Redstate

Sen. Gregg believes that he has addressed the Constitutional issues raised by SCOTUS in its overturn of the line item veto. I will not pretend to know what they are.

As to your other Constitutional question, that is an interesting one. IANAL or an expert on the Constitution, so I will have to punt again. I will make some inquiries along these lines.

Nevertheless, I think the overall exercise is a win for the Republicans because they have exposed the Senate Democrats for what they are, unserious about meaningful reform of any kind.
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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman

I think it exposed that Democrats don't want to vote on this amendment. That may be because of constitutional questions or because they love earmarks or for another reason; I don't think it exposes anything either way.

Put the shoe on the other foot: Denying a vote to weaken the veto power of a corrupt president (like Grant or someone) is "soft on corruption." Denying a vote on the death penalty for shoplifters is "soft on crime." Sure, they can make great 30-second ads, but it's probably better for our democratic system that such proposals die a silent death in committee.

Gregg's proposal is clearly less extreme, and my concerns may be wrong. Still, constitutional brinksmanship isn't a win for anyone in the long term.

Constitutional questions? From the party of "penumbras and emanations?" From the party of "a right to privacy?" From the party of "the sweet mystery of life?" No, I don't think it is because of Constitutional questions.

Rather, I think they don't wasn to vote on this amendment because, like the DeMint amendment, they know it will pass. And if they don't want that, it can only be because they don't want more restrictive rules on earmarks. No, I think they have showm themselves just fine.

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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman

I don't think there is any such issue here because the override requirement is the same as the requirement for passage in the first place... a simple majority. Anything more than that and you'd have an issue, but with a simple majority requirement, you don't take any power away from the legislature.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

I HATE all earmarks, just on general principle.

I also haven't read this bill.

But it does seem very borderline Constitutionally.

And if I read the lead right, Congress has 8 days to act when the President recinds. But what if they don't take it up in 8 days? It isn't like Congress is all that great about following the law.

As much as I'd like to end earmarks and other BS spending, I really don't think this amendment is the way to do...plus it will end up in court and I predict it will take exactly 4 years for SCOTUS to rule on it.

A simple majority can reaffirm it in any case. Sure, it will end up in court. Everything ends up in court. That isn't a reason to not do something. I think they've managed to deal with the central issue of the LIV, and that is the changing of the balance of power by requiring a super majority vote on items the executive doesn't want, when a simple majority is all that should be required.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

He can't delay anything. He can use up one of his 4, he can veto it, or he can sign it. Or he can not sign it and it becomes law in 10 days anyway. He can't hang onto them and he can't span multiple bills with his package. He'd have 4 bills max per year that he can strike items from.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

Or he can not sign it and it becomes law in 10 days anyway.

Unless Congress adjourns in that 10 day window. Then it doesn't become law when the clock runs out.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

The President can send up to 4 rescission packages per year.

The term "rescission package," to my ear, sounds like a bundle of rescissions from multiple bills. That opens the possibility of substantial delay from the time of passage to the time of resubmission to Congress.

Otherwise, what's the point of the proposal? The President gets four bills per year when he can use this special new power? Don't more than four budget appropriations bills pass every year, to say nothing of the earmarks that get tucked into practically everything else that passes?

The package is the multiple strikes against a single bill. In the case of earmarks, there might be 100 objectionable items in a single bill.

I'm sure the 4 use limitation is simply a way to buy votes... it's the same as putting a sunset on a bill... it brings some reluctant legislators on-board.

A legislator could get his earmark in 5 bills and he would be guaranteed to get it. But if he's that serious about it he's gonna get it anyway.

I don't think it's a panacea and it won't end earmarking, but it is a good thing to have. It's mostly just a way for a President to call attention to the more objectionable items in a bill.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. - Milton Friedman

Sen. McConnell also noted that the Democrats similarly objected to provisions in last year’s ethics package, ultimately killing the overall measure by voting against cloture.

If not, you best learn to do so if you hope to stick around.

1. If the Republicans want to stop earmarks they would not have been part of tripling them. Yes, tripling the use of earmarks. The last time I posted a link from the Washington Times documenting this I got threatened for posting something obvious, so I will assume, as I was previously instructed on this issue, that "everyone knows that."

2. If the Republicans wanted to end earmarks all they had to do was stop putting them in bills.

3. If the Republicans wanted to stop earmarks they could have just banned them and not added the language to which significant numbers of people in both party object to on Constitutional bases.

4. We will see if the Democrats are serious about ending earmarks, I suspect they are not. In the mean time, declaring victory by repeating the behavior of the Democrats hardly seems like much of a victory.

Look, the bottom line is, is either party serious about ending pork? I suggest history indicates the answer is no. As such, for either party to claim "victory" is hardly justified.

1) The majority of Republicans did want to reduce earmarks. Most of the ones who did returned to Congress. This is not to say the Majority of Congress wanted to reduce earmarks. Powerful appropriations chairmen joining forces with a uniform voting block of Democrats in favor of earmarks are more than sufficient to block the will of the majority of Republicans, especially in the Senate with its seniority rules.

2) See point one above. And once the dam breaks on earmarks, even the people opposed to earmarks have to start competing for them to make sure their districts aren't short-changed.

3) First, see point one above about banning them. Second, there are not significant numbers of people in both parties who object to the language on a constitutional basis. If there were, the language would never have passed in the first place. There are a small number of people who object, and who raised the point as a constitutional issue that went to the SCOTUS and rendered the judicial verdict that the prior law was unconstitutional. Minorities go to court to win arguements, majorities go to the legislature.

4) We don't need to "see" if Democrats are serious, we know it was a lie. The sole purpose of Democratic leadership since at least the 1960s and possibly since the 1930s is to make the government the primary provider of services to citizens (in my middle school history classes I thought this was called feudalism, and I thought we had gotten past it, but apparently I was mistaken) and the best way to do that quickly is with earmarks. What we do need to do is expose their lies, and keep holding their feet to the fire.

Even if neither party is truly interested in finance reforms, you take your allies where you can get them, so long as you don't vary from pushing for the needed reforms. My criticism of the amendment is that it doesn't give the President enough authority to cut pork. I see no reason why the President shouldn't be able to send as many items from any spending bill as he wants to back to Congress for a vote on that specific subsection of spending being questioned. If it passes on an up or down vote, it stays, if it fails, its gone.

"I see no reason why the President shouldn't be able to send as many items from any spending bill..."

It's just that he can only send them back from 4 bills/yr.

"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal comfort... has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
--John Stuart Mill

He should be able to send one for each bill congress sends him.

going to work to long, actually for me it already doesn't work.

You see, the democrats ran saying they were going to clean this stuff up. They made a case for this stuff as a reason people should vote for them.

I was smart enough to know they were just pulling my leg, but at some point they are going to have to actually follow through on those promises.

Yes, the GOP did a crappy job of fiscal responsibility. You won't hear any argument.

But the GOP isn't the party in control of the spending anymore.

From here on out, the democrats need to pony up and start producing, because too much of this stuff, only gives the GOP fodder to beat them over the heads with come '08.

My guess is it will work until the 2008 election campaign begins in earnest.

Accountability isn't like random access memory; it doesn't get wiped clean every time you lose power. If Repubs want to rail against the Dems for not passing earmark reform then they need to have an explanation as to why they didn't do it when they had the chance.

Clearly your own has been wiped clean, since you no longer recall how 44 Dem senators voted to block earmark reform in the last Congress.

Hint; it generally takes 60 votes to get anything through the Senate. At least it did in the last session of Congress, where the Dems filibustered everything on principle.

The Republicans are clearly the champions of earmark reform and the only reason they haven't been able to pass any legislation relating to it or simply stop doing it is because of the Democrats.

But the GOP didn't spend the entire 2006 campaign running around the country screaming to anyone who would listen about Culture of Corruption™ and Draining the Swamp™, did they?

That said, I'm going to opt-out of the rest of this discussion as I really could not possibly care less about Earmark Reform®. Frankly, I just assume elected representatives carve-up a fair chunk our tax revenues opposed to having cubicle-bound desk jockeys in DC to it all. At least I have a say in who are the elected knuckleheads - well, until Johnny Mac and his merry band of political speech regulators get done, that is.

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, in response to the question, "Are we at war, Helen?" - posed by then-White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

that you are incapable of of a response.

The fact is that it has been the Democrats blocking earmark reform. Your not liking the fact does not change it. Your making snarky comments does not change it either.

Do you never give any consideration to the future?

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

you are correct about Bush, but you also realize, don't you, that doesn't get the democrats off the hook.

The idea that liberals[?] complain or fault Bush for spending is beyond hypocritical. Sit tight, we may expect higher levels of spending coupled with tax increases, to reduce the deficit and for the children naturally.

This will occur minus complaints from the left.

"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville