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This is the WashingtonWatch.com Digest for December 29, 2008. Subscribe here.
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Sure, Congress debated a multi-billion dollar bailout for the auto industry. (Cost: $50 per U.S. family.) By early March, Congress must decide how hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent ($thousands per family) as it completes the annual spending process that it kicked down the road back in September. More than $800 per family in spending on Hurricane Katrina relief is still being moved around.
But there are important issues, too.
H.R. 693 is entitled the “Restroom Gender Parity in Federal Buildings Act of 2007.” Shockingly, Congress let this essential legislation languish since its introduction back in January 2007.
In newly acquired or renovated federal buildings, the bill would require the Administrator of General Services to make sure that toilets in women’s restrooms exceed the number of toilets in men’s restrooms (including urinals) by a ratio of 2 to 1. The GSA could issue a statement as to why it’s not needed, but the deal is to create toilet equity by giving women double the number of commodes.
Which raises a question about the word “equity” – . . . Ahhh, nevermind!
Below is the current vote on H.R. 693, the Restroom Gender Parity in Federal Buildings Act of 2007. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.
Like Santa delivering presents to all the good little boys and girls, we have added cost estimates to some recent new laws.
Public Law 110-449, the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2008, costs the average U.S. family about $58. You can see some people discussing how to collect their benefits on the page for the bill.
Public Law 110-457, The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, costs about $0.38 per family.
And Public Law 110-351, the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008, comes in at $3.50.
Consider these gifts to your fellow men and women – whether you wanted to give them or not!
But you’re getting a little something back. An updated cost estimate for Public Law 110-328, the SSI Extension for Elderly and Disabled Refugees Act, reveals savings of about $5.50 per family. Over the next 10 years, the bill decreases both spending and revenue.
An updated estimate for H.R. 7321, the Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act, which did not pass, places the bill’s cost at just under $89 per U.S. family.
The bills passed into law this week include:
Public Law 110-456, The America’s Beautiful National Parks Quarter Dollar Coin Act of 2008 (saves $0.21 per family)
Public Law 110-458, The Worker, Retiree, and Employer Recovery Act of 2008 (saves $30 per family)
Public Law 110-459, The Short-term Analog Flash and Emergency Readiness Act (no cost estimate)
and
Public Law 110-460, A bill to make a technical correction in the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (no cost estimate)
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Here’s the WashingtonWatch.com email newsletter for the week. Subscribe here.
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Every family should have a Christmas light display like the one depicted in this YouTube video. And H.R. 4502 means to help you do that. The bill would temporarily suspended the duty on certain Christmas tree lamps.
According to this report from the United States International Trade Commission, there are about $557,000-worth of incandescent Christmas tree lamps imported into the U.S. each year. (LEDs are a different product, and strings of lights are classified as “Christmas tree lighting sets.”) The overwhelming majority of Christmas tree lamps are imported from China.
The duty on Christmas lights is 5.8%, which means that Americans spent $32,000 more on Christmas lights than they had to last year. Maybe this money went to good causes, but what cause could be better than the display below?
With little time left in the current congressional session, there is almost no chance that this bill will pass, but opposing this bill is like opposing Santa Claus.
I call on Congress to immediately reconvene in special session to pass this bill.
You can show your support by voting for H.R. 4502, and by encouraging friends and loved ones also to vote. Don’t let them be on the wrong side of Santa Claus, people. The current vote is tallied below.
Via the Enlightened Redneck, Congress is getting a raise. In fact, they have set it up to give themselves a raise automatically, no matter what their work produces:
A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay. Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries . . . .
Be sure to note how the pay increase kicks in right after the election. For you to do something about it, you have to wait 23 months until the next election. Have no doubt, they’re clever, your representatives in Congress.
There was a bill introduced to prevent the automatic pay increase from taking effect this year, but guess what?: It didn’t go anywhere.
Here’s the current vote on H.R. 5087, to prevent Members of Congress from receiving the automatic pay adjustment scheduled to take effect in 2009. Click to vote, comment, learn more, and edit the wiki article about the bill.
Today’s plan to bailout automakers comes in at $17.4 billion. That’s about $178 per U.S. family, or $57 per person.
It’s not clear that all this money is going to be spent outright – it may be in the form of loans (and who knows whether the loans would be repaid). So don’t treat that as a hard and fast cost estimate, but at least you have a sense of how much of your money is at risk.
Meanwhile, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, the chairwoman of a congressional oversight panel for the bailout, has gone on record criticizing how the bailout is being handled.
“[T]roubled assets from any financial institution.” That’s what the financial services bailout bill allowed the Treasury Department to buy: “troubled assets from any financial institution.” They were talking about bad mortgages.
But then the money got used to buy pieces of financial institutions themselves. Some Members of Congress raised a stink when word circulated that the money would be used to pay dividends – because it wasn’t their preferred violation of the terms of the bailout law.
Now the talk is of using the money to give loans to automakers.
Let’s take a look at what the law said again:
“The Secretary [of the Treasury] is authorized to establish the Troubled Asset Relief Program (or ‘TARP’) to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, troubled assets from any financial institution . . . .”
Now, it’s true – Congress left the definitions wiiiide open:
The term ‘troubled assets’ means–
(A) residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages, that in each case was originated or issued on or before March 14, 2008, the purchase of which the Secretary determines promotes financial market stability; and
(B) any other financial instrument that the Secretary, after consultation with the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, determines the purchase of which is necessary to promote financial market stability, but only upon transmittal of such determination, in writing, to the appropriate committees of Congress.
But do you think that loaning money to automakers is a “purchase” of a “financial instrument”? Well, that’s a small hurdle. The Treasury Secretary can structure the loan to look like the purchase of a financial instrument, and voila.
I was a little hesitant when I wrote this post back in early November to call the $700 billion in bailout money a “slush fund.” But it appears now quite clearly to be a slush fund.
It’s a slush fund, a slush fund, a slush fund. Congress and the Administration passed themselves a law to create a slush fund. Now they’re debating how to dip into this slush fund.
I repeat: It’s a slush fund.
Reuters reports:
President-elect Barack Obama’s team is considering a plan to boost the recession-hit U.S. economy that could be far larger than previous estimates and might reach $1 trillion over two years, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.
That’s just under $1,000 per U.S. family.
Will it stimulate your economy for the government to tax that from you?
What about adding that to your share of the national debt?
It’s a long way from today to an Obama stimulus package, but it’s nice to have some idea of what the price tag might be.
