct a bridge nicknamed the "Bridge to Nowhere," to connect an Alaska town of 8,900 persons to an island of 50 inhabitants (saving a short ferry ride).
All this will change with the new, Democratic Congress, right?
Don't throw away those gift receipts yet. The House and Senate appropriations subcommittees, the subcommittees responsible for writing the spending bills, will indeed come under new management with the flurry of Democrats riding the snow storm of the 2006 election. However, "what is good for the goose is good for the gander," according to Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who is set to become chairwoman of the transportation subcommittee.
The next chairman of the full Senate appropriations committee is Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), known as the "King of Pork." West Virginia is littered with roads and public buildings that bear his name. A recent appropriations feat of Sen. Byrd was to put the two of the Coast Guard's management centers, and next year a third, in his landlocked state.
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), incoming chairman of the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee, and deliverer to his state of over $903 million in earmarks, had this prediction about earmarks: "I don't see any monumental changes."
The House needs some cleaning as well. Rep. David Obey  (D-WI), set to become chairman of the full House appropriations committee, boasts on his website of giving $300,000 to a single dairy in his district, $6 million to develop an airless tire, and $8 million to research plastic food containers.
The new, slightly more Democrat, Congress won't necessarily implement all the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission (as promised), either. They want to skip the one that asks for an across-the-board reorganization of Congress to improve oversight and funding of the nation's intelligence agencies.
The 9/11 Commission emphasized, "of all our recommendations, strengthening congressional oversight may be among the most difficult and important. So long as oversight is governed by current congressional rules and resolutions, we believe the American people will not get the security they need."
The Republicans didn't listen, and now the Democrats won't either. "I don't think that suggestion is going anywhere," said Rep.C.W. Bill Young (R-FL). Democratic officials won't say why, but the 9/11 Commission's Co-Chairman, Thomas Kean, mentioned he thinks it's because the appropriators, the heads of the Defense appropriations subcommittees, do not seem to care too much about strengthening oversight and funding. Currently, intelligence spending is set by the Defense appropriations subcommittees. They don't seem interested in relinquishing purse strings and power in the interest of safety.
Don't look in your stocking for an end to the wars, either. Yes, wars, plural: Afghanistan is so easily forgotten, except by the heroin dealers enriched by the increase in the Afghanistan poppy trade.
Recently, the U.S. military has proposed doubling the size of Afghanistan's army even as President Bush prepared to urge NATO members to send more troops.
With the election moving to the side of the Democrats, you'd think there'd by a symbolic gesture, a recommendation, or even a suggestion toward pulling the troops out of Iraq. As the "do-nothing" (more aptly, "do-nothing-but-harm") 109th Congress mires itself in sloth (lust, avarice, and pride already exercised), 110th isn't positioning itself in a practical condition for withdrawal.
Remember, the Democrats controlled the Senate in 2002 when Bush was given the authority to invade Iraq. Pro-war Democrats sided with Bush when presenting false and misleading information about WMDs in Iraq. At least one Senator has repented, well, repented being a Democrat, and become an Independent. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut is still pro-war all the way. But Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), and Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI), among others, have stayed Democrat and barely moved from the bloody pro-war line.
Less the six months ago, on June 15, 2006, the U.S. Senate defeated a resolution calling for the withdrawal of American combat forces in Iraq. Only six of 100 senators voted in favor of the resolution, and there were considerably more than six Democrats in the senate.
The same week, the House of Representatives claimed the ongoing war in Iraq was part of the "war on terror" and that it was against U.S. interests to withdraw from Iraq. That was a 256 to 143 vote. Forty-two Democrats joined all but three Republicans.
The Democrats are the party of the people, right? They'll at least support civil liberties, right? No, Virginia there isn't a Santa Clause. A bi-partisan congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act, the most egregious legislation against civil liberties since the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798. The USA PATRIOT Act lets the government get individuals' medical, mental health, financial, and school records, spy on what books individuals buy or check out of the library, search individuals' homes without telling them till later, and lock up immigrants indefinitely without charges and in secret.
Then there's the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (the MCA). Where the USA PATRIOT Act dared not tread, the MCA trampled with pride. The MCA retroactively legalizes the president's policy of torturing detainees and allows the use of evidence gained by torture to be admitted into hearings of the military commissions. The MCA also strips all but U.S. citizens -- including legal U.S. residents -- of the fundamental right to challenge their detention in court -- what's known as the writ of habeas corpus.
Here's the real gift -- the MCA allows the president to name anyone an "enemy combatant" and detain him or her indefinitely. That means U.S. citizens can be spirited away to Guantanamo without a lawyer -- to be tortured -- legally.
No, Virginia, there isn't a Santa Claus. If there were, he'd have to be bound and gagged, waterboarded, then draped in loose black cloth and a pointed hood. Don't forget the electrodes.
Yes, Virginia, twelve Democratic senators voted for the MCA. So did thirty-two Democratic representatives.
The 109th Congress is dead. Long live the 110th.

Brent Mesick can be reached at brentmesick [at] yahoo [dot] com.
Tags: politics, Democrats, Republicans, Congress, tax policy, policy, law, Iraq, Iraq war, Iraq withdrawal, anti-war movement, Guantanamo, torture, war on terror, USA PATRIOT Act, Military Commissions Act, repression, civil liberties.

Comments

[Harris Tocracy]

I am outraged by this one-sided reporting. This liberal questioning is anti-American. It is clear that the easing of restrictions on American business is crucial for the operation of a free market. Free includes free from pesky regulations. The sacrifice of a few pensions or jobs is nothing next to the gains in the Dow or the U.S. GDP.
Also - earmarks are communal, they help spread the wealth. It allows U.S. Senators and Representatives to share in lucrative campaign contributions while we corporate heads and progressively wealthy earn well-deserved no-bid contracts on whatever Congress dreams up. It’s win-win. This Brent Mesick seems more concerned with losing.
He also failed to identify the benefits to the investors in Iraq’s economy, Dick Cheney, or my peers on the Defense Advisory Board. Frankly, defense stocks are up. We’ve made a killing.
I hope future articles will provide the reading public with a more balanced view of the workings of U.S. policy. In fact, I think I will contribute to this blog.

[Comrade O'Brien]

Attention Comrade,
Please visit http://ministryoflove.wordpress.com to learn about our creative protest of the Military Commissions Act.
Regards,
O'Brien