Obama's veto could have killed both amendments and forced a continuing resolution to fund government operations while Congress did the actual work it is paid by the public to do, instead of fulfilling corporate lobbyists' dry dreams that both parties are paid by plutocrats to make come true. Every year they have the same dream.
Obama had competently demonstrated how a veto threat works when he wanted to increase military expenditures with respect to the original H.R. 2029. But that was before it was stripped to contain his own CRomnibus II. Amending an empty bill with respect to another much lesser matter (the appropriations contained in the original H.R. 2029), a bill that had already gone through the whole legislative process short of final enactment, avoided the messy "sausage-making" journey of legislative deliberations of, rather than decreeing, the appropriations and tax amendments.
Had they been offered as original bills for financing the whole government and tax expenditures, rather than a single large Omnibus fix of everything at once, the two amendments would have gone in various parts through the same subcommittee and committee vetting, mark-ups and hearing process that the simpler, original H.R. 2029 took the better part of a year to traverse.
By avoiding the usual route, debate on the single Omnibus bill could be restricted to 2 hours in the House, the total debate allowed for this major part of the below-average legislative output of Congress for the whole year. This process shuts down all discussion, debate, opposition, prior comment and public input. Lobbyists produce such a bill-- rather than the open legislative process intended by the Constitution, as described by Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Practice (1801) where Jefferson warned, "nothing tended more to throw power into the hands of administration ... than a neglect of, or departure from, the rules of proceeding".
V oting House Democrats were unanimously against the resolution to adopt this summary Omnibus procedure, more than enough to sustain a veto. This was a deal between Obama, the Speaker, and the Senate leaders (necessary to obviate a filibuster), which eventually the House leaders joined in too. Republicans held together on that procedural vote to waive the rules. CRomnibus II was too big and well-financed to be stopped by backbench dissenters, whether on its unorthodox process or its breathtaking substance.
Later on December 18, 2015, when the House sent its two amendments of the Senate's bill stuffed with Santa's goodies back to the Senate for rubber stamping, Bernie Sanders and a mixed group of only six Democrats and 26 Republicans voted against HR 2029.
Thus plutocrats again turned the once-boring extended appropriations process for funding the federal government into a swift act of larceny from the taxpayers. At the same time they changed out the locks to make their future raids even easier. Lobbyists get to stuff all the presents for special interests they can pay for under their Omnibus Yule tree called the Consolidated Appropriations Act, as discussed in Sec b below, while politicians get to receive secret payments for these gifts and many more to come, as discussed in Ch. 2 below.
After signing the Act, President Obama conducted one of his rare press conference s to soft-sell it to the public. He sought to make it all sound normal--"Just keep moving, nothing to see here." Circumventing normal legislative rules, which last year the Washington Post protested as a " caricature of the deliberative process by which Congress is supposed to approve appropriations" this year becomes, in Obama's reassuring alternate version of reality, "typical of American democracy." As veteran journalist Bill Moyers wrote, stenographers called news "anchors acted as amplifiers for official spin -- repeating the mantra-of-the-hour that while this is not 'a perfect bill,' it does a lot of good things. ' But for whom? At what price?' went unasked." Moyers does not answer his question that the "good things" were deliberate window dressing for plutocratic plunder.
Obama was not content with his usual pretense that the Republican Congress -- which Obama created by alienating his base in two midterm elections -- made him do it. This dodge seems to be wearing thin. This year, it may have been implied in some soundbites. However, according to CNN, "Obama called Ryan after the vote to thank him 'for helping government work.'" But notwithstanding his presidential "kudos," even the Speaker was rightly complaining that the process was not a good way for government to work: "Ryan repeatedly stressed he doesn't like rolling up all the spending bills, along with a myriad of policy provisions, into one measure." NYT confirms the Speaker told reporters, "You know I don't like this process, right?" and that he later re-Twitterated "his distaste for omnibus spending bills."
Short-cutting democratic process is Obama's preference, designed by him to instruct the leaders privately what Republican policies he likes and will not veto in order to serve Wall Street as discreetly as possible. In return he gets Republicans to give him the advertising gimmicks he needs to sell Wall Street's Christmas package to the terminally gullible public that still supports him. His approach is designed for fraud. Once his modus operandi is understood, Obama can almost make Paul Ryan look good.
b) The Swag
This year's theft is more raw and comprehensible than last year's. In a nutshell the basic deal was that to appropriate the money necessary to support a federal budget of $1.1 trillion, Obama's Omnibus decree has awarded tax breaks mostly for special interests in an amount that will put the government another estimated $622 billion deeper in debt, not including the CBO-projected increase in spending of over $57 billion in ten years. The cuts primarily benefit plutocrats though there were window-dressing cuts -- like the "small-but-symbolic tax deduction" for teachers mentioned by NYT. These cuts were needed to reward some union, poverty and environmental "on-profit industrial-complex" constituencies, which they and Obama could then talk up as worth the cost. "Just keep moving, please."
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