His boxes are not yet unpacked, and he has not even set foot in his new Senate office, but already Republican Sen.-elect Mike Lee of Utah is shaking things up on Capitol Hill. On Friday night, Lee sent an e-mail to Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander formally requesting that when Republican senators vote on a proposal Tuesday to unilaterally give up earmarks in the 112th Congress, they hold a public, recorded vote instead of a secret ballot.Yes, when earmarks actually constitute about 0.01 percent of the federal budget, it truly is a waste of time to get so exercised about them (as I’ve said many times before, I don’t care about earmarks as long as they’re disclosed).
This is a bold move for a soon-to-be freshman senator. How Republican leaders handle Lee's request may mean the difference between success and failure for the earmark ban - and it will tell Americans a great deal about whether the GOP establishment has learned the lessons of the 2010 elections that swept conservative insurgents like Lee into office.
And also concerning Lee, I give you the following (here)…
Last Friday, a group of recently-elected Republican lawmakers gathered in Baltimore for a retreat sponsored by FreedomWorks, a tea party astroturf group run by corporate lobbyists. ThinkProgress traveled to the event, and spoke to several of the new members about their views on the vote to raise the debt ceiling, a necessary legislative item to prevent the United States government from defaulting on its debt entirely, which would cause a global economic tailspin.Funny, but as I recall, the Repugs took the heat primarily for the government shut down of the 1990s, and rightly so. So, if Lee were to help do this again, he most definitely would “slip into the same mindset” of the past.
Rep.-elect Andy Harris (R-MD) told us that he would absolutely vote against raising the debt ceiling. Harris — who made headlines this morning after he staged a tantrum upon learning that he had to wait a few weeks before being fully enrolled in taxpayer-subsidized health care for federal employees (and of course, Harris opposed HCR: my note) — explained that he would have the government default as “an important message to send to the American people.” Similarly, Sen.-elect Mike Lee (R-UT) reiterated that he would have the government default on its debt to show that Republicans won’t “slip into the same mindset” of the past:
Which, on the one hand, would be bad for the country, though, on the other hand, it would make it more obvious than it already is that these charlatans have no desire to practice actual governance.
Needless to say, none of the liberal lawmakers attacking the Simpson-Bowles proposals offered alternative blueprints for restoring America’s solvency. The Democratic Party has plans for many things, but a balanced budget isn’t one of them.Too funny - fortunately, John Feehery jogged my memory a bit here…
…the class of 1994 came in with a conservative sensibility in reaction to the first two years of Bill Clinton, and that group similarly smashed the seniority system, audited the House’s books for the first time in history, professionalized the management of the institution, balanced the budget for the first time in three decades, passed welfare reform and ushered in a long period of Republican dominance.On the matter of the Repugs supposedly balancing the budget with no help from a certain 42nd president, I give you the following (from here, and again, harking back to the government shutdown)…
(In 1994) the GOP gained 54 seats in the House of Representatives and eight in the Senate, giving it control of both chambers for the first time in 40 years.And what of the individuals who, more than anybody else, blew the budget all to hell after Clinton left office? See below.
House Republicans wasted no time in setting about to adopt, in a mere 100 days, the Contract with America they had campaigned on.
Under Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich, the House passed legislation to reform welfare and cut taxes and spending – except for defence expenditures. In all, it voted to abolish 280 programs and eliminate the departments of Education, Energy and Commerce, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts. That agenda stalled in the Senate.
The real fireworks came, however, when Congress presented Mr. Clinton with a budget resolution that included a $245-billion (U.S.) tax cut and $270-billion cut to Medicare, the federal health plan for seniors.
The standoff lasted for weeks as each side engaged in a game of chicken. Mr. Clinton finally vetoed the budget bill in November of 1995. Republicans’ refusal to authorize spending led to a six-day shutdown of the federal government that month. There was a second three-week stoppage over the Christmas holidays.
The public blamed the gridlock on Mr. Gingrich and the GOP. Mr. Clinton accused them of wanting to slash Medicare for the elderly in order to pay for a tax cut for the rich, and the charge stuck.
Though Mr. Clinton scored political points, and his own re-election in 1996, Republicans ultimately could claim to have won a policy victory. When all the wrangling was over, Mr. Clinton agreed to a Republican resolution that called for a balanced budget within seven years. In the end, a booming economy enabled him to balance the books in less than half that amount of time.
At (a) groundbreaking ceremony in Dallas for the George W. Bush Presidential Center today, former Vice President Dick Cheney said "history is beginning to come around" to a more positive view of former President George W. Bush. Cheney said that Mr. Bush, whose approval rating upon leaving office was just 22 percent, always understood that "judgments are a little more measured" with the passage of time.Yeah, “Big Time,” dream on.
Cheney, who (unlike Mr. Bush) has been a vocal critic of President Obama, also took a shot at the current administration. Speaking of his expectation that construction would move quickly on the presidential center following the groundbreaking, Cheney quipped that "this may be the only shovel ready project in America." The reference was to the Obama-supported stimulus package that Republicans have criticized as ineffective.Read this, you parasite – it tells us that, due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, your home state of Wyoming (and why in God’s name they haven’t utterly disowned you is something I cannot imagine) received $17.5 million in stimulus funds to keep teachers on the job.
And speaking of joking about “shovel-ready projects,” I give you the following from here…
As President Bush and Vice President Cheney helped push thousands of new coalbed methane wells, with their associated grids of new roads, pipelines, power lines and compressor stations, “(Republican Governor Jim) Geringer’s Environmental Quality Council (another state agency) was very active weakening environmental regulations,” says Dan Heilig, director of the state’s leading environmental group, the Wyoming Outdoor Council. This included loosening restrictions on how much arsenic and barium are allowed in water discharged from methane wells, Heilig says.And as a result (here)…
Even ranchers who opposed methane development on their land couldn’t get through to Gov. Geringer, environmentalists say. “Conservative Republican ranchers couldn’t get a meeting with Geringer,” says Jill Morrison, an organizer for the Powder River Basin Resource Council.
“Geringer just did not want to have a dialogue about it. Anyone who was having trouble (with methane) was locked out of his administration. He had his marching orders (for state agencies) to facilitate (drilling), and that’s what they did.”
The federal government is warning residents in a small Wyoming town with extensive natural gas development not to drink their water, and to use fans and ventilation when showering or washing clothes in order to avoid the risk of an explosion.Oh, and by the way, Deadeye Dick, your pal Harry Whittington says hi.
The announcement accompanied results from a second round of testing and analysis in the town of Pavillion by Superfund investigators for the Environmental Protection Agency. Researchers found benzene, metals, naphthalene, phenols and methane in wells and in groundwater. They also confirmed the presence of other compounds that they had tentatively identified last summer and that may be linked to drilling activities.
"Last week it became clear to us that the information that we had gathered" "was going to potentially result in a hazard -- result in a recommendation to some of you that you not continue to drink your water," Martin Hestmark, deputy assistant regional administrator for ecosystems protection and remediation with the EPA in Denver, told a crowd of about 100 gathered at a community center in Pavillion Tuesday night. "We understand the gravity of that."
Representatives of the EPA and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which made the health recommendation, said they had not determined the cause of the contamination and said it was too early to tell whether gas drilling was to blame. In addition to contaminants related to oil and gas, the agency detected pesticides in some wells, and significant levels of nitrates in one sample -- signs that agricultural pollution could be partly to blame. The EPA's final report on Pavillion's water is expected early next year.
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