2015 American Politics Thread: The 114th Congress Is in the House!

this is encouraging!

incredible

"This is about trying to accomplish something important for the country that happens to be the president’s No. 1 domestic priority,” Mr. McConnell said.

lol how does he say this with a straight blobfishface

very slowly

I like how the implication is that Obama's no. 1 domestic priority is just, y'know totally coincidentally, important for the country

This take on it makes it just sound like a slight delay

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2015_05/fasttrack_sidestepped_by_senat055516.php

Democratic fast-track supporters, including original cosponsor of the TPA bill in question, Ron Wyden, refused to let the bill go because Republicans would not agree to schedule voters on two related bills, one on currency manipulation and another on trade preferences for African countries.

Oh Chuck Schumer:

From that NY Times article Hoos posted

But if Democrats successfully force Mr. McConnell to include that currency measure in the trade promotion bill, the negotiations could collapse.

“I’m strongly against it,” said Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.

The way forward is likely to be a negotiated package of trade-enforcement amendments that would be guaranteed a vote, Republican leadership aides said. Before talks collapsed Tuesday morning, talks on that amendment had begun, with Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, offering to drop the currency measure in exchange for a promised vote later this Congress.

there are so many key people with contradictory requirements to secure their votes, that's whats so great about this

this may just be a delay, granted, but this is gonna give opposition in the house even more to crow about and there's no way the senate takes it up before mid next month

wyden's ppl had been shrugging off currency manipulation all this time and now suddenly he's going "but wait actually this matters," i think he wanted an out

this morning before this came up ppl in wyden's office said "we've been getting a lot of calls about fast track--some for, some against.......but mostly against *nervous laughter*"

alright, pop quiz you political know it alls

http://i.imgur.com/F5tqXdq.jpg

that tom cruise is a looker

Wyden flipflops from yesterday after meeting in the White House

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/05/13/senate-reaches-deal-to-move-fast-track-trade-authority/?tid=sm_tw

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) announced a plan that allows for a controversial provision that Democrats have been demanding – legislation targeting China’s alleged manipulation of its currency to make its exports cheaper – a separate vote Thursday afternoon. Not a part of the broader trade package, the China currency legislation has been opposed by the Obama administration but favored by many senators from Midwest states hit hard by manufacturing job losses in the last two decades.

This legislation, which also contains other measures for enforcing trade deals, is likely to pass the Senate but its ultimate fate remains in doubt in the House, with a potential presidential veto awaiting it.

...

Led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the ranking member of the Finance Committee, the group initially wanted a guarantee that the currency language would be signed into law, but they were summoned to the White House “Cabinet Room” after Tuesday’s embarrassing vote left Obama facing a filibuster from his own party. According to those in attendance, the president spoke to the group for two hours and made clear that he wants this trade legislation approved and was willing to accept most of their enforcement measures on trade deals, just not the currency bill.

reid said yesterday he wouldn't vote if currency manipulation was stripped out, but word today is he will

Yep. Hopefully Senate vote on fast-track and on separate currency manipulation will at least be close.

Does this mean that Fast Track will pass? Not necessarily. If Fast Track gets past the first procedural vote, next up is an open amendment process. Even if Fast Track does ultimately pass the Senate, then it has to get through the House, which could prove even tougher. But today’s events are a reminder that Fast Track is anything but dead. And if it keeps moving forward, Hillary Clinton just may feel compelled one of these days to tell us what she thinks of it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/05/13/fast-track-may-not-be-dead-after-all/

Senator Blowfish speaks:

He insisted that the news media and Democrats had long exaggerated his determination to thwart the White House as a matter of partisan strategy. His often-cited vow to make Mr. Obama “a one-term president,” he explained, was followed by acknowledgment that “the American people would like for us to look for things that we agree on and to make progress.”

“The reason we haven’t done more things together is because we don’t agree on much,” he said. “The president, I believe, is the most left-wing president since Woodrow Wilson, who believed the Founding Fathers kind of got it wrong when they made the Congress as strong as it is.

“The last few years, he didn’t need anything from Congress other than to be left alone,” Mr. McConnell said. “They wanted their regulators to be free to overregulate America.”

Wilson notoriously even more of a commie than FDR

He has kept us out of war, oh wait

House Republicans voted Wednesday to chop $260 million from Amtrak’s budget, less than a day after a deadly train crash

Oh no overregulation! That is a serious matter that affects all of my closest personal friends that are corporations!

you can maybe have your new trade deal when the estate tax is 100% after the first million $$ of inheritance

really disappointed that i didn't come up with

all about abe
bout abe
no trade bill

during abe's visit

"Kansans are perfectly capable of improving the Prairie Chicken population through state and local efforts without putting any undue burden on our military or our state and local economies," Rep. Kevin Yoder said Friday.

http://cjonline.com/news/2015-05-15/us-house-takes-steps-remove-lesser-prairie-chicken-threatened-list

no conscience necessary

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2015/05/21/e54c539a-ffbd-11e4-8b6c-0dcce21e223d_story.html?hpid=z1

On a 62 to 38 vote, the push for fast-track authority to secure a sweeping Pacific-rim trade deal secured just enough Democratic support to kep the legislation moving, following a last-ditch lobbying effort by Obama and his top advisers. The fate of legislation, known as Trade Promotion Authority, hung in the balance for more than 30 minutes during the vote, as it remained shy of the 60 votes needed to advance and more than a dozen senators from both parties negotiated over the last details of the legislation and other side issues.

...

The TPA bill is now almost certain to pass the Senate, possibly over the weekend, and then heads for an uncertain fate in the House, where Democratic opposition to Obama’s trade agenda is more deeply ingrained.

[i]After last week’s temporary blockade, 13 Democrats joined with almost every Republican to begin debate on the legislation.

watching that was extraordinary, all these urgent whispering huddles breaking out on the senate floor

mostly over export-import bank stuff which tbh is relatively obscure to me--anybody have a link/thought on that?

Its confusing to me. Have read various pro and con takes on it.

ex-im bank is a real libertarian v 'big business' hot button issue but i can't really make heads or tails of it tbh. same division exists among dems i suppose but less acutely.

my gen understanding is, it was a gov't sponsored entity to finance (or insure? same diff) 'risky' overseas operations by american firms. but now international trade is so routine, developed and rule-bound it may not be needed. but it's still up and running to... some good or ill effect, fuck, who knows

It's a slush fund

oh, cool

seems to be pretty important to boeing, at least

the lawmakers reached a deal on the Export-Import Bank that tipped the scales for Patty Murray (D) and Maria Cantwell (D), senators from Washington state, which relies on the thousands of jobs at Boeing plants that are tied to Export-Import Bank loans.

i keep waiting for george costanza to way in on this

a true architect of trade policy

to way in

smh at myself

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/21/republicans-plan-to-replace-health-law-is-_%E3%83%84_-senator-says/

wait how did I miss that Feingold is trying to get back into the Senate?!

and Ron Johnson's vulnerable. Feingold's got a good shot.

"We'll be back on Sunday, May 31, one more opportunity to act responsibly to not allow this program to expire," he said around 1:30 a.m. "This is a high-threat period. We know what's going on overseas. We know what's been tried here at home. My colleagues, do we really want this law to expire?"

http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/23/politics/senate-nsa-bills-patriot-act/

Temporary extension falls 6 votes short of 60; but alas, ending NSA holding phone data (the House passed bill) also falls 3 votes short of 60.

Kinda sad that 60 votes is the new threshold in the senate. Do they teach this shit in school now or what

new? it's been the norm for the past 7 years

Hence they should be teaching it in school amirite

as GG says, may the Senate stay paralyzed

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nsa-tracking-program-20150523-story.html#page=1

this belongs here:

looks like Hastert's jail-bound
http://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/Ex-US-Speaker-Hastert-indicted-on-bank-related-6292720.php

sounds like he was being blackmailed? over what one can only guess

Mr. Hastert, 73, a longtime Republican leader who served as speaker from 1999 until 2007 and now works as a lobbyist in Washington, was providing money to an unnamed person in order to “compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct” against that person, according to a federal indictment issued by the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

sounds like hush money IMO, but it's a fine line

Washington Post re it:

The indictment did not spell out the exact nature of the “prior misconduct” by Hastert, but it noted that before entering state and federal politics in 1981, Has­tert served for more than a decade as a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Illinois.

In 2010, confronted about the “prior misconduct,” the former speaker agreed to pay $3.5 million to the person “to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct against Individual A,” prosecutors alleged.

That person, whose identity was shielded by prosecutors, has known Hastert most of his or her life, growing up in Yorkville, the city next to Hastert’s home town of Plano, in the exurbs west of Chicago. Prosecutors said the actions “occurred years earlier” than the 2010 meeting that sparked the payments.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/former-house-speaker-dennis-hastert-indicted-over-alleged-secret-payments/2015/05/29/dad237be-05f7-11e5-a428-c984eb077d4e_story.html?hpid=z1

Sounds creepy

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-28/obama-trade-bill-seen-gaining-enough-support-for-final-passage

Hopefully this won't be true

From some Fox site:

Hastert isn't the only recent House speaker to face ethics troubles. Former House Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, resigned under a cloud of conflict in 1989 after a very short speakership. Wright, who died May 6, was investigated by the House Ethics Committee over speaking fees and purchases of his book, becoming the first speaker to resign due to a scandal.

Yeah, close to 30 years ago is not really recent, but good point, he was a democrat. Bipartisan!

the man leading the insurgence against Wright? Newt Gingrich.

Aha!

Indicted former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was paying an individual from his past to conceal sexual misconduct, two federal law enforcement officials said Friday.

One of the officials, who would not speak publicly about the federal charges in Chicago, said “Individual A,” as the person is described in Thursday’s federal indictment, was a man and that the alleged misconduct was unrelated to Hastert’s tenure in Congress. The actions date to Hastert’s time as a Yorkville, Ill., high school wrestling coach and teacher, the official said.

“It goes back a long way, back to then,” the source said. “It has nothing to do with public corruption or a corruption scandal. Or to his time in office.” Thursday’s indictment described the misconduct “against Individual A” as having “occurred years earlier.”

Asked why Hastert was making the payments, the official said it was to conceal Hastert’s past relationship with the male. “It was sex,’’ the source said. The other official confirmed that the misconduct involved sexual abuse.