Sneak Attack? Congress Slips Controversial Measures into Spending Bill

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/sneak-attack-congress-slips-controversial-measures-spending-bill-n265391

You've heard of 5:00 pm ET news dumps on a Friday, right? Well, on Tuesday night we saw what amounted to a Lame-Duck Congress news dump: As the political world was busy flipping through the pages of the graphic and headline-grabbing Senate Intelligence Committee report on Bush Era torture practices, Congress snuck in two measures to its must-pass spending bill -- all without formal debate. The first was a rider that essentially overturns the District of Columbia's ballot initiative legalizing marijuana, which passed by a more than 2-to-1 margin last month. (Remember, D.C. doesn't even have elected House or Senate members.) The second measure Congress snuck into the spending the bill will be more galling to some, because it amounts of a pay raise for the two unpopular political parties: It raises the $32,400 maximum that donors could give the Democratic National Committee or Republican National Committee to a whopping $324,000 per year, gutting what's left of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. The Washington Post says this was inserted on page 1,599 of a 1,603-page bill (!!!). These two measures -- and probably more like them -- will become law because they were jammed into a must-pass spending bill to keep the government open. Remember all the grumbling about transparency? All the grumbling about gigantic bills that many members of Congress never read? Given that, what happened last night was mind blowing.

Where were the hearings? Where was the congressional debate?

...more...