Just Plain Broken

Is there ANYTHING good happening on Capitol Hill these days?


***Senate Democrats are about to smear (as a racist) and screw over President Bush's third consecutive Mississippian nominee to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Leslie Southwick. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is threatening to paralyze the Senate if they do, which would include killing the resurrected immigration amnesty bill, so he's probably just bluffing to base consumption.

Double-H had a good line: "Why a path to citizenship when the Bush nominees can't get a path to a floor vote?" Maybe if Republicans had been more prudent about getting the latter cleared of its unconstitutional obstructions when they had the chance, the former wouldn't be such a mortal political threat.


***Right-wing purists hated the energy bill the last Republican Congress passed and President Bush signed, citing it as one reason among many why the GOP needed to be cashiered in order to be "taught a lesson".

So they were cashiered and "taught a lesson," although the only lesson they seem to have learned is that they can't count on the base, so they need to teach US a lesson about loyalty in turn by defecting to the Democrats at every opportunity - just as I predicted.

Has this exercise in do-it-yourself partisan amputation provided better legislative energy policymaking? Bleep, no:

Summertime is here, and with it, the annual spectacle of our representatives in Washington competing to see who can come up with the worst solution to the problem of higher gas prices. This year, Congress has outdone itself. The energy bill wending its way through the Senate this week would do nothing to reduce the price of gasoline. But if it’s most ambitious goals are realized, it might create gas shortages and make electricity more expensive.

Oh, my, Tonto, this bill has everything: more "price-gouging" witch-hunts against Big Oil as the pretext for the reimposition of price controls, which would only lead to artificially depressed pump prices, and inevitable shortages as demand surged ahead of supply; jacking up CAFE standards, and the sticker price of new cars along with them, while at the same time forcing consumers into smaller, and therefore less safe, vehicles; forcing energy utilities to utilize at "alternative" energy sources (solar, wind {heh}, gerbils on wheels, but Gaia forbid any new nuclear power plants or oil refineries), which are less efficient and much more expensive (either a stealth tax increase or a sop to Uncle Hugo to provide the Northeast more "free" Venezuelan heating oil).

Haven't we been, er, "down this road" many times before? Why can't the "reality-based community" be pragmatic for a change and go with energy policy that actually works and the least cost to consumers?

Because that would mean oil (and drilling for it in ANWR and the Gulf of Mexico and off our continental shelves) and coal and nuclear energy, and that would be blasphemous to their pagan/socialist religion that teaches mankind is supposed to live in caves, eat dirt, and worship overweight crazoid messiahs allegedly from Tennessee in a previous life.

Except for liberals, of course, who are entitled to modern living, lear jets, limousines, and all of it fueled by limitless cheap energy. Dig through their energy bill long enough and you'll find that clause in there somewhere.


***Another Donk Senator and his assimilated RINO cohort are about to try another "jam-down," this time on a "targeted" (and huge) tax increase:

It never fails, whenever the free market is poised to succeed and innovate further, there is always an effort to tax or regulate it from reaching its true potential. The most recent example: efforts to impose new punitive taxes on publicly traded partnerships.

In view of several pending and potential Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) by private equity firms seeking to join the public markets, U.S. Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) unveiled punitive legislation in S.1624 late last week to actually RAISE taxes on ALL existing and new publicly traded partnerships.

Like bad tax policy before it, this legislation was offered without the benefit of normal Congressional or Joint Tax Committee hearings or any analysis from the U.S. Treasury or the Internal Revenue Service.

The free market community is united against any new tax increases and will oppose this bill vigorously. Not only is this legislation a major tax increase, it will actually depress tax revenues as other partnerships will choose to stay private or reincorporate abroad – neither of which is good for the economy, the government or investors. [emphasis added]

Tell me again how throwing out the Republicans was supposed to make Congress - and them - more responsible both to the best interests of the American people and of the GOP base? All I see is that the Senate has become more arrogant and authoritarian under Donk auspices, and the Pachyderm remnant that was supposed to have been chastened is riding shotgun.

So how now, brown cow? Take the GOP down to forty senate seats and 150 House seats to REALLY "teach them a lesson"? By the time this dynamic runs its course, the devil will be in the Oval Office.

And that's only nineteen months away.


***The means to that dismal end - Bush-McCain-Kyl-Kennedy (aka the orphan with way too many daddies) - is shaping up to be an instant replay of the last "jam-down" attempt, only sneakier.


***However, there may be a silver lining in this supercell: it'll have to go to the House, and the lower chamber may not swallow it whole:

House Democrats say they may break the immigration issue up into a series of smaller bills that would put off the tougher parts and allow others to pass, such as border security, and high-tech and agriculture worker programs that have clear support.

That could buy Democrats more time to work out the tougher aspects of immigration, such as what to do about the estimated twelve million to twenty million illegal aliens now here, but it would go against the Senate's massive catchall approach and contradicts President Bush's call for a broad bill to pass. ...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, says he is committed to getting a "comprehensive" bill done before releasing the Senate for its Fourth of July vacation, and he has the support of top Republican leaders.

In the House, though, Republicans are more uniformly opposed, and many vulnerable freshman Democrats could be hurt by a bill labeled "amnesty." That leaves Democratic leaders trying to see what they can pass. [emphasis added]

Well, now, that's interesting, isn't it? House 'Pubbies refuse to be stampeded off the same cliff their Senate counterparts are determined to plunge, putting the onus for amnesty enactment on the Democrat majority, and the three dozen or so Donk freshman, all of whom have to face the voters next November, suddenly lose their taste for "doing what's best for America". Will wonders never cease?

Gotta love Ace of Spades' rhetorical question:

Will George Bush and Michael Chertoff and Lindsay Graham start suggesting that Democratic enforcement-first Congressmen are "bigots" "who don't want what's best for America" and who wish to execute illegal aliens, or is that privilege reserved for Republicans only?

Hey, it's right there in the "New Tone" manual.


***We close this chapter on a ray of hope for the future - and his name is Tim Walberg:

Democrats in Congress are discounting advancements made possible by the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts passed by Congress and are trying to slap U.S. taxpayers with a $400 billion tax increase that will slow our economy's current progress.

If Democrats follow through on their budget promises, the American people will face the following:

• A $500 per child tax increase.
• A 55% Death Tax.
• A 13% tax increase for many small businesses.
• A 33% tax increase on capital gains.
• A 164% tax increase on dividends.

I believe Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats in Congress must join together to ensure the American economy is not crippled by a massive tax increase. I recently introduced the Tax Increase Prevention Act, legislation that would make permanent tax relief passed in 2001 and 2003.

You can always tell a principled, courageously outspoken Republican - it'll always be the new guy.

Hopefully Representative Walberg will be able to help infuse some spine back into the House Republican remnant before the RINOs stick a severed elephant head in his bed (or he moves on to the Senate, whichever comes first).

UPDATE: Senators Baucus and Grassley are just getting started. How do y'all feel about $29 billion in new energy taxes? A doubling of current gasoline prices within the decade? All under the patently phony lable of "promoting clean and sustainable energy."

I expect this socialist crapola from Baucus. But what the blue hell is Grassley - who, last I checked, was a Republican - doing joined at this hip? Didn't he "learn his lesson" last November?

Or has he been "set free" to be as "RINO as he wants to be"?