The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

HR1586: ‘Legislate In Haste, Amend At Leisure’ Now Making Oscar Wilde
Look Serious

Posted on | August 10, 2010 | 7 Comments

by Smitty

Unserious

Bluegrass Pundit has us on a merry chase, trying to find out the meaning of HR1586, which was passed :

Cato and CNET were on the case:

It was supposed to be some routine election-year largesse from Democrats: a $26 billion spending measure to aid two of the party’s core constituencies, labor unions, and government workers.

But a watchdog Web site on Sunday evening spotted an unusual feature of the legislation, which the Senate approved by a 61-to-39 vote last week.

Suggested alternate titles:

  • Immoral Act of 2010
  • 1586th Idiotic Act of the 111th Congress
  • Can’t Get It Together Act of the Usual Suspects
  • Anti-Constitutional Act of Godforsaken Commies
  • Anyone Disagreeing With The Progressive Agenda Is Raaaaacist Act of 2010
  • Stacy McCain Needs Vanilla Pudding

By the time you get back to the Library of Congress, the title seems to be somewhere between TARP and tarmac:

1 . To impose an additional tax on bonuses received from certain TARP recipients. (Introduced in House – IH)
2 . FAA Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act (Engrossed Amendment Senate – EAS)
3 . To impose an additional tax on bonuses received from certain TARP recipients. (Engrossed in House [Passed House] – EH)
4 . XXXXXXAct ofXXXX (Engrossed Amendment Senate – EAS)
5 . Aviation Safety and Investment Act of 2010 (Engrossed Amendment House – EAH)
6 . To impose an additional tax on bonuses received from certain TARP recipients. (Placed on Calendar Senate – PCS)

As of this writing, it is unknown to what degree my local Congresstool’s stellar leadership record did or did not contribute to the “Legislation With No Name” debacle, but you can bet there was a fistful of dollars involved.

Serious

Instapundit posed a reader’s question:

Staggering deficits. Exploding national debt. Grossly underfunded public pensions. Aging populace. Social Security on track for insolvency. Investors running for precious metals. Higher education bubble. Stagnant economy. Massive new government healthcare program. Words like “unsustainable” in CBO reports.

I have racked my brain and debated with anyone who was willing. I can’t come up with a way out of this that doesn’t involve printing vast amounts of cash, double-digit inflation and interest rates, and the end of the dollar as a global currency because we “soft default” trillions of the national debt. What productive capacity we have left would be gutted by the tax increases needed to honestly pay what we are going to owe. And the people we owe (China, seniors, public pensioners, etc) aren’t going to just write off the debt like a bank short-selling a beach house.

So my challenge to your readers is this: “How do we get out of this WITHOUT printing money?”

In that post, another reader’s response:

There are a nearly infinite number of solutions, but the key is this: if the rate of GDP growth is greater than the rate of government spending growth, everything will come out.

Insty followed up with a realistic response:”The end of responsibility: From homeowners to government, the buck stops nowhere”

First, what is responsibility? For my purposes, responsibility is the negative feedback loop that dampens idiocy over time. More briefly, responsibility is that which our government lacks.

Why?

The Federalist model of government stands effectively scuttled for at least three reasons (he said in a Gillespie tone)

DC is the ultimate source of loot, punishing and rewarding by whim. Citizens have been rewarded for jacking the incumbency rate to full-on aristocratic levels.

Now someone says, ‘well, if we just curb the spending. . .’ Really? Really?

No, until you’re doing something to alter the context, to revitalize the states, to break the back of Progressivism, you’re sadly working for the other team. You’ll clean House in November, 2010, sure. You’ll maybe even up the ante in 2012. But that silent, unelected, tumorous, Orwellian staff of federal zombie-crats will, eventually, inexorably set about dining on a brain near yours, because there is no feedback loop flogging responsibility into the system.

When we’ve reached the point of honestly revisiting the last century, and set about delegating all social safety net programs to the States, over time, sensibly, to survive or die as the voters are willing to fund them sustainably (if I can use an eviro-weenie word in an economic context, knowing it’s a ‘narrative’ violation, but so is this whole blog FTW), then We The People will not seem as un-serious as a Congress that can’t get a name on legislation before voting.

It has suddenly come to me, in closing, that this could be the most honest title of any legislation in the 111th Congress. Soon, they may pass the Everything Men Know About Women Act (read the first review).

Category: Congress, Corruption, Democrats, Progressivism

Comments

7 Responses to “HR1586: ‘Legislate In Haste, Amend At Leisure’ Now Making Oscar Wilde
Look Serious”

  1. Kojocaro
    August 10th, 2010 @ 12:15 pm

    By November 2012 we will be like china with such horrid pollution…………hey thanks obama for pretending to save the environment

  2. Kojocaro
    August 10th, 2010 @ 8:15 am

    By November 2012 we will be like china with such horrid pollution…………hey thanks obama for pretending to save the environment

  3. Time to Play ‘Name that Bill’ :: The Lonely Conservative
    August 10th, 2010 @ 12:29 pm

    […] How should we fill in the blanks? Smitty has a few suggestions, such as the Immoral Act of 2010. Personally, I think it should be called the Umpteenth […]

  4. Kojocaro
    August 10th, 2010 @ 8:45 pm

    why not call it the Save our ass from the wrath of the peoples will act

  5. Kojocaro
    August 10th, 2010 @ 4:45 pm

    why not call it the Save our ass from the wrath of the peoples will act

  6. Kojocaro
    August 10th, 2010 @ 8:46 pm

    although some parts of china are not that bad but still

  7. Kojocaro
    August 10th, 2010 @ 4:46 pm

    although some parts of china are not that bad but still