Fiscal Clifford

Sitting around with my friend, Fiscal Clifford, and discussing the vote.  What I want to know is how these guys can vote so fast.  A bill is written in normal English first, but a staff of experts have to put together the actual code of the bill.  This may include thousands of changes to the law in obscure places.  A bill that extends unemployment benefits may, for example change the coffee-break times of union contract workers in the unemployment office.  It may require a cost of living adjustment in certain locales and not in others.  Net result is that a bill cannot be completely written for days. Steve has shown me bills that were a page long in normal English versions that wound up being an inch thick once written as law.  And the codified entire bill is what counts and must be available for reading.  Lest some weird unintended side effect on the law occur.  "What! They are closing all the post offices in 4 counties!!"

Clifford smiled at me and answered, "You are right to be suspicious.  In fact the Senate got to look at the codified bill 3 minutes before they voted at 1:39 am.  You can find that on Drudge Report.  But, don't think that the bill was really complete.  By a parliamentary trick, the Senate reserved conference committee time for the bill when it came back from the House, so that staffers could complete their research of the legal codes and make all the changes they deemed necessary.  In other words, they didn't really know what the hell they were voting on--even if Harry Reid could speed read it.  Hare just waved his arms and said, 'Let's vote'.  Gives new meaning to the statement by Pelosi about Obamacare that we would have to pass it to find out what's in it."

Okay so they passed more than the tax stuff in the form of Puerto Rican Rum subsidies and so forth.  I thought the House had a moratorium on earmarks.  How did that get passed?  I did note that all sorts of earmarks had cluttered the Sandy Relief Bill.  So how did HR8, the Fiscal Cliff Avoidance bill get passed?  Clifford smiled again.  It just slipped through, he noted.  Now Charlie Wrangle and Harry Reid can dance around while drinking cheap rum.  I thought of the old cheer of St. Johns College I had to learn as a freshman, "Ashoo, ashoo, ashoo, laroo, ishabakka, ishabakka, boo!  Pass me a legislator, half-past an alligator, RUM, BUM BOLLIGATOR, Chicasaw a dog! St. Johns Seniors, Rah! Rah! Rah!"  Does this not fit?

Well, the Dems certainly got the upper hand in this, I lamented.  But Clifford just laughed.  "After arguing for ten years that the Bush tax cuts were bad and that the Clinton tax rates made business boom, they are now saying that a return to Clinton rates would have been a disaster and did what the R's could never achieve--made several tax fixes permanent.  The alternative min tax will be indexed to inflation.  And the ultimate irony is that they decried middle class tax cuts while demanding justice that the upper class pay their fair share.  In other words, if you make $449,999 they are your friend, but if you make $450,001, you are one of the evil rich.  Worse, the number of tax returns above $450,000 represents only 0.7% of all returns, and 6 days of revenue which could run the government."

But the wealthy didn't come out unscathed, I offered.  Most people who manage to accumulate assets do so by tax  strategies that utilize the lower capital gains rates--which have gone up.  "Yep," Clifford responded.  "And nobody is going to scrap their trusts and estate planning with a 40% tax on assets either."

But doesn't this mean that the Republican congress is neutered?  They will barely have a majority in a couple weeks and the leadership is split,  I asked.  Plus, Obama got all the credit.  Clifford chuckled.  "Well, the R's shot themselves in the foot expecting that the mandatory taxation and defense spending cuts would be so onerous that the D's would look for a compromise.  What we all see plainly is that Obama doesn't care a fig about deficits.  He scoffs at deficits.  And of course, so do a lot of Americans.  They have heard about deficits for so long they are jaded and don't care.  They won't know what hit them when the debt bomb explodes.  The next round is over the debt ceiling.  I would like to see the Congress just hang tough and talk about how Obama needs to live on his means.   But it will never happen," Clifford insists.  "They will make a show, but ultimately don't want to be blamed for a recession."  Which prompted me to laugh.  I recently read Paul Krugman, that leftist economist say forebodingly that this year we might get a recession started by politics 'for the first time'.  Ha! He finally admitted that recessions are not normally caused by politics.  The Dems have blamed every recession since Hoover on Republican politics.  Now Krugman let his hand slip.

"But by being the big spender when the bomb explodes," Clifford mused, "Obama and the Democrats have shot themselves in the foot for a long long time.  There are a lot of people who will be cussing them when the bills come due and America becomes a weaker country.