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Friday, May 23, 2008
Point-scoring all that matters in election year
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Congress is a despicable body in an election year.
Something absolutely has to happen to move this country away from a grotesque governing body that turns every piece of legislation, no matter how critical, into a game of partisan one-upmanship or a vehicle for bleeding taxpayers to gain or preserve political power.
This week’s examples were legislation to fund the war in Iraq and Afghanistan through next spring and a $300 billion farm bill that — in the words of the president of the food relief agency Oxfam America, Raymond Offenheiser — “continues billions of dollars in subsidies to large industrial-sized farms, doing little for family farms and rural America while hurting poor farmers abroad.”
The president rightly vetoed it. Georgia’s congressional delegation, with the exception of Tom Price, Lynn Westmoreland, John Linder, Nathan Deal and Paul Broun, voted to override. And Congress did. Why?
It’s an election year. Two-thirds of the bill’s funding goes to food programs, with generous increases added to attract urban Democrats, while the remainder goes to continue and expand subsidies to farmers, despite the fact that crop prices are at all-time highs.
Just after overriding the president’s veto of the farm-and-food-stamp bill, which U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) helped write, the Senate passed war funding legislation that should embarrass responsible governing officials. Everything’s a game with this Congress.
With 25 Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate approved a war funding bill loaded with domestic election-year pork and with programs intended to score political points to win elections in November.
One example of presidential politics setting the agenda to stage a “gotcha” opportunity is a veterans’ education add-on that would cost an estimated $51.6 billion over the next decade, substantial even by congressional standards.
There’s legitimate policy disagreement about whether the proposed entitlement, as drafted, produces unintended consequences. Barack Obama, seizing the moment for political advantage, took to the Senate floor to lambaste McCain, who supports an alternative measure. “I respect Sen. John McCain’s service to our country. … But I can’t understand why he would line up behind the president in opposition to this G.I. Bill,” Obama said, “or why he believes it is too generous to our veterans.”
On Memorial Day weekend, no senator can be seen as opposing education aid for returning veterans. And, of course, McCain doesn’t. It’s a cheap shot by Obama that’s typical of how policy gets made in Washington. McCain unloaded:
“It is typical, but no less offensive, that Senator Obama uses the Senate floor to take a cheap shot at an opponent and easy advantage of an issue he has less than zero understanding of,” said McCain.
While it would be easier politically to support the particular approach that Obama favors, said McCain, he, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham and North Carolina’s Richard Burr have offered an alternative “that would provide veterans with a substantial increase in educational benefits.” He continued:
“The most important difference between our two approaches is that” the bill by U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) that Obama supports “offers veterans who served one enlistment the same benefits as those offered veterans who have re-enlisted several times.” The McCain-Graham-Burr approach is to increase benefits with longer service, “otherwise we will encourage more people to leave the military after they have completed one enlistment.” By one study, the Webb approach would reduce retention by 16 percent, he said.
Without re-enlistments, the non-commissioned-officer core, the backbone of the military, loses its pipeline, weakening all the services.
It could be an honest disagreement that leads to the best solution for national security and for veterans.
It’s not. It’s cheap partisan politics that, sad to say, frightened 25 Republicans to turn war funding legislation into a domestic Christmas tree.
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Inspectors, defunct Bird, farm bill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Georgia’s rushing to execute its murderers, you say. Would the “rush” apply to Jack Alderman, who murdered his wife in Savannah in 1974 —- 34 years ago —- or to Curtis Osborne, who murdered two people in Spalding County in 1990, 18 years ago? Stays were lifted on both.
Public Service Commissioner Bobby Baker finally wins all challenges to residency. His wife has a house in DeKalb; he has a condo in Athens, in the PSC district he represents. He spends most of his time in Atlanta. Duh. That’s where his job is. Requiring PSC members to live in districts is one of the dumber laws the Legislature has imposed. It should be repealed promptly.
The state has no business licensing home inspectors. Gov. Sonny Perdue was right to veto that bill. In his view, and mine, the marketplace and voluntary associations are perfectly capable of “regulating” those who inspect the homes for prospective buyers. In fact, the state should be looking for every opportunity to get out of the licensing business. Mostly, licensing is a way to keep out potential competitors. License physicians. Republicans should be deregulating, not piling on.
Whatever happened to the Great Speckled Bird newspaper? It died. All the young hippies went into academia or politics and/or into being old hippies.
I’d probably have to read the book to find out why 78-year-old Barbara Walters wants us to know that she once had an affair with a politician. It never occurred to me to inquire. Or care. People, especially those in sports and entertainment, are all the time telling us more than we want to know about their personal lives. Stop. Quit. Or else I go before the Tribunal of Right Wingers to get a cease-and-desist order.
Barack Obama is determined to control not only his campaign but the campaign he will authorize to be waged against him. He tells Tennessee Republicans his wife’s comment that “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country” is off-limits. “If they [Republicans] think that they are going to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful, because I find unacceptable the notion that you start attacking my wife or my family.” Bill’s fair game. So’s Michelle. If they make campaign speeches, they’re fair game. Spouses. Children. Parents. Pets. Sacred cows. All.
Amnesty it is. A proposal by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) would allow farm laborers who have worked in the U.S. over the past four years to work legally for the next five. Georgia’s Saxby Chambliss, ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, is opposed.
No crisis here, at least with the state’s system for testing middle school students. Failure rates ran as high as 80 percent. The levelheaded observation of Herb Garrett, director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association, charts the course: “Anytime you have that level of failure statewide, you’ve got to go back and re-examine the test and re-examine everything associated with the test.” Take a sip of water, a deep breath and go on living. Matching curriculum, instruction, testing and higher standards is a work in progress.
Good news. Somewhat, anyway. Syria and Israel resume direct talks. Syria wants the Golan Heights. Surrendering it invites disaster.
Thank you, Lynn Westmoreland of Grantville, Nathan Deal of Gainesville, Paul Broun of Athens, John Linder of Duluth and Tom Price of Roswell, who cast a fiscal conservative vote to sustain the president’s veto of the $307 billion farm bill. “At a time when net farm income is projected to increase by more than $28 billion in one year, the American taxpayer should not be forced to subsidize a group of farmers who have adjusted gross incomes of up to $1.5 million” per year, said the president. He lost. We did too.
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