United States Congress 5: Still Looking for a Spine

[Cartmann99]

41 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

His supporters and campaign contributors must be really pissed.  I'd think he would peddle the lie about spending more time with his family instead of admitting he was getting a higher  paying job.

Also, the taxpayers of Pennsylvania now have to foot the bill for a special election to replace him. 

 

[fraurosena]

Sweet Rufus. Could they make it any more obvious the GOP is in thrall to the Russians?

 

[Cartmann99]

They really don't know how to deal with women who can't be bribed with expensive jewelry and spa treatments, so they just swing their dicks around in a clumsy fashion.

2 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Sweet Rufus. Could they make it any more obvious the GOP is in thrall to the Russians?

 

Both of my senators are in that picture.

[AmazonGrace]

 

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yet another reason to despise Bitch: "Senate GOP mulling rules change to speed up confirmations of Trump nominees"

Spoiler

Senate Republicans are again considering using a controversial procedural maneuver to change how the chamber handles presidential nominations — a move that would significantly speed up processing of President Trump’s nominees and that of his successors in the White House. 

Typically, a nomination can be debated for a maximum of 30 hours on the Senate floor after senators invoke cloture, which is a vote that officially cuts off unlimited debate on a nomination and now only needs a simple majority to occur. But Republicans are mulling cutting short those 30 hours to as brief as two hours for relatively noncontroversial nominees, such as candidates for the district court. 

Changing the Senate rules was one of several topics raised during a private Senate Republican retreat held at a conference center at Nationals Park on Thursday. While GOP senators discussed wanting support from Democrats to revise the rules — a process that would take 67 votes — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also raised the prospect of using the so-called “nuclear option” to change the rules unilaterally, according to two senators in attendance who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door retreat. 

Using the nuclear option means the rules of the Senate are changed with just a simple majority of senators. It’s been considered a highly confrontational tactic in the past. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) deployed it in 2013 to eliminate the filibuster for nearly all executive and judicial nominations, while McConnell used it in 2017 to make the same change for Supreme Court candidates. 

“It’s untenable,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who has spearheaded the rules change proposal in the Senate. “If the Senate is filled with only the executive calendar on the personnel side and we can’t even get to the legislative side, it bogs down a bogged-down process even more.” 

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), returning from the retreat to votes Thursday afternoon, also confirmed Republicans discussed their options about how to speed up the confirmation process along the lines of a bipartisan agreement in 2013 that temporarily cut short the post-cloture debate time.

He said that no final decisions had been made but that Republicans intended to give Democrats a final chance on some of the upcoming nominees that will move out of committees.

If Democrats continue to string out every hour of parliamentary debate, Barrasso said, “then we’re going to have to look at other alternatives.” One of those would be the nuclear option, he said.

“The frustration level,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), “remains very high.”

Though an arcane topic, altering the chamber’s rules could have significant implications. The rules changes under consideration by Republicans would be permanent, meaning a future Democratic president could benefit from the revisions — or face the consequences of infuriated GOP senators.

“Half of my Democrat colleagues are now running for president,” Lankford said. “If one of them is elected in 2020, they’re going to want to put a government together in 2021. If they spend the next two years blocking us, there is zero chance that Republicans are going to let them put a government together in 2021.”

Trump has frequently vented his frustration on Twitter about how long the Senate — where any one member can drag out debate time — has taken to confirm key posts in his administration. Speeding up the process would fill many vacancies across an administration that remains largely unstaffed. 

Barrasso, the No. 3 member of the GOP leadership, said the breaking point came when the Senate had to return more than 270 nominations to the White House on the morning of Jan. 3, when the 115th Congress officially ended. Many of those were for lower-level posts that Democrats would not allow to be approved in a year-end package.

“Heads of countries are calling wanting to know why Senator Schumer is not approving their otherwise approved Ambassadors!?” Trump tweeted Dec. 31, although he did not specify which world leaders had contacted him. “Likewise in Government lawyers and others are being delayed at a record pace!”

Lankford’s proposal would keep the 30 hours of debate time for high-profile nominees such as Supreme Court and circuit court candidates, Cabinet picks and nominees for a bipartisan commission such as the Federal Communications Commission. But the 30 hours would be limited to two hours for district court nominees, and most executive branch nominees would have eight hours. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Steve King had to weigh in: 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

Quote

 

Steve King (R-Racist) tweet: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his all for all. I have long agreed with his speeches and writings. Today I think of this MLK quote, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” May we renew ourselves in his teachings so that he can RIP.

 

@AmazonGrace, that HAD to have been written by a staffer, and one with zero sense of shame or decency. No way King would have tweeted that. 

I've come to be very fond of Chip Franklin in the few weeks that I've been following him on twitter; he does a show called Inside the Beltway.  Each day he calls out a person as The Worse Person in the World not Named Trump. Today it's McConnell. NSFW if you have the audio turned up;  some profanity and (clutches pearls) naughty words. 

 

[Howl]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I often disagree with George Will, though he writes beautifully. The Dumpy era has made me agree with more of his work. This is an interesting piece he just wrote: "Why do people such as Lindsey Graham come to Congress?"

Spoiler

Back in the day, small rural airports had textile windsocks, simple and empty things that indicated which way the wind was blowing. The ubiquitous Sen. Lindsey O. Graham has become a political windsock, and as such, he — more than the sturdy, substantial elephant — is emblematic of his party today.

When in 1994, Graham, a South Carolina Republican, first ran for Congress, he promised to be “one less vote for an agenda that makes you want to throw up.” A quarter-century later, Graham himself is a gastrointestinal challenge. In the past three years, he had a road-to-Damascus conversion.

In 2015, he said Donald Trump was a “jackass.” In February 2016, he said: “I’m not going to try to get into the mind of Donald Trump, because I don’t think there’s a whole lot of space there. I think he’s a kook, I think he’s crazy, I think he’s unfit for office.” And: “I’m a Republican and he’s not. He’s not a conservative Republican. He’s an opportunist.” Today, Graham, paladin of conservatism and scourge of opportunism, says building the border wall is an existential matter for the GOP: “If we undercut the president, that’s the end of his presidency and the end of our party.” Well.

Six years after its founding, the Republican Party produced the president who saved the nation. The party presided over the flow of population west of the Mississippi, into space hitherto designated on maps as the Great American Desert. (The Homestead Act of 1862 was enacted by a Republican-controlled Congress.) The Morrill Act of 1862 (Vermont Rep. Justin Morrill was a Republican) launched the land-grant college system that began the democratization of higher education and advanced the science-intensive agriculture that facilitated the urbanization that accelerated the nation’s rise to global preeminence. The party abetted and channeled the animal spirits that developed the industrial sinews with which 20th-century America defeated fascism and then communism. Now, however, Graham, whose mind might not have a whole lot of space for pertinent history, thinks this party’s identity and survival depend on servile obedience to this president’s myopia.

During the government shutdown, Graham’s tergiversations — sorry, this is the precise word — have amazed. On a recent day, in 90 minutes he went from “I don’t know” whether the president has the power to declare an emergency and divert into wall-building funds appropriated by Congress for other purposes, to “Time for President . . . to use emergency powers to build Wall.” The next day, he scrambled up the escalation ladder by using capitalization: “Declare a national emergency NOW. Build a wall NOW.” Two days later, he scampered down a few rungs, calling for his hero to accept a short-term funding measure to open the government while wall negotiations continue. Stay tuned for more acrobatics.

But stay focused on this: Anyone — in Graham-speak, ANYONE — who at any time favors declaring an emergency, or who does not denounce the mere suggestion thereof, thereby abandons constitutional government. Yes, such a declaration would be technically legal. Congress has put on every president’s desk this (to adopt Justice Robert Jackson’s language in his dissent from the Supreme Court’s 1944 Korematsu decision affirming the constitutionality of interning of U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent) “loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.” Or an implausible one. However, an anti-constitutional principle would be affirmed. The principle: Any president can declare an emergency and “repurpose” funds whenever any of his policy preferences that he deems unusually important are actively denied or just ignored by the legislative branch.

Why do they come to Congress, these people such as Graham? These people who, affirmatively or by their complicity of silence, trifle with our constitutional architecture, and exhort the president to eclipse the legislative branch, to which they have no loyalty comparable to their party allegiance?

Seven times, Graham has taken the oath of congressional office, “solemnly” swearing to “support and defend the Constitution” and to “bear true faith and allegiance” to it, “without any mental reservation.” Graham, who is just 1 percent of one-half of one of the three branches of one of the nation’s many governments, is, however, significant as a symptom. When the Trump presidency is just a fragrant memory, the political landscape will still be cluttered with some of this president’s simple and empty epigones, the make-believe legislators who did not loudly and articulately recoil from the mere suggestion of using a declared emergency to set aside the separation of powers.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Nothing is as important as football right now

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

Good question. 

 

[Audrey2]

11 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Good question. 

 

So they can blame the Democrats now and say the Democrats made this mess and we fixed it. Yes I know that's not how it went and I know it's disgusting. But the Republicans are masters of spinning their own version of the truth and the sad thing is Fox reports on it and too many people believe it.

[47of74]

Some of Steve King's supporters applauded him at a town hall meeting.

Quote

Constituents applauded Republican Rep. Steve King on Saturday at the Iowa congressman's first public event since being rebuked by his House colleagues over racist comments he had made to a newspaper earlier this month.

King told the roughly 75 people who showed up for the first of 39 planned town hall meetings in his sprawling district that he doesn't adhere to a white supremacist ideology and he repeated his assertion that he's not racist.

The nine-term House member caused an uproar after he was quoted in a New York Times story saying, "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?" King claimed his comments were taken out of context, but the House voted 424-1 to rebuke him, with King himself voting in favor of the resolution, and Republican leaders denied him any committee assignments.

Although King's recent comments drew a relatively large media contingent to Saturday's meeting, none of the constituents who were on hand said anything critical about the controversy and a couple expressed their support, telling King they think he's doing a great job. In the few instances in which King's history of insensitive comments and his most recent statements arose, the audience seemed supportive, and they stood twice during the gathering to applaud him.

This is in a goddamn nutshell why I'm thinking of moving out of Iowa once I'm done with school. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The bumbling Kevin McCarthy"

Spoiler

With former speaker Paul D. Ryan tucking tail and retiring last year, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is the new leader of the House Republicans. McCarthy has never been known for poise on camera. Ryan ascended to the speakership in 2015 in no small part because McCarthy admitted on Fox News that the Benghazi investigation was political. (As Michael Kinsley said, “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.”) So you might expect that in the years since, McCarthy learned to be better prepared for TV appearances. His Sunday appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” showed quite the opposite.

Even the smoothest GOP talker would struggle two days after President Trump caved and ended the weeks-long government shutdown. Host Chuck Todd summed up the bleak situation in his first question to McCarthy: “On day one of the shutdown, the president had a deal in front of him that was essentially a continuing resolution for three weeks, no [border] wall. That’s the deal he agreed to on day 35. What was accomplished?” McCarthy had no answer to the question. Instead, he questioned what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accomplished and offered banalities such as “I give President Trump a lot of credit. He put the American people before politics.” Nor could McCarthy later answer why the White House would expect Democrats to accept a permanent border wall for temporary protection for “dreamers.” Four times, McCarthy fell back on declaring that Trump was being “reasonable” while Democrats weren’t.

So far, so standard spin — a party leader trying to make the best of a bad situation. But McCarthy went beyond “glass half-full” to comically delusional. First, when Todd pointed out that Trump was still threatening to declare a national emergency to build the border wall, McCarthy replied, “That is not true.” It was an odd claim to make, given that Trump said the exact opposite two days ago. “We’ll work with the Democrats and negotiate, and if we can’t do that, then we’ll do a — obviously we’ll do the emergency because that’s what it is. It’s a national emergency,” the president declared Friday.

Then, when Todd asked, “Why did [Trump] shut down the government?” McCarthy replied, “He did not shut down the government.” As Todd incredulously responded, “Who else did it?” It was Trump who said publicly he’d be “proud” to own the shutdown. It was Trump who changed his mind on a clean continuing resolution over a month ago. It was Trump who threatened during the shutdown to keep the government closed. And it is Trump’s base who is now furious at the president for caving — in other words, for not keeping the government shut down.

It’s one thing for a political leader to turn every answer into the best-case scenario for his or her party and the worst-case scenario for the opposition. That’s what most politicians do, some more artfully than others. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), on the same show, also argued the GOP case, but at least admitted that another shutdown would be “a terrible idea.” McCarthy, though, essentially asked viewers, “Who do you believe, me or your lying eyes and ears?” Which elicits another question in reply: Is this man really the best House Republicans have left to offer?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Mean as a Snake’: When President Trump Met the Real Mitch McConnell"

Spoiler

It’s nearly impossible to have a conversation while waiting on the president to make an appearance. Instead, everyone steals glances at the closed door, waiting for it to open, and converses in short, substance-­free sentences that are all but forgotten as soon as they are uttered. Such was the case in February 2017 as I stood in the Roosevelt Room making small talk with House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, who, along with other Republican leaders, had arrived for their first legislative strategy session with the new president. Now a few weeks into my time in the West Wing as special assistant to the president and director of White House message strategy, I was growing more accustomed to this awkward dynamic, but this was the first time I had experienced it alongside the most powerful members of Congress.

Compliments about neckties were exchanged, which led to a discussion about socks. Before long we were talking about the weather, always a sure sign that a conversation is going nowhere. We were all looking toward the door.

A nervous energy seemed to envelop the Roosevelt Room, where Republican leaders from both chambers of Congress were encircling the conference table. In addition to Ryan and Cornyn, Senate and House Majority Leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy were present, along with House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. After eight years of President Obama occupying the White House, the entire group was still growing accustomed to regular visits to the West Wing as the people fully in charge of the governance of the nation. After 2016, Republicans were in their best position in about a century, with control of a majority of state governorships, the United States Congress, the United States Senate, and now the White House. This was a once­-in-­a-generation opportunity for the GOP, and you could tell the members in the room sensed it. But they’d also have to work with a most unlikely president who had spent al­most his entire campaign railing against them and seemed to them to have, at best, a glancing understanding of federal policy.

There were deep fissures between Republican leaders and the president on certain issues. Perhaps most notably, Trump had won the presidency by bucking decades of Republican orthodoxy on free trade. He’d also shunned the business wing of the GOP—of which Ryan and McConnell were both card­-carrying members—because he believed they preferred lax immigration laws that undercut the wages of American workers. Trump was malleable in many policy areas, but not on immigration and trade. On those two issues, he had been remarkably consistent for decades. He believed deep in his bones that he was right and viewed his election—with those two issues front and center—as his vindication.

There was also a personal concern, shared by many of the men in the room: They had all but left Trump for dead a few months earlier. And Trump didn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d forget something like that. How was this going to work?

The president marched into the room like a man on a mission. “My team,” he said warmly, holding out his hand to begin greeting the lawmakers. “Hello, Paul … Mitch. Great to see everyone.” They responded in kind, but their body language was stiff, uncomfortable, especially Ryan’s.

Chief of Staff Reince Priebus entered just behind the president. A much smaller figure than Trump—in both physical stature and personality—Priebus had billed himself as Trump’s bridge to the GOP establishment in Congress. And he was clearly a bridge to at least one of them. Upon seeing his fellow Wisconsinite, Ryan’s entire body seemed to loosen up. His shoulders relaxed, his face softened, and he greeted Priebus with a friendly handshake and a slap on his left shoulder.

“Take a seat, everyone,” Trump said. “Let’s talk.”

The president, whose chair was a few inches taller than everyone else’s, as is tradition, sat at the middle of the table. Following his lead, Ryan sat to his left and McConnell pulled up directly to his right. Priebus sat at the end of the table, and the rest of the lawmakers, along with a handful of additional White House aides, found their way into the remaining vacant chairs.

The purpose of the meeting was for all parties to agree on a timeline for delivering on one of the president’s biggest campaign promises: to repeal President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, commonly known as Obamacare, and to replace it with a Republican health­-care plan to drive down costs and increase competition. Priebus opened the meeting, speaking confidently but glancing periodically at his notebook sitting on the table in front of him. Before long, the president cut him off with a look of impatience. This was a small but telling sign of how the Trump-Priebus relationship would work.

“We want to do Obamacare first, then tax cuts second, is that right?” he asked the room.

There was a moment of silence. The lawmakers exchanged glances, un­sure about who should answer for them.

“Yes sir, Mr. President,” Speaker Ryan finally said. “There are policy reasons for that, which we are happy to get into.”

“But we can get it done, right?” the president asked. “We need to get this done. You guys have been promising for a long time—longer than I’ve been in politics, really. But I promised it, too, so we need no mistakes.”

The president thought like a normal Washington outsider might think. House Republicans had made a great show out of voting more than 60 times to repeal Obamacare, a statistic they cited on the campaign trail all the time. How hard could repeal possibly be now that the GOP was in charge of every­thing?

I also saw his comment as a subtle indication that Trump was personally much more excited about cutting taxes. The prospect of eroding Obama’s sig­nature legacy was appealing, of course. But health-­care policy was foreign to him. Taxes—now, that’s a topic a billionaire businessman knows a thing or two about.

“We’re going to get it done, Mr. President,” Ryan said confidently. The rest of the men around the table seemed to be in agreement, so the conversation moved quickly into laying out a timeline.

In rapid succession, Priebus, Ryan and McConnell threw out timetables for introducing bills and committee votes, and target dates for final passage. The conversation seemed choreographed. I was confident, based on the lack of pauses to consider what the others were saying, that they had orchestrated it all before this meeting. If they had, that was probably a smart approach. That all sounded fine to Trump. The president wasn’t interested in getting down into the weeds. He just wanted Obamacare repealed. The command­er’s intent was clear. The details were left to the lieutenants. And they seemed to like that approach anyway. They were the professionals. They could take it from here. This was, in its way, astounding, since these same people, their consultants, their pollsters and their aides had guided Congress to historic levels of unpopularity.

As the meeting was coming to an end, an offhand comment piqued the president’s interest.

“We’re going to have to keep everyone together, because we’re going to be doing this without any Democratic votes,” McConnell said.

“Really?” Trump replied, suddenly intrigued. “You don’t think we’ll get any?”

The owlish, placid Senate majority leader spoke quietly but firmly. “No, Mr. President,” McConnell said. “Not one.” Democrats had passed Obamacare without any Republican votes. If Republicans were going to repeal it, McConnell believed they’d have to do it in the same way.

“What about Joe Manchin?” Trump asked, as if McConnell must have for­gotten him. Manchin, a 69-year-old West Virginia Democrat who liked to position himself as above partisan politics and willing to work with the GOP, was coming up for reelection in 2018 in a state that Trump had won by 42 points. On top of that, Trump viewed him as a personal friend. Surely his buddy Joe would play ball.

“Absolutely not, Mr. President,” McConnell said in a tone that seemed designed to end the debate.

“Really?” the president asked. Often the contrarian, he seemed to view this as a personal challenge as well as a test of his persuasiveness. “I have a wonderful relationship with him; I think he might come around.”

McConnell didn’t flinch. He stayed sitting upright in his brown leather chair, elbows on the armrests and hands clasped underneath his chin.

“Mr. President,” he began, “he’ll never be with us when it counts. I’ve seen this time and time again. We’re going to do everything in our power to beat him when he comes up for reelection in 2018.”

Trump seemed taken aback. He cut his eyes at Priebus, as if to say, Why did no one tell me this was an issue? He didn’t seem angry, just befuddled.

“Well, Joe’s been a friend of mine, so we’ll have to see,” Trump said, turning his attention back to McConnell. “Do we have to go after him like that?” “Absolutely, Mr. President,” McConnell shot back without a moment’s hesitation. “We’re going to crush him like a grape.” Outside the walls of the Roosevelt Room, the conventional wisdom was that men like McConnell would temper Trump’s aggressive impulses. Just the opposite was happening right now. There was a brief silence—maybe a half second—when the atmosphere in the room felt like the scene in Goodfellas when no one can tell how Joe Pesci is going to react to Ray Liotta calling him “funny.” Would he freak out? Would he laugh it off? Finally Trump broke the tension.

“This guy’s mean as a snake!” he said, pointing at McConnell and looking around the room. The entire group burst out laughing.

“I like it, though, Mitch,” he continued, giving McConnell two quick pats on the back. “If that’s what you think we need to do.”

“I do,” McConnell said, never breaking his steely-­eyed character.

I saw a side of Mitch McConnell that day that I’d never appreciated as an outside observer. His cold­blooded response to the president’s Manchin questions revealed an underlying toughness that earned him a new respect and appreciation in the president’s eyes, particularly compared to many of the more weak­-willed, equivocating members of Congress he’d encounter.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[onekidanddone]

6 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Caught the "what" instead of "who"

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[AmazonGrace]

If you get a chance to be a jerk you gotta take it