WAY TO GO DEMS, PAYGO JUST PASSED!!!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16487187/

WASHINGTON - The House has voted to reinstate budget rules designed to curb the budget deficit.

The vote was 280-to-154 to reinstate the so-called "pay as you go" rule. It requires that any increase in entitlement spending or tax cut be somehow offset so as to not to increase the deficit.

This is simply awesome folks...

snip:

Many Republicans also voted for a Democratic proposal to require lawmakers to disclose publicly their want for pet projects -- referred to as earmarks in legislative terms -- for their districts or states, such as Alaska's bridge to nowhere in the last Congress. Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said Republicans would tend to vote for the earmark reforms despite its linkage to a "pay as you go" rule that would threaten efforts to extend GOP-passed tax cuts that expire at the end of 2010.

snip:

"I give them kudos," said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., a fierce but sometimes quixotic foe of Congress' earmarking ways.

I LOVE HAVING MY COUNTRY BACK!!!

It's not going to take 100 hours. In yo faces, pugs.

also wanting to be voted for next term....

BOOM. They saw CLEARLY what happened on November 7th, and took delivery on the message. They don't want to be the next casualties. I guess a five-day work week is better than unemployment.

Really great to see! Reminds me of one of the recurring lines in "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" about Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters - "are you ON the bus, or OFF the bus?" Looks like some of 'em would rather be ON the bus. Besides, what bush is doing lately isn't exactly drawing flies with sugar.

BTW - here's something to help encourage them, if I may be so bold...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3042082&mesg_id=3042082

we get many of their votes over the next 2 years.

Because we need some aisle-crossers to override a Presidential veto.

Either way, the people win.

This is why Americans wont be so disturbed about our excluding them in these early days.

They may be tired of partisanship, but not nearly as much as they are tired of hypocrisy and irresponsibility.

Go Dems!

2008 will be here before we know it. Time to start collecting political ammo for the Big Showdown.

This is pretty commonsense legislation...why would anyone from the Party of "Fiscal Responsibility" not want this? Are their taxcuts more important than the financial health of this country? I think we know the answer to that.

there's lists being made... names are being taken and like the one dorkus who voted against ethics reform, will be used effectively against him..

I think it is right that his constituents know exactly where their rep stands on issues. and we finally have a way to prove it, make them vote on REAL legislation for the PEOPLE. Not legislation for the executive.

I was watching C-Span this morning and there are several components -- are they scheduled to vote on the rest today also?

w/no ammendments?

Good on them.

If you read it...

but do these have to be signed by George and will he insert a signing statement to ignore these changes. Just asking feedback please.

all spending bills must originate in the House. The President can not do this and he can't just add stuff to bills. This would seem to outside the supposed jurisdiction of his signing statements.

These are agreements as to how the HOUSE conducts business, how they PREPARE legislation. These are not "laws"--these are administrative measures.

Basically, the House (which gets to reinvent itself every 2 years) has said that it won't consider any spending legislation (or tax cut legislation) without the legislation *also* saying where the funds are coming from.

This isn't a bill that needs to become law because this is just a question of how the House runs itself.

simply, a member of the House can not introduce a bill without following this rule.

I'm surprised the "Fuck that ethics and fiscal shit, the Dems should gridlock and demand an end to the war NOW, even though they don't have the votes to override a veto" crowd isn't here to pee on the parade...

see/read/hear about the letter...?

There's a whole subset of folks who think that tackling the winning elements first is a waste of time, that the Dems should be up on their feet shaking their fists and demanding "Troops out NOW!" even though we don't yet have the veto override votes from our friends on the other side of the aisle to make that happen. These are people who don't understand how the Hill works, but they consider ethics, minimum wage, budgets, and the "winning bits" as superfluous and they are angered that they were first on the agenda. These same people believe that the Congress should drop everything and deal with that war issue FIRST, no matter how impractical that idea is. They don't understand that you've got to pull the legislature together and get as many people as possible on the same page to achieve the goal.

The letter is a great first step--even if the Monkey wipes his ass on it, which he likely will do. But at least our team is on the record, and that's a start.

Text of the letter, which is not copyrighted, is public property of the people of the United States, and thus doesn't have to adhere to the four paragraph admonition which is customary:

Dear Mr. President:

The start of the new Congress brings us opportunities to work together on the critical issues confronting our country. No issue is more important than finding an end to the war in Iraq. December was the deadliest month of the war in over two years, pushing U.S. fatality figures over the 3,000 mark.

The American people demonstrated in the November elections that they do not believe your current Iraq policy will lead to success and that we need a change in direction for the sake of our troops and the Iraqi people. We understand that you are completing your post-election consultations on Iraq and are preparing to make a major address on your Iraq strategy to the American people next week.

Clearly this address presents you with another opportunity to make a long overdue course correction. Despite the fact that our troops have been pushed to the breaking point and, in many cases, have already served multiple tours in Iraq, news reports suggest that you believe the solution to the civil war in Iraq is to require additional sacrifices from our troops and are therefore prepared to proceed with a substantial U.S. troop increase.

Surging forces is a strategy that you have already tried and that has already failed. Like many current and former military leaders, we believe that trying again would be a serious mistake. They, like us, believe there is no purely military solution in Iraq. There is only a political solution. Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain. And it would undermine our efforts to get the Iraqis to take responsibility for their own future. We are well past the point of more troops for Iraq.

In a recent appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General John Abizaid, our top commander for Iraq and the region, said the following when asked about whether he thought more troops would contribute to our chances for success in Iraq:

“I met with every divisional commander, General Casey, the Corps commander, General Dempsey. We all talked together. And I said, in your professional opinion, if we were to bring in more American troops now, does it add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq? And they all said no. And the reason is, because we want the Iraqis to do more. It's easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.”

Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror. A renewed diplomatic strategy, both within the region and beyond, is also required to help the Iraqis agree to a sustainable political settlement. In short, it is time to begin to move our forces out of Iraq and make the Iraqi political leadership aware that our commitment is not open ended, that we cannot resolve their sectarian problems, and that only they can find the political resolution required to stabilize Iraq.

Our troops and the American people have already sacrificed a great deal for the future of Iraq. After nearly four years of combat, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, and over $300 billion dollars, it is time to bring the war to a close. We, therefore, strongly encourage you to reject any plans that call for our getting our troops any deeper into Iraq. We want to do everything we can to help Iraq succeed in the future but, like many of our senior military leaders, we do not believe that adding more U.S. combat troops contributes to success.

We appreciate you taking these views into consideration.

Sincerely,

Harry Reid

Majority Leader

Nancy Pelosi

Speaker

As you can see, the letter is written not as a demand, but as a request. It has to be thus, because we still have work to do to get the GOP to see this debacle our way. It's happening, faster than many of them thought it would, but it's not going to happen tomorrow.

perfect & delivered with perfect timing.


I have this urge to say, "Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves."
not literally...just an old saying, of course.

Could it be that our Busy-bee Congress is taking time to hand out a little rope here and there?

When anonymous WH sources are saying that even diehard "FU" Cheney thinks the war is lost, I'd say they're checking out neckties and tying knots even as we type!

But will it pass there too?

and we know Bush will veto..

is there enough to override?

:P..just did not realize the senate & prez did not have to weigh in on it :P:hi:

:shrug:

the official U.S. webpage.

http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2007&rollnumber=9

Every Democrat voted for it, save for 1 who didn't vote at all.

My supposedly "fiscal conservative" repuke Representative, Bill Sali, voted against the rule. What a hypocrite and a partisan hack.

This will make for some damn effective commericals come 2008 - the FDR coalition is back.

:woohoo:

:applause:

MSNBC said that this could be a block against some of the propossed tax cuts by the dems. Maybe this would have been better a little later, AFTER the tax cuts? I'm thinking I would have voted NO maybe, only so that we could sidestep this.

But right now, our financial situation is just as dire as every other situation. The debt is HUGH.

We should make ethical rules and then play by them. Besides any tax cuts the Dems want will be offset by repealing the tax cuts W gave the filthy rich. So they don't need to worry about it.

:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

A balanced budget...what a concept!

Here's the link with Krugman's succinct analysis:

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F10F11FF3A550C718EDDAB0994DE404482

Democrats And The Deficit
E-MAIL Print Permissions Save

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: December 22, 2006

Now that the Democrats have regained some power, they have to decide what to do. One of the biggest questions is whether the party should return to Rubinomics -- the doctrine, associated with former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, that placed a very high priority on reducing the budget deficit.

The answer, I believe, is no. Mr. Rubin was one of the ablest Treasury secretaries in American history. But it's now clear that while Rubinomics made sense in terms of pure economics, it failed to take account of the ugly realities of contemporary American politics.

And the lesson of the last six years is that the Democrats shouldn't spend political capital trying to bring the deficit down. They should refrain from actions that make the deficit worse. But given a choice between cutting the deficit and spending more on good things like health care reform, they should choose the spending.

In a saner political environment, the economic logic behind Rubinomics would have been compelling. Basic fiscal principles tell us that the government should run budget deficits only when it faces unusually high expenses, mainly during wartime. In other periods it should try to run a surplus, paying down its debt.

Since the 1990s were an era of peace, prosperity and favorable demographics (the baby boomers were still in the work force, not collecting Social Security and Medicare), it should have been a good time to put the federal budget in the black. And under Mr. Rubin, the huge deficits of the Reagan-Bush years were transformed into an impressive surplus.

But the realities of American politics ensured that it was all for naught. The second President Bush quickly squandered the surplus on tax cuts that heavily favored the wealthy, then plunged the budget deep into deficit by cutting taxes on dividends and capital gains even as he took the country into a disastrous war. And you can even argue that Mr. Rubin's surplus was a bad thing, because it greased the rails for Mr. Bush's irresponsibility.

As Brad DeLong, a Berkeley economist who served in the Clinton administration, recently wrote on his influential blog: ''Rubin and us spearcarriers moved heaven and earth to restore fiscal balance to the American government in order to raise the rate of economic growth. But what we turned out to have done, in the end, was to enable George W. Bush's right-wing class war: his push for greater after-tax income inequality.''

My only quibble with Mr. DeLong's characterization is that this wasn't just one man's class war: the whole conservative movement shared Mr. Bush's squanderlust, his urge to run off with the money so carefully saved under Mr. Rubin's leadership.

With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that conservatives who claimed to care about deficits when Democrats were in power never meant it. Let's not forget how Alan Greenspan, who posed as the high priest of fiscal rectitude as long as Bill Clinton was in the White House, became an apologist for tax cuts -- even in the face of budget deficits -- once a Republican took up residence.

Now the Democrats are back in control of Congress. They've pledged not to be as irresponsible as their predecessors: Nancy Pelosi, the incoming House speaker, has promised to restore the ''pay-as-you-go'' rule that the Republicans tossed aside in the Bush years. This rule would basically prevent Congress from passing budgets that increase the deficit.

I'm for pay-as-you-go. The question, however, is whether to go further. Suppose the Democrats can free up some money by fixing the Medicare drug program, by ending the Iraq war and/or clamping down on war profiteering, or by rolling back some of the Bush tax cuts. Should they use the reclaimed revenue to reduce the deficit, or spend it on other things?

The answer, I now think, is to spend the money -- while taking great care to ensure that it is spent well, not squandered -- and let the deficit be. By spending money well, Democrats can both improve Americans' lives and, more broadly, offer a demonstration of the benefits of good government. Deficit reduction, on the other hand, might just end up playing into the hands of the next irresponsible president.

<snip>

from somewhere to offset whatever spending we are proposing...Revenue comes form increased taxes on the top 1%, increasing the payroll taxes...etc. there are all kinds of ideas.

In Krugman's specific example about Medicare (or anything else in my opinion) it would be to immediately lower our Medicare cost by allowing negotiations with drug companies for lower costs, it is really that simple.

I am a huge Krugman's fan, but this had to be done right now, during the 100 hours.

at least not yet.

It depends on how they put the fiscal package together for the future.

I like Krugman's suggestions -- but realize that there is much more to it. Main points are that Dem control, with some Repug support, will enable us to get this war de-funded. We have to cut out the corporate welfare, and huge tax breaks/ benefits for the top 1%.

It's complex.. but if you look at them as strategies taken together, they can work to bring sanity to fiscal matters.

Nice try to bring us down.

Edit: typo

:woohoo:

Why are they allowed and if all politicians use them, doesn't that indicate how dishonest they are ? Has the Congress always used them? Why is a President allowed to make signing statements. Seems to me this should be illegal also. Bush has made God knows how many signing statements. the latest being, opening peoples mail.This all seems very wrong to me.

WooooHoooo!!!!!!!
:hi:
:kick: