by Mansur Gidfar
Earlier this week, Congressional leaders struck a deal to avert another government shutdown and put off our next completely avoidable, 100% self-imposed budget crisis until next September.
See, if you're a Congressperson looking sneak in something shady under the radar, this budget bill is the perfect opportunity since 1.) It's 1600 pages long and therefor very easy to hide things in, and 2.) Congress kind of has to pass it or the government shuts down. Again.
So, of course, there are a whole lot of shady things in this deal. Now, because this 1600 page bill was released on Tuesday night and we're not magic, we can't list every single one of those things just yet. But we can highlight the 5 crappiest ones that we've come across so far — everything from crazily wasteful spending to overturning a popular Marijuana Legalization ballot initiative.
So, let's get to it.
#5 $479 million for warplanes the Pentagon didn't ask for
Congressional appropriators ordered four more F-35 joint strike fighters for a cool $479 million dollars even though the Pentagon didn't ask for them. The F-35 program has a long, sordid history of running behind schedule and over budget, and is on track to cost American taxpayers more than $400 billion dollars. Despite the crazy amount of money we've poured into the F-35 project, it continues to run into minor technical snags like the inability to "turn, climb, or run."
None of this has stopped Congress from continuing to fork over funding though. In what we're sure is a completely unrelated coincidence, Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor receiving billions of taxpayer dollars to build the F-35, spent more than $28 million on political contributions and lobbying in the last election cycle alone.
#4 $93 million cut from Women, Infants and Children nutrition program
Since those shiny new F-35s aren't going to pay for themselves, Congress did manage to trim a few areas of the budget. For example, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly referred to as WIC, was on the receiving end of a $93 million budget cut. WIC provides low-income mothers and children with vouchers that can be exchanged for food that meets certain nutrition guidelines, although I imagine they'll be handing out a few less vouchers after this deal goes through.
If you're a family that depends on WIC to put food on the table, this is terrible news. Maybe those low-income women, infants and children could try hiring some lobbyists. Or being planes. With really good lobbyists.
#3 Nullification of voter-backed marijuana legalization in D.C.
The 2014 Midterms saw voters in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington, D.C. vote to legalize Marijuana for recreational use. Unlike in Alaska and Oregon, however, the D.C. ballot measure is subject to congressional approval. So, despite the fact that the actual citizens of Washington, D.C. voted for legalization by a margin of more than 2 to 1, anti-legalization advocates in Congress attached a rider that completely undoes the voter-backed change and keeps Marijuana illegal.
And while this is basically a flaming middle finger to the 70% of D.C. residents who voted for legalization, I'm sure the Pharmaceutical Industry and alcohol manufacturers — both of whom regularly fund anti-legalization campaigns and spend millions of dollars every year to buy political influence — are pretty happy about the outcome.
#2 The part that CitiGroup wrote
After the 2008 financial crisis, a lot of people were understandably less enthusiastic about derivative trading — A financial instrument that played a major role in the crisis and led to the collapse and $85 billion taxpayer bailout of insurance giant AIG.
As Ben Protess of the New York Times explains, Congress used the 2010 Dodd-Frank law to create "a requirement that banks "push out" some derivatives trading into separate units that are not backed by the government's deposit insurance fund. The proponents of the push-out rule argued that it would isolate risky trading from parts of a bank eligible for a government bailout."
Since everyone from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street was infuriated by the big bank bailouts, you'd think Congress would still be taking a victory lap for passing a measure that makes bailout less likely. Instead, they're using the budget bill to sneakily kill it.
The current budget deal includes a repeal of the Dodd-Frank derivatives rule that was literally written by big bank lobbyists — A leaked document obtained by the New York Times revealed that 70 of the 85 lines in the new House bill reflect recommendations made in a piece of model legislation drafted by lobbyists for Citigroup, another bank that played a major role in the 2008 crisis and also received billions of federal stimulus dollars.
If all this sounds familiar, it's because the House passed the exact same CitiGroup-written law last year, but it died after resistance from the Senate and Treasury Department. Now, Wall Street's allies in Congress have effectively copy-pasted the CitiGroup-approved language out of the old bill and into the current budget deal, which can't be vetoed without shutting down the government.
On a completely unrelated note, did you know Wall Street spends $1.5 million per day to buy influence with our government? Looks like their investment is about to pay off.
#1 More big money in politics
So, by now you've probably noticed a theme developing here. Everything on this list is a direct result of money pouring into our political system. And that brings us to our #1: the huge political money loophole that Congress is trying to sneak into the budget deal.
In a provision conveniently located on page 1,599 of a 1,603 page document, Congress lays out donation rules that would allow individuals to give more than $300,000 directly to political parties every year. According to the Washington Post's Matea Gold, under the new rules, one couple could legally funnel nearly $1.3 million to a party's various account.
As the public debate over the budget bill devolves into partisan finger-pointing, it's especially important that we don't lose site of this critical fact: Both major parties had a chance to stop this new political money loophole, and neither of them did. NPR's Peter Overby reports that "the changes in campaign finance law surfaced without fanfare during negotiations when either Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could have vetoed them."
When we say that money has corrupted American government, this is exactly what we're talking about. Special interests pour money into our political system, and our government doles out favors in return, will of the people be damned. Until we put an end to this kind of corruption, all of us will continue to get screwed over by budget deals exactly like this one.
Now here's the good news: We have a plan to tackle this corruption head-on, and it's already falling into place. We're working with citizens of all political stripes — conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between — to pass a wave to tough new anti-corruption laws in cities, states, and eventually Washington D.C. We just passed the first city-wide anti-corruption act in the country and more cities and states are on the way in 2015 and 2016.
See, if you're a Congressperson looking sneak in something shady under the radar, this budget bill is the perfect opportunity since 1.) It's 1600 pages long and therefor very easy to hide things in, and 2.) Congress kind of has to pass it or the government shuts down. Again.
So, of course, there are a whole lot of shady things in this deal. Now, because this 1600 page bill was released on Tuesday night and we're not magic, we can't list every single one of those things just yet. But we can highlight the 5 crappiest ones that we've come across so far — everything from crazily wasteful spending to overturning a popular Marijuana Legalization ballot initiative.
So, let's get to it.
#5 $479 million for warplanes the Pentagon didn't ask for
Congressional appropriators ordered four more F-35 joint strike fighters for a cool $479 million dollars even though the Pentagon didn't ask for them. The F-35 program has a long, sordid history of running behind schedule and over budget, and is on track to cost American taxpayers more than $400 billion dollars. Despite the crazy amount of money we've poured into the F-35 project, it continues to run into minor technical snags like the inability to "turn, climb, or run."
None of this has stopped Congress from continuing to fork over funding though. In what we're sure is a completely unrelated coincidence, Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor receiving billions of taxpayer dollars to build the F-35, spent more than $28 million on political contributions and lobbying in the last election cycle alone.
#4 $93 million cut from Women, Infants and Children nutrition program
Since those shiny new F-35s aren't going to pay for themselves, Congress did manage to trim a few areas of the budget. For example, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, commonly referred to as WIC, was on the receiving end of a $93 million budget cut. WIC provides low-income mothers and children with vouchers that can be exchanged for food that meets certain nutrition guidelines, although I imagine they'll be handing out a few less vouchers after this deal goes through.
If you're a family that depends on WIC to put food on the table, this is terrible news. Maybe those low-income women, infants and children could try hiring some lobbyists. Or being planes. With really good lobbyists.
#3 Nullification of voter-backed marijuana legalization in D.C.
The 2014 Midterms saw voters in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington, D.C. vote to legalize Marijuana for recreational use. Unlike in Alaska and Oregon, however, the D.C. ballot measure is subject to congressional approval. So, despite the fact that the actual citizens of Washington, D.C. voted for legalization by a margin of more than 2 to 1, anti-legalization advocates in Congress attached a rider that completely undoes the voter-backed change and keeps Marijuana illegal.
And while this is basically a flaming middle finger to the 70% of D.C. residents who voted for legalization, I'm sure the Pharmaceutical Industry and alcohol manufacturers — both of whom regularly fund anti-legalization campaigns and spend millions of dollars every year to buy political influence — are pretty happy about the outcome.
#2 The part that CitiGroup wrote
After the 2008 financial crisis, a lot of people were understandably less enthusiastic about derivative trading — A financial instrument that played a major role in the crisis and led to the collapse and $85 billion taxpayer bailout of insurance giant AIG.
As Ben Protess of the New York Times explains, Congress used the 2010 Dodd-Frank law to create "a requirement that banks "push out" some derivatives trading into separate units that are not backed by the government's deposit insurance fund. The proponents of the push-out rule argued that it would isolate risky trading from parts of a bank eligible for a government bailout."
Since everyone from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street was infuriated by the big bank bailouts, you'd think Congress would still be taking a victory lap for passing a measure that makes bailout less likely. Instead, they're using the budget bill to sneakily kill it.
The current budget deal includes a repeal of the Dodd-Frank derivatives rule that was literally written by big bank lobbyists — A leaked document obtained by the New York Times revealed that 70 of the 85 lines in the new House bill reflect recommendations made in a piece of model legislation drafted by lobbyists for Citigroup, another bank that played a major role in the 2008 crisis and also received billions of federal stimulus dollars.
If all this sounds familiar, it's because the House passed the exact same CitiGroup-written law last year, but it died after resistance from the Senate and Treasury Department. Now, Wall Street's allies in Congress have effectively copy-pasted the CitiGroup-approved language out of the old bill and into the current budget deal, which can't be vetoed without shutting down the government.
On a completely unrelated note, did you know Wall Street spends $1.5 million per day to buy influence with our government? Looks like their investment is about to pay off.
#1 More big money in politics
So, by now you've probably noticed a theme developing here. Everything on this list is a direct result of money pouring into our political system. And that brings us to our #1: the huge political money loophole that Congress is trying to sneak into the budget deal.
In a provision conveniently located on page 1,599 of a 1,603 page document, Congress lays out donation rules that would allow individuals to give more than $300,000 directly to political parties every year. According to the Washington Post's Matea Gold, under the new rules, one couple could legally funnel nearly $1.3 million to a party's various account.
As the public debate over the budget bill devolves into partisan finger-pointing, it's especially important that we don't lose site of this critical fact: Both major parties had a chance to stop this new political money loophole, and neither of them did. NPR's Peter Overby reports that "the changes in campaign finance law surfaced without fanfare during negotiations when either Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid or Minority Leader Mitch McConnell could have vetoed them."
When we say that money has corrupted American government, this is exactly what we're talking about. Special interests pour money into our political system, and our government doles out favors in return, will of the people be damned. Until we put an end to this kind of corruption, all of us will continue to get screwed over by budget deals exactly like this one.
Now here's the good news: We have a plan to tackle this corruption head-on, and it's already falling into place. We're working with citizens of all political stripes — conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between — to pass a wave to tough new anti-corruption laws in cities, states, and eventually Washington D.C. We just passed the first city-wide anti-corruption act in the country and more cities and states are on the way in 2015 and 2016.
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