Earlier this week, congressional leaders struck a deal to avert another government shutdown and put off our next completely avoidable, 100% self-imposed budget crisis until next September. The deal has the backing of the White House, passed the House of Representatives on Thursday night, and appears to be well on its way to becoming law. Theres just one problem: The bill is absolutely packed with riders that have nothing to do with the budget and everything to do with paying back special interests and opening more channels for political money to flow directly to the two major political parties. $479 million for warplanes the Pentagon didnt ask for Congressional appropriators ordered four more F-35 joint strike fighters for a cool $479 million dollars even though the Pentagon didnt ask for them. The F-35 program has a long, sordid history of running behind schedule and over budget. Despite the crazy amount of money weve poured into the F-35 project, it continues to run into minor technical snags like the inability to turn, climb, or run. $93 million cut from Women, Infants and Children nutrition program Congress did manage to trim a few areas of the budget. For example, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly referred to as WIC, was on the receiving end of a $93 million budget cut. WIC provides low-income mothers and children with vouchers that can be exchanged for food that meets certain nutrition guidelines, although I imagine theyll be handing out a few less vouchers after this deal goes through. Nullification of voter-backed marijuana legalization in D.C. The 2014 Midterms saw voters in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington, D.C. vote to legalize Marijuana for recreational use. Unlike in Alaska and Oregon, however, the D.C. ballot measure is subject to congressional approval. So, despite the fact that the actual citizens of Washington, D.C. voted for legalization by a margin of more than 2 to 1, anti-legalization advocates in Congress attached a rider that completely undoes the voter-backed change and keeps Marijuana illegal. The part that CitiGroup wrote After the 2008 financial crisis, a lot of people were understandably less enthusiastic about derivative trading — A financial instrument that played a major role in the crisis and led to the collapse and $85 billion taxpayer bailout of insurance giant AIG. Since everyone from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street was infuriated by the big bank bailouts, youd think Congress would still be taking a victory lap for passing a measure that makes bailout less likely. Instead, theyre using the budget bill to sneakily kill it. The current budget deal includes a repeal of the Dodd-Frank derivatives rule that was literally written by big bank lobbyists — A leaked document obtained by the New York Times revealed that 70 of the 85 lines in the new House bill reflect recommendations made in a piece of model legislation drafted by lobbyists for Citigroup, another bank that played a major role in the 2008 crisis and also received billions of federal stimulus dollars. If all this sounds familiar, its because the House passed the exact same CitiGroup-written law last year, but it died after resistance from the Senate and Treasury Department. Now, Wall Streets allies in Congress have effectively copy-pasted the CitiGroup-approved language out of the old bill and into the current budget deal, which cant be vetoed without shutting down the government. On a completely unrelated note, did you know Wall Street spends $1.5 million per day to buy influence with our government? Looks like their investment is about to pay off. More big money in politics So, by now youve probably noticed a theme developing here. Everything on this list is a direct result of money pouring into our political system. And that brings us to our #1: the huge political money loophole that Congress is trying to sneak into the budget deal. In a provision conveniently located on page 1,599 of a 1,603 page document, Congress lays out donation rules that would allow individuals to give more than $300,000 directly to political parties every year. According to the Washington Posts Matea Gold, under the new rules, one couple could legally funnel nearly $1.3 million to a partys various account. As the public debate over the budget bill devolves into partisan finger-pointing, its especially important that we dont lose site of this critical fact: Both major parties had a chance to stop this new political money loophole, and neither of them did. NPRs Peter Overby reports that the changes in campaign finance law surfaced without fanfare during negotiations when either Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could have vetoed them. When we say that money has corrupted American government, this is exactly what were talking about. Special interests pour money into our political system, and our government doles out favors in return, will of the people be damned. Until we put an end to this kind of corruption, all of us will continue to get screwed over by budget deals exactly like this one.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 15:06:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015