How'd that get in there?
This is infuriating.
Over the weekend, it was reported that a small rider got into an omnibus spending bill in the Senate that would have given the House and Senate appropriations committee chairs or their agents the right to inspect anyone's income tax returns. Think about that. Some staffer for a committee chair could look up how much money you, or anyone, reported to the IRS. This, by itself is incredible - that the Senate would give away so much of our privacy for no reason.
But it gets worse. Apparently, no one in the Senate knew they voted for the rider. Well, almost no one.
Just so we are clear, Congress puts together what are called omnibus bills. These huge pieces of legislation - often well over a thousand pages - combine a whole bunch of committee recommendations on all kinds of related subjects so that the Congress can vote on lots of little things all at once. Omnibus spending bills allow our representatives to vote for pork without looking stupid. Instead of thousands of individual allocations coming up for a yes or no vote, they vote for all of them at once. They are the work of lots of compromise and infighting. Small allocations for one representative's constitutents are included in exchange for support for another representative's pet projects. "I''ll support the bill if you include a million dollars to fund a submarine for Colorado." Omnibus bills are nefarious, but probably necessary because of how huge our country is.
Riders are small amendments that are attached to bills without going through committees. Riders often have no relationship to the bill being voted on. An omnibus spending bill that includes all the funding for our entire governent, the failure of which would mean world-wide economic collapse, might include a rider making it illegal to skateboard on D.C. sidewalks. Riders escape scrutiny.
Well someone snuck this particular rider onto the omnibus spending bill, and now Senate Majority leader Bill Frist claims he doesn't know who did it. On "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Frist said, "I have no earthly idea how it got in there." The Republican Senate Majority leader doesn't know how a rider got into a bill in the Republican-controlled Senate that would have given incredible new power to two Republican committee chairs? Excuse me. And what is worse, this bill passed. A majority of senators supported this bill. Afterwards, of course, they all claimed not to have read the rider.
A majority of our senators passed a law that none of them read. Or even skimmed.
This is insane.
We need reform of the way our Congress does business. We need a Constitutional amendment prohibiting riders. We need to give serious consideration to prohibting omnibus bills. Let them vote for every single piece of spending. Let's see how much pork they approve if they are on record voting for it individually. These omnibus bills and riders allow stupid campaign charges like the ones levelled in this past campaign where Bush accused Kerry of voting against military spending "X" number of times. Kerry might have voted against an omnibus bill for literally a thousand different reasons, but because that bill also included military spending provisions, he is accused of voting against military spending.
This is insane.
Over the weekend, it was reported that a small rider got into an omnibus spending bill in the Senate that would have given the House and Senate appropriations committee chairs or their agents the right to inspect anyone's income tax returns. Think about that. Some staffer for a committee chair could look up how much money you, or anyone, reported to the IRS. This, by itself is incredible - that the Senate would give away so much of our privacy for no reason.
But it gets worse. Apparently, no one in the Senate knew they voted for the rider. Well, almost no one.
Just so we are clear, Congress puts together what are called omnibus bills. These huge pieces of legislation - often well over a thousand pages - combine a whole bunch of committee recommendations on all kinds of related subjects so that the Congress can vote on lots of little things all at once. Omnibus spending bills allow our representatives to vote for pork without looking stupid. Instead of thousands of individual allocations coming up for a yes or no vote, they vote for all of them at once. They are the work of lots of compromise and infighting. Small allocations for one representative's constitutents are included in exchange for support for another representative's pet projects. "I''ll support the bill if you include a million dollars to fund a submarine for Colorado." Omnibus bills are nefarious, but probably necessary because of how huge our country is.
Riders are small amendments that are attached to bills without going through committees. Riders often have no relationship to the bill being voted on. An omnibus spending bill that includes all the funding for our entire governent, the failure of which would mean world-wide economic collapse, might include a rider making it illegal to skateboard on D.C. sidewalks. Riders escape scrutiny.
Well someone snuck this particular rider onto the omnibus spending bill, and now Senate Majority leader Bill Frist claims he doesn't know who did it. On "Face the Nation" on Sunday, Frist said, "I have no earthly idea how it got in there." The Republican Senate Majority leader doesn't know how a rider got into a bill in the Republican-controlled Senate that would have given incredible new power to two Republican committee chairs? Excuse me. And what is worse, this bill passed. A majority of senators supported this bill. Afterwards, of course, they all claimed not to have read the rider.
A majority of our senators passed a law that none of them read. Or even skimmed.
This is insane.
We need reform of the way our Congress does business. We need a Constitutional amendment prohibiting riders. We need to give serious consideration to prohibting omnibus bills. Let them vote for every single piece of spending. Let's see how much pork they approve if they are on record voting for it individually. These omnibus bills and riders allow stupid campaign charges like the ones levelled in this past campaign where Bush accused Kerry of voting against military spending "X" number of times. Kerry might have voted against an omnibus bill for literally a thousand different reasons, but because that bill also included military spending provisions, he is accused of voting against military spending.
This is insane.
posted by Charles S. Russell at 11:50 AM
1 Comments:
Charlie, you make an excellent point here, regarding these riders. This reminds me of a dispute I had once w/ the phone company over a policy they buried in one of their pieces of literature. When I called them to complain about what I thought were errant charges, the nice lady at the phone co. explained that the reason for them was described in such and such section of my bill. "Oh", I said "I'm supposed to read that?"
Thanks for the invite to the movies today, we had fun. Take Care!
Post a Comment
<< Home