Mikey's "TRAIN In Vain" And Other Follies, Part 2

(Part One including the setup is here.)

Continuing with our PA-08 U.S. House Rep’s supposed legislative “achievements”…

Encouraging Entrepreneurship and Growth

HR 1070 – Small Company Capital Formation Act of 2011
HR 1965 – Community Bank Resource Improvement Act
HR 2930 – Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act

HR 1070 lets companies sell $50 million in securities in a public offering without having to register with the SEC, exempting “a certain class of securities.” HR 1965 increases the number of shareholders permitted to invest in a community bank before it must register with the SEC. Also, HR 2930 is intended to increase “access to capital” presumably for the purposes of job creation.

I’ll be honest – I checked these out and I can’t find anything wrong, though I am suspicious of course. The intention of all of these bills (apparently) is to speed up the process by which capital is acquired for startups and to encourage “crowd funding” as opposed to “angel investing,” getting around the SEC’s reporting requirements. I have a feeling that this is a recipe for trouble, but again, I don’t know enough to stand in the way on this (more on crowd funding is here).

Another piece of legislation Mikey touts is as follows…

HR 2940 – Access to Capital for Job Creators Act

This was sponsored by supposed GOP “young gun” Kevin McCarthy of California, again, intended to hasten access to capital on behalf of those “job creators” the GOP claims to love. However, I think the following should be noted about this from here…

Vote 4: Executive compensation: The House has rejected an amendment sponsored by Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., to the Access to Capital for Job Creators Act (H.R. 2940). The amendment would have required businesses soliciting capital from private, non-accredited investors to disclose their bonus compensation structures and any golden parachute severance packages for company officials. Miller said the requirement would protect investors from unwittingly having their investments increase executive compensation. An opponent, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said "the SEC has no authority to regulate the compensation of executives at private companies," and the requirement "would fail anyone's cost benefit analysis" of its economic impact. The vote, on Nov. 3, was 190 yeas to 234 nays.

Oh, I get it now – all of these bills are intended to allow executives at these startups that supposedly now will flourish to claim any degree of compensation that they want outside of any reporting requirements that may exist as stipulated in existing or future legislation. Clever.

Well, we’ll see about this, won’t we?

Continuing…

Controlling Government Spending and Deficit Reduction

Supported a House of Representatives ban on all earmarks, which had come to signify the permissive spending culture in Washington.

Yeah, Mikey and his pals like to ride the little earmark “hobby horse” in the name of supposed fiscal austerity, but as noted here, earmarks really aren’t all that big of a deal when it comes to federal spending. And as noted here, the teabagger caucus took in $1 bil in earmarks in 2010.

(By the way, in the matter of earmarks, even though this involves the Senate and not the House, I think it should be noted from here that the Senate Repugs blocked the 2010 Omnibus Spending Bill because it contained nearly $2 billion in earmarks that the Senate Repugs asked for themselves – too funny.)

H Res 22 – Voted to cut House budget by 5% (and Mikey voted for a 11% cut on top of that; that's a total of 16 percent for those of us playing along at home)

However, in the matter of supposed fiscal austerity, this tells us that the House Speaker scored a hefty raise in his expense account, and I can recall not a word of protest from Mikey The Beloved.

H Res 38 – Roll back current gov’t spending to 2008 or before

That sounds nice too, until you realize that it would give unprecedented authority to “flim-flam man” Paul Ryan (noted here in the second bullet).

HR 2 – To reduce new spending by $2.6 trillion over 10 years

As noted here, though, government spending has helped create jobs, not hinder job growth (of course, this is coming from the political party that continues to sit on President Obama’s jobs bill, so this doesn’t surprise me at all).

HR 1 – Continuing Appropriations Act for 2011, which eliminated $100 billion in federal spending for the remainder of FY 2011

It should be noted from here that that includes underfunding operation of the IRS, among other agencies of government (more here – another attempt to remove those supposedly pesky, “job-killing” regulations that would let the GOP’s “small business” constituency get away with more and more nonsense).

H. Con Res 34 – would reduce federal spending by $5.8 trillion in 10 years

As noted here…

H.Con.Res. 34 is yet another example of GOP magical thinking — cut federal government spending and the debts and deficits will go away! We also know that cutting government spending on education and infrastructure programs makes jobs go away too.

Uh, yep. And finally (for now)…

HR 2560 – Cut, “Crap” and Balance Act

(Mikey’s mailer, by the way, incorrectly notes the bill number as 2562, for what it’s worth).

As noted here…

The federal budget could very well be reduced to defense spending, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and national debt interest and absolutely (nothing) else - assuming that revenues actually reached 18% (and that's happened under two of President Bush's, and none of President Obama's budgets – note: the cuts would be enacted if revenues reached the 18% limit). If not, then even more cuts would be necessary. Based on FY 2010 revenue - and remember it would take a 2/3 vote to increase revenue under these Amendments - the budget would be operating closer to 14% of GDP, meaning that the budget would have faced a cut of about $1.5 trillion, or a 42% budget cut across every single program, including Medicare and Social Security.

Also, cutting $1 trillion yearly from the federal budget would have a devastating impact on the economy, which would likely reduce the GDP, both lowering the funding cap and reducing tax revenues, forcing further cuts, lowering the GDP further. Such an amendment could trigger a downward spiral that would almost certainly result in the gutting of most of the nation's entitlement programs.

This amendment would also largely trigger elections moot, and that's something that all but the hardest core Republicans should be opposed to, regardless of whether one agrees with current Democratic policies or not.

This amendment would enshrine in the Constitution right wing conservative economic doctrine, ensuring that conservatives could implement their agenda of cutting the budget and cutting taxes by a mere majority vote, but would require moderates and liberals to meet a virtually unattainable goal of 2/3 vote in both Houses to implement any of their policy goals, or to even undo anything Republicans might have done when they were in power. It would effectively ensure that Republicans control government, even if they lose elections. Only an overwhelming election of Democrats, ensuring a 2/3 majority in both Houses could undo this arrangement.

Fitzpatrick also voted in favor of and cosponsored a bill to send a Balanced Budget Amendment to the states (H.J. Res 2), something else that will pass state legislatures when pigs fly.

In response, click here to support Kathy Boockvar (with some news about Kathy’s candidacy here).

Oh, and by the way, Courier Times, we always knew you were Mikey’s PR service (this appeared online yesterday). Do you now have to accept advertising on his behalf paid for by taxpayer funds too?

Update 1/27/12: And here is more on Cut, "Crap" And Balance.