UPDATED:How Incompetent Is This Congress Led By San Fran Nan? UPDATE: Did Democrats argue that Congress can hide legislation from the President?
This incompetent:
The House overwhelmingly rejected President Bush’s veto Wednesday of a $290 billion farm bill, but what should have been a stinging defeat for the president became an embarrassment for Democrats.
Only hours before the House’s 316-108 vote, Bush had vetoed the five-year measure, saying it was too expensive and gave too much money to wealthy farmers when farm incomes are high. The Senate then was expected to follow suit quickly.
Action stalled, however, after the discovery that Congress had omitted a 34-page section of the bill when lawmakers sent the massive measure to the White House.
That means Bush vetoed a different bill from the one Congress passed, raising questions that the eventual law would be unconstitutional. Republicans objected when Democrats proposed passing the missing section separately and sending that to Bush.
In order to avoid those potential problems, House Democrats hoped to pass the entire bill, again, on Thursday under expedited rules usually reserved for unopposed legislation. The Senate was expected to follow suit. The correct version would then be sent to Bush under a new bill number for another expected veto.
Lawmakers also will have to pass an extension of current farm law, which expires Friday.
But look who get’s the blame:
“We are trying to understand the ramifications of this congressional farm bill foul-up. We haven’t found a precedent for a congressional blunder of this magnitude,” said Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman. “It looks like it may be back to square one for them.”
A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., shot back.
“Partisan sniping won’t solve this clerical error that even the White House failed to catch,” said Drew Hammill.
MM explains why Republicans will pay for this as well!
Ed asks: Did Democrats argue that Congress can hide legislation from the President?
His post is a must read, but this memo from House minority whip Roy Blunt is very interesting:
What Did They Know, When Did They Know It, and What Did They Do About It?:
Ø It appears the Democrat Leadership was informed by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel and the Committee on Agriculture that the bill sent to and vetoed by the President was erroneous PRIOR to consideration of the veto override.
Ø Despite this knowledge and despite requests from staff from the Republican Leader’s office, the Democrat Leadership proceeded with the veto override of a bill they knew was not the bill passed by both Houses of Congress.
Ø Importantly, there were opportunities to correct the enrollment error consistent with past practice and in a constitutionally sound manner if the Democrat Leadership had not rushed ahead with the veto override. Once they moved forward, however, they foreclosed those opportunities.
Ø When confronted on the House Floor by the Republican Leader, Whip, and Rules Ranking Member, the Majority Leader defended the Leadership’s actions and professed a constitutional theory that so long as both the House and Senate had passed the same language in didn’t matter whether or not the Speaker sent the whole bill passed by the House and Senate or simply parts of it to the President.
The Dangers of the Democrats’ New Theory:
Ø Under the theory espoused by the Majority Leader, the Speaker of the House can simply pick and chose (either overtly or as a result of mistake made by an enrolling clerk) which parts of final bills to send to the President. If she is uncomfortable with a provision that was included as part of a compromise she could in theory exclude it from the bill when she sends it to the President. Ø Importantly, the Speaker’s decision to omit language if challenged by Members of the House through a question of privilege, can simply be tabled by the majority.
Who Pressured the Enrolling Clerk to Quickly Complete the Enrollment:
Ø In a memo prepared by the House Clerk on May 21, 2008, the Clerk asserts that part of the mistake was a result of a ten-year-old flawed enrolling process, yet she goes on to state that “During a review of this process, Enrolling Division staff expressed a concern in receiving direct calls from Leadership and the Committee to accelerate the enrolling process.” Who pressured the enrolling staff?
Most ethical Congress ever 
May 22, 2008 - 06:33 AM on May 22nd, 2008
[...] The Absurd Report wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt This incompetent: The House overwhelmingly rejected President Bush’s veto Wednesday of a $290 billion farm bill, but what should have been a stinging defeat for the president became an embarrassment for Democrats. Only hours before the House’s 316-108 vote, Bush had vetoed the five-year measure, saying it was too expensive and gave too much money to wealthy farmers when farm incomes are high. The Senate then was expected to follow suit quickly. Action stalled, however, after the discovery th [...]
May 22, 2008 - 09:50 AM on May 22nd, 2008
It is utterly incompetent. I challenged SFL to name one accomplishment of theirs. He was unable to do so.
May 22, 2008 - 10:35 AM on May 22nd, 2008
“How Incopetentent”
I dunno, how “incopetentent” is the person who wrote the headline and published it?
May 22, 2008 - 08:36 PM on May 22nd, 2008
Let’s see,
Democrats:some clerk made an error in printing out a bill. Republicans: Bush made an error on starting the dumbest war on the planet and calling it a war on terror (hint, the terrorist were already here).
I’ll take the clerkical mistake, it costs me less.
David
May 22, 2008 - 08:45 PM on May 22nd, 2008
So because the terrorists were here, there is no reason to fight them?
May 22, 2008 - 09:12 PM on May 22nd, 2008
With all due respect, the people we are fighting in Iraq have little to do with the people who took down the WTC.
We got rid of a bad guy that did a lot of bad things. Akin to what we wish would have been done to Hitler in ‘39. Eventually, Iraq will govern itself and then we will leave and the world will still be a dangerous place.
All things considered, we should have gone after North Korea as he not only is still a threat, but he’s starving his people. Take your pick.
David
May 22, 2008 - 10:48 PM on May 22nd, 2008
WTC was taken down by Jihadists. Al Qaeda has declared war on America openly, and their jihadists are fighting us in Iraq (and getting their ass kicked).
Seems abundantly clear to me…
May 23, 2008 - 06:39 AM on May 23rd, 2008
Not quite that simple. Perhaps we should have fought them over in Malaysia, or maybe Syria, where they openly cheered the tv that show the towers coming down. The war in Afghanistan is somewhat of a response, but has fallen off the radar screen on MSM.
As far as declaring war on America, they did that about 15 years ago. The problem is that you don’t know who it is and if they just got lucky with having a CNN reporter there.
David
May 23, 2008 - 06:40 AM on May 23rd, 2008
…and yes, the idiots who are trying to prevent Iraq from standing on their feet are getting their butts kicked by US and Iraqi forces!!
David
May 23, 2008 - 07:30 AM on May 23rd, 2008
I disagree with your assertion that those we are fighting in Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. What terrorist attacks precipitated that horrific event? We were hit at the WTC in 93′ and again in 01′. We did nothing about about all the terrorists attacks prior to 01′. Closing our eyes to the problem did nothing to stop the attacks, but they helped Clinton’s poll numbers. That declaration of war was a formality to AQ, and should have been taken seriously by this country. The UN has been worthless in Darfur, another radical islamic problem that people just assume is another area of Africa where the people are starving because they have no food..The POTUS has offered to help the African Union, the best hope for Darfur, but was criticized for calling it what it was ..genocide! How many people are dead or near death and we are worried about the word genocide?
You are correct, we are fighting an enemy that wears no uniform. They wear no uniform and know no bounds. They don’t need alot of money to create a massive path of destruction.
May 23, 2008 - 09:01 AM on May 23rd, 2008
Actually there’d been terrorist attacks (Islamist-based) between that time. US forces were actually close to Bin Laden in ‘98 as they knew something was in the works. Its hard to ramp up support when the idiots haven’t done anything yet as they did in ‘01. The ‘93 attack was so poorly planned and executed that it was assumed that the idiots were not as organized as they might have been. The truck was supposed to have been detonated at the entrance so as to affect the building’s structure. Instead the driver brought it to a large empty area which disapated a lot of the blast.
That said, it shouldn’t diminsh the importance of the war in Iraq. It was a dangerous country and we took out a bad guy that routinely paid families of suicide bombers who went into Israel, amoung many other things. I wish the President would have sold it differently because so much was based on finding the weapons of destruction that getting rid of Sadam should have been billed as the main goal.
Thanks,
David
May 23, 2008 - 09:20 AM on May 23rd, 2008
I remember very, very clearly the buildup to the war in Iraq. I remember how Saddam flagrantly violated the terms of the Gulf War cease-fire, repeatedly. How he kept giving us and the rest of the world the finger, repeatedly. It was clear something had to be done, and it was clear the geopolitics had to be changed. Bush had to sell the WMD thing to get things moving forward.
Then after the invasion some Congressional scum, who stood on the steps of the Capitol and sang God Bless America after 9/11, started focusing on the WMD threat and pretending it was the only reason for taking down Saddam, which was a lie. The truth was of no consequence to these Boll Weevils, who were more interested in political gain for their party that anything else.
May 23, 2008 - 09:54 AM on May 23rd, 2008
I agree with the fact that he felt he had to use the WMD thing in order to get the ball rolling. My point exactly. Now he’s in the quagmire because of it. Just stupid. Add to the fact that let’s do some more tax cuts because the war will get financed by…opps, he forgot about that one. Very easy to play Santa Claus.
As for the terms of the original Gulf War, he’d violated the no-fly zone several times over the previous decade, and several times Clinton gave the go ahead to shoot the idiots down.
David
May 23, 2008 - 09:59 AM on May 23rd, 2008
11- But what about the embassies and the USS Cole? Let’s not forget that in each case, it was an act of aggression. They didn’t need an Army to carry out the attacks.
May 23, 2008 - 10:07 AM on May 23rd, 2008
Correct and thanks for reminding me of the Cole. That underscores the fact that there were other events between ‘93 and ‘01. China had forced down one of our spy planes and it sat on the tarmac for awhile while we tried to explain that one. Not so much of a terrorist thing because it was done by an established government where the others, as you point out, were attacks that didn’t need any Army to carry out.
David
May 23, 2008 - 10:44 PM on May 23rd, 2008
Actually the tax rate cuts were a good thing, especially with a war on. Tax RATE cuts almost always lead to increased revenues. We have had record high revenues the last couple of years. The real problem has been the out of control spending. I just don’t understand how people who claim that conserving will solve our energy deficit, insist on increasing taxes is necessary to solve our fiscal one. History shows that reduced tax rates lead to increased tax revenues (actual money coming into the treasury) because of the additional investment and production that leaving the money in the private sector produces. I like the farmer analogy. The more seeds a farmer has to plant, the more crops he can grow. The more crops he harvests, the more seeds he has to plant. In a manufacturing model it would be the more capital an entrepreneur has to start his business, the bigger it can become. The bigger it becomes, the more capital the entrepreneur has to invest in making it bigger.
May 25, 2008 - 11:25 PM on May 25th, 2008
Just finished a good book on US Army Special Forces (Green Beret) operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. From what I read in the book, our guys found a lot of training material on Chemical weapons in an Ansar Al Islam training camp just this side of the Iranian border and the people in the camp weren’t Iraqis. They were from all over the middle east and had connections to Al Quaeda and possibly the Iraqi intelligence service, though that purpose of that connection is unknown. Whether the Iraqi intelligence service was trying to infiltrate them or recruit them wasn’t discernible from what I read. The camp was situated in such a location as to allow the leaders and as many fighters as possible to skip across the border to the relative safety of Iran. The book was called “Masters of Chaos” It was written by a reporter who had unprecedented cooperation from the US Army Special Forces. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in how the Green Berets are actually supposed to work versus the BS that gets printed about them in the press.
May 27, 2008 - 01:34 AM on May 27th, 2008
Generally a rate cut will lead to more economic activity and ultimately more for the goverment in general, but only to a point. My beef is that the President made no provision either way and chose not to handle it at all. This I consider very irresponsible and is something my kids will pay for. Not to mention other Bush mandates that were never funded, like “No Child Left Behind”.
David
May 27, 2008 - 05:10 AM on May 27th, 2008
David. No Child Left Behind was legislation originating from Ted Kennedy.
May 27, 2008 - 06:01 AM on May 27th, 2008
Actually David, NCLB was funded, but not in the way that schools wanted the d\funding, therefore create the lie that it was never funded and people ran with it…
Schools were getting their funding, but only schools that achieved got the additional funds, not the failing schools..it was like a reward for those making or already at desired levels and a way to weed out the failing schools and send the students from that failing school into one that is achieving the desired grades.
I am not sure how old you are, but I am 43. I attended one of the top public high schools in MI. From the minute we sat in that very first desk in the first grade, we were being prepared for college. It wasn’t if you went, it was when you went. It wasn’t if you could afford it, it was our guidance team will assist a family to get the necessary loans, grants and scholarships to assure that each student attended college. Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s, we knew that the days of getting a good paying job without a college education were numbered. We were tested on a regular basis, the difference was that there was no hoopla surrounding the tests. There was no warning to the kids, we just came in and took standardized tests. I look back at all of my old class photos and those of my siblings, and guess what? We had minimum 25 students per class, but we learned and no one ever complained. In those days, schools, at least mine, did the right thing and pulled those that were struggling as well as those that weren’t challenged, gave them some special assignments and one on one attention to their needs..it was nothing out of the ordinary for those pulled that were struggling, to come back and rank in the top of the class.
Today, we see a union fighting a program that is necessary in today’s education. My beef with NCLB is that it left loopholes for educators to take advantage of. Minority students aren’t counted in the testing. When NCLB was passed, 60+% of African American males in the 3rd grade could not read at a 3rd grade level. (Reading is fundamental to learning.) We have an alarming statistic begging for attention, so we pass legislation to correct the problem..well except for those black kids that can’t read!
A woman in Oak Park, IL sued when she found out that her kids weren’t included in the test scores. They are used to bring in extra funds from the state, just not good enough with their perfect scores to be used on a test average!
May 27, 2008 - 09:23 AM on May 27th, 2008
Pam,
Your response is indeed the reason why I blog and that is to learn. I went to a similar highschool in a state to the west of you (I’m about the same age) and it was largely mainstreamed with the ultimate goal of getting everyone to college who wanted it.
In my kids school today, there is so much focused on the tests that actually learning something is what gets left behind. I currently live in NYC and for Bush and Congress to blithly say “Poorly performing schools will not get funding” isn’t fair to the rest of us who have to send our kids there. The few nickels I’d get for sending my kids to private school wouldn’t make up the difference in cost for tuition and transportation in getting them to school. Let’s face it, the kids that really need to do well in school are not my kids where my wife and I are very involved in their learning. The kids who are poor and from single-parent homes are the ones that statistically need to get schooling or they will drop out. Private schools are less of an option there.
I know Bush was attributed to turning around high schools in Texas with similar methods, but there are many things that can and should be done at the state level that the federal government shouldn’t be involved in.
The darker side, I feel is that Bush had a lot of well-heeled supporters that already had their kids in private schools and this worked out as a nice thank you to them.
Thanks for bloggin’
David
May 27, 2008 - 03:55 PM on May 27th, 2008
David,
They don’t get Federal NCLB funds, but they still get their state funds, and in many cases, federal funds that are not charged to the NCLB account.
I am happy to see that the largest inner city school district has quit fighting the testing and instead has begun focusing on the teachers and the parents. The Superintendent is an African American male brought in from I believe Baltimore. His attitude has been that we aren’t producing results at $6700 per head, what is throwing money at the problem going to do for us? He is tired of excuses and wants realistic goals to be set and met. He wants qualified teachers to teach the subjects they are assigned. He wants parental participation. A bunch of foundations just donated a prepatory high school to the city. It will be free…The curriculum will be tough, but worth the effort on the part of the students.