Now, A Bailout For Detroit

[piper17 1]

Last week, U.S. News & World Report suggested the $25 billion loan-guarantee bailout for the Big 3 automakers may be passed by Congress and signed by President Bush as early as this weekend. Certainly, it will be done without any fanfare, especially if the financial services bailout is finalized and ready for the president's signature at about the same time.

Reuters confirmed the auto deal cleared a major hurdle last Wed., Sept. 24, when the House passed the $25 billion loan guarantee measure as part of a "larger, must-pass spending bill."

Reuters also reported the Senate is expected to follow through swiftly and pass the legislative package so President Bush can sign it into law by Oct. 1, this Wednesday.

Congress and the President are spending more and more of your tax dollars. Happy?

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition"...Rudyard Kipling

[billvon 3,116]

>Congress and the President are spending more and more of your tax
>dollars. Happy?

Never fear! It will never pass - unless they add a tax cut for the republicans and some health care assistance for democrats, of course. Then everyone can vote for it and be a tax-cuttin', granny-savin' hero.

[Trent 0]

Line item veto or legislation to prevent unrelated crap being added to bills needs to happen.

Oh, hello again!

[billvon 3,116]

>Line item veto . . .

Absolutely not. We've already made the president into more of a king than a president; the last thing we need to do is give him more power to tailor laws to his particular ideology.

>or legislation to prevent unrelated crap being added to bills needs to
>happen.

That might work better. A rule that requires more than X unrelated provisions to be broken out into separate laws.

[piper17 1]

Agreed but the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, IIRC.

Line Item Veto Act of 1996
Presidents have repeatedly asked Congress to give them a line item veto power. According to Louis Fisher in The Politics of Shared Power, Ronald Reagan said to Congress in his 1986 State of the Union address, "Tonight I ask you to give me what forty-three governors have: Give me a line-item veto this year. Give me the authority to veto waste, and I'll take the responsibility, I'll make the cuts, I'll take the heat." Bill Clinton echoed the request in his State of the Union address in 1995.

The President was briefly granted this power by the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, passed by Congress in order to control "pork barrel spending" that favors a particular region rather than the nation as a whole. The line-item veto was used 11 times to strike 82 items from the federal budget by President Bill Clinton. [3][4]

However, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled on February 12, 1998, that unilateral amendment or repeal of only parts of statutes violated the U.S. Constitution. This ruling was subsequently affirmed on June 25, 1998, by a 6-3 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case Clinton v. City of New York. The case was brought by the then New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.

A constitutional amendment to give the President line item veto power has been considered periodically since the Court ruled the 1996 act unconstitutional. Some scholars, including Louis Fisher, believe the line item veto would give presidents too much power over government spending compared with the power of Congress.[5]

"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition"...Rudyard Kipling

[Trent 0]

Quote

That might work better. A rule that requires more than X unrelated provisions to be broken out into separate laws.

I'd say that ANY unrelated provisions should be disallowed. It'd force people to actually take a position on each vote instead of, for example, our Texas senators agreeing to pass the bailout only after Ike Funding was put in there. Stupid.

At least then, politicians would have to own up to what they REALLY voted for and against.

Oh, hello again!

[billvon 3,116]

>I'd say that ANY unrelated provisions should be disallowed.

Right - the term "unrelated" would be the sticking point there. It's probably reasonable to include a roads bill in a mining bill to build the roads to access the resources. But a traffic bill to deal with the new problems caused by the roads? Or an environmental rider to mitigate the pollution caused by the mine? Tougher question.

[Trent 0]

I think a group of reasonable people could come up with a way to keep "unrelated" out of bills. The problem is... finding a group of reasonable people in office. For instance, what did Ike or mental health have to do with the "bailout" garbage that is in the house now?

I think this is one central reason we can't keep our representatives honest. They never have to REALLY choose. There's always the "well, I voted for the part that fed starving children... not the war part" excuse. That needs to be cut out.

Oh, hello again!

[billvon 3,116]

>The problem is... finding a group of reasonable people in office.

Or finding clear language to describe what "unrelated" is. Would not solve the problem but would help a lot.

[Trent 0]

You're right. But going the way it has been is NOT the way. It needs to be figgerd out. I think it'd go quite a long way towards fixing things. At the very least, it'd be more honest.

Oh, hello again!