1

Good post. It sounds incredible. Thanks for getting on the issue.

More generally, I am really sick of these anonymous midnight amendments. The amendment process itself is not so much the problem, though there should be a more democratic procedure for it, but the ability to mark up bills without accountability - sometimes even by staffers, not legislators - leads to all kinds of shameful antics. There should be a requirement that every change to a bill in committee must be made by an explicit motion from one of the members, recorded and published under their name.

2

Oooo-kayyy . . .

I knew I should have known better than to take the Republican's word for anything.

The infant AIDS program is probably a good thing. But this issue is cheap, bogus political hackery. Of course there was nothing else to be expected, but, surely nobody would play politics with an infant AIDS care program, would they? Surely the concern over this issue was sincere and heartfelt? Surely the claims that the Democrats were cynically holding up this program out of "partisan passivity" could not themselves be a cynical attempt to use this program for tawdry political ends?

Surely you'd be as stupid as I just was if you believed any of that.

Every time I believe the GOP - or evangelical Christians - about anything at all, out of the belief that there's a level they can't sink below, I'm forced to recalibrate that level. Every time I tell myself I'll never do it again. Every time I wind up trusting them again, and later have to remind myself, again, never to do it again. Thanks for the reminder.

As for the bill . . .

HJRes20 is the omnibus "anti-earmark" bill. As many people have noted, getting rid of "earmarks" is harder than it looks, because there is no legal distinction between an "earmark" for "pork-barrel spending" and an ordinary appropriation for an ordinary program. But both parties have declared they are going to do something about "earmarks".

The approach they have taken is to submit a huge bill that comprehensively strikes out hundreds - possibly thousands, there were too many for me to count - of targeted allocations for named programs. The same bill stipulates specific levels of funding for different departments, and in some cases specifies that that funding should be used in certain ways. (E.g., one section states that "the level for `Employee Benefits Security Administration, Salaries and Expenses' shall be $140,834,000, of which no less than $5,000,000 shall be for the development of an electronic Form 5500 filing system (EFAST2).") So it doesn't really eliminate all earmarks, but, again, there's no definition of earmark.

I honestly don't know why they've decided on the funding levels they have. I would guess some of them simply restore previous levels of funding, and some fund programs already underway. It would take research into each specific provision to figure it all out. But the main point is that the bill is an attempt to clear the decks of the thousands of small allocations for individual projects, in order to start a systematic attempt to decide what should or should not be funded. Along the way, a huge number of specific funding initiatives - most of them probably reasonable - have been undone. (Note that this does not mean that these programs will not get funded, or that the money will "just sit there". It means that all those funding decisions will have to be revisited, hopefully with greater oversight. Every single one of the rescinded "earmarks" could be funded if Congress chooses to do so, even after passing this bill.)

So what's up with the Baby AIDS program? It is one of the hundreds of line items that is being taken out of the budget.

Why are the Democrats holding it up? They're not. A Republican member attempted to re-insert a specific earmark for that program in the bill designed to eliminate earmarks. Reid has said he will not allow specific programs to be exempted. I don't think Reid has said anything about the Baby AIDS program - just that he wants the entire earmark bill dealt with at once, and not a bunch of earmarks on the earmark bill. Adding in specific programs for special funding is what "earmarking" is about. Coburn is trying to create an earmark for the AIDS program in the anti-earmark bill. Reid has said no earmarks in the earmark bill.

Most of the "earmarked" programs are good ones. Most undoubtedly will be funded. I would bet money that the Baby AIDS bill will eventually be funded. But it's going to be done in a considered fashion, after they've worked out a way to deal with "earmarks" - as the Republicans say they want to do

So, are the promoters of the Coburn amendment just confused or short-sighted? No - they're liars, or at least those who've bothered to read the bill (as I should have done) are.

As I said, the earmark bill is filled with an uncountable number of axed programs. The very next clause in the same sentence that eliminates the Baby AIDS funding then eliminates for the flu vaccine. Other eliminated programs include the "Rural Utilities Service, Rural Telephone Bank Program Account", funding for modified water deliveries and the national historic landmark in national parks, and activities "approval of any right-of-way or similar authorization on the Mojave National Preserve" - among many, many others.

I'm sure every one of those line items has its Congressional supporters - that's how they got there. So why did the GOP pick this one issue to emphasize? Why did they not just happen to stumble on the Rural Telephone Bank as their issue? Why did they not even quote the entire provision that Coburn objects to, including the part about flu vaccine? Is it their well-known concern for AIDS above all other things? Hardly.

They picked a single line item out of the entire anti-earmark bill that sounded bad when you quote it out of context - "babies with AIDS!" - and, characteristically, quoted it out of context. Then made it a huge partisan and ideological issue. From the Arkansas Republican Assemblies blog that Joe links:

Liberals in the Senate and House are using their control of the agenda in Congress stop a $30 million program that encourages states to test newborns for HIV. . . . Liberals have decided that this program is an “earmark” that should be eliminated. . . .

Yeah, those damn liberals. They just hate kids with AIDS.

As usual, these people can't do a single thing - even a good thing - without plumbing the rankest depths of cynicism, falsehood, and distortion.

The anti-earmark bill may or may not be a good way to control spending. The individual programs in it may or may not be good ones - most are good. But picking one single half-sentence out of an immensely huge bipartisan bill and then claiming that Reid and "the liberals" are trying to kill kids with AIDS is just sleazy, cheap, cynical, and a lie.

As I said, thanks for the reminder.

3

Say it ain't so, Joe: The active intervention to de-fund the program was abetted by partisan passivity.

It's obvious from your post that Sen. Reid prevented Coburn's amendment. Recriminations start at his door. This is Democrats in action. You seem reluctant to say that it's Dems and not Republicans who are responsible for this.

I'll be interested to see Kevin T Keith's outraged reaction when it's shown to be Democrats who are responsible for this "incredible" sounding omission.

I agree completely with Kevin's post, however. Midnight congressional shenanigans make me sick. My anger with Congress has no bounds. They have forgotten why there are there, and are only concerned with staying there. Congressman John Dingell has been there for 50 years. The idiots in my state have voted for him in 25 elections. He is the very model of what the founders didn't want in legislators. Almost every time I see a senator on TV, whether it's a Republican or Democrat, I flip the channel. Their words are chosen for their exquisite combination of beauty and vapidity. They are gifted in everything but telling the truth. As my Dad used to say to me: You're just talking to hear your head roar.

4

Kevin:

As if Harry Reid is concerned at all about stopping earmarks. He is another example of exactly what the founders didn't want in a legislator. Nothing the man says has any bearing at all on what he truly means.

5

I'll tell you why the Democrats blocked this program. Because any type of pre-natal care initiative is based on the idea that a fetus is a person and deserves humane treatment. And that would contradict their dogma of abortion at any time for any reason. Why treat a child when you can just kill it?

6

This is why Congress is one of the least respected institutions in the country. All the members care about is getting on their high horse to bash the other side for doing the exact same things they do. When the republicans where in the majority, they complained about the procedural manuevering the democrats did to block their agenda. Now that the reverse is true the democrats howl about not being able to ram their agenda right though.
Kevin, it is humourous to see you get so worked up. Do you expect any different from either party?
As Christians, this is why it is silly to rely on the government to do Christ's work. We are His body and we should be doing His work, not letting the government do it. If AIDS in Africa is something Christ would be compassionate about, then WE need to step up and raise the money or go o Africa. Lets not abdicate or role in this world to the government.

7

Kevin So what's up with the Baby AIDS program? It is one of the hundreds of line items that is being taken out of the budget.

For a moment there I thought you were actually going to veer from the party line. But at the last minute you realized that the Democrats were in office so the things that you would normally be for (funding HIV programs for babies) you have to come out against since it makes the Dems look bad.

That aside, you need to take a civics lesson, Kevin. The Baby AIDS program was a congressionally legislated budgeted item that was included in President Bush’s budget proposal. This is how programs are supposed to be funded in our system of government. Some staffers, however, decided that they wanted this particular program defunded, apparently to get back at Coburn, so they included this specific language.

Also, to claim this is an anti-earmark bill is just to stupidly accept the DNC’s talking points. How can it be and “anti-earmark bill” when it (a) doesn’t define what an earmark is, and (b) doesn’t ban earmarks? I know that Democrats believe language is flexible but shouldn’t an anti-earmark bill actually include language that is “anti-earmark”?

8

jd:

Joe specifically accuses Reid of blocking the amendment, in the post I responded to saying it was wrong (predicated upon my mistaken trust in his claim that the Republicans were not being deceitful again). You insist I would not do something that I did in the post you criticize by accusing me of not doing it! Please refer to my comments on conservative reading comprehension, several posts ago.

As for Reid, he's the one pushing the earmarks bill! Whether or not he "cares" about it in his heart, he cares about it enough as a legislator to back the bill and insist it not be modified. If it gets passed, it will be largey due to his efforts.

Do you feel the slightest obligation to conform your comments on events in the world to the actually reality of those events? Is it in any way significant to you that your statements are not merely wrong but, repeatedly, directly contradicted by the very things they refer to?

9

Good points, Kevin T. Keith.
But Joe Carter's response to your points is valid.

10

Kevin T. Keith, I think your opinion on the midnight amendment makes sense. It's simply laziness and a desire to remain unaccountable that motivates that process.

11

Joe:

For a moment there I thought you were actually going to veer from the party line. But at the last minute you realized that the Democrats were in office so the things that you would normally be for (funding HIV programs for babies) you have to come out against since it makes the Dems look bad.

As I pointed out to jd, I endorsed your criticism of the bill after you specifically named Reid (but before I realized you were shilling for GOP lies). And I agree with Democratic and Republican critics that the original version of the earmark bill didn't go far enough. But note that Mitch McConnell, the Minority Leader, is also backing the earmark bill and has been working with Reid - both are opposed by members of their respective parties who want to extend the cutouts further.

The issue of the AIDS funding has nothing to do with parties. It - and the hundreds and hundreds of other funding cuts in the bill - have entirely to do with how Congress will go about dealing with earmarks. Either they can pass a broad bill and force debate on individual programs, or they can pick at one of them at a time as they have always done. But if they are going to revisit earmarks, then in every single case they are revisiting some program that some member of Congress wanted. And most of them are probably good programs. The GOP, after having hundreds of its programs cut in a bill that Mitch McConnell is pushing and other GOP members are trying to expand, somehow found it necessary to pick one particular cut and claim that it shows "partisan indifference". That seems . . . suspicious.

That aside, you need to take a civics lesson, Kevin. The Baby AIDS program was a congressionally legislated budgeted item that was included in President Bush’s budget proposal. This is how programs are supposed to be funded in our system of government.

The Constitution says nothing about the budget process except: "No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time." (Note, also, that Presidential budget proposals have no place in the Constitution at all. They are merely a courtesy, or, rather, a partisan act by Congressional members of the President's party. Funding bills officially originate with the Congress, not the President. He can't complain if they change his proposal - legally, that proposal doesn't exist except as a bill submitted by a member of Congress, the same as every other bill.)

There is no requirement that federal expenditures be determined by an omnibus budget bill at the beginning of the year. It is only fairly recently that that was done at all. (And it was done largely for the same reason the earmarks bill is the way it is: by putting every program on the table at once, decisions and compromises can be made without encouraging every member of Congress to fight to the death for their particular program.) Congress certainly has the power to allocate money and then later stipulate its use, or to allocate only partial funds and later increase them, or to allocate funds and later withdraw them. It's what the Constitution intends them to do.

You're welcome for the civics lesson.

Some staffers, however, decided that they wanted this particular program defunded, apparently to get back at Coburn, so they included this specific language.

I fell for this the first time, then read the bill. There is absolutely no substance to this claim.

Obviously there was a lot of staff work on the original draft of the bill - that's how bills get written. But to say that "staffers decided" to cut this particular program - while cutting hundreds and hundreds of other allocations in a bill designed to cut allocations - is just fantasy. The Baby AIDS provision - again, along with hundreds and hundreds of similar cuts - was in the bill from the very beginning.

If you simply go to THOMAS, the official Congressional information Website, enter "H.J.Res.20" in the search box and click "Bill Number" for your search, you will get the entire text of the bill at every step of the process from introduction through its current version. Clicking the earlist version and finding the right section (it's in Chapter 6) will prove that the wording of the section you refer to in the current bill is precisely identical to the wording already in the bill when it was first placed in the hopper - before going to committee.

Although bills do get marked up in secret, this provision did not come about that way. Whoever physically typed the words into the first draft, they have been there from before the moment the bill was submitted and have not been changed. That is, they are part of the bill that Reid and McConnell have been formally pushing, with bipartisan support, and always have been. Nobody "sneaked" it in, and it remained in after Coburn began complaining about it.

Your description of the process on this bill is simply false. Your imaginary reasons for the process that didn't occur are simply made up.

Also, to claim this is an anti-earmark bill is just to stupidly accept the DNC’s talking points. How can it be and “anti-earmark bill” when it (a) doesn’t define what an earmark is, and (b) doesn’t ban earmarks? I know that Democrats believe language is flexible but shouldn’t an anti-earmark bill actually include language that is “anti-earmark”?

I suppose it's also to stupidly accept Mitch McConnell's talking points, and those of every Republican who supported the bill.

The word "earmark" has no legal significance. Earmarks are no different from any other line item in an appropriations bill. You can't simply ban "earmarks". That's the problem.

"Earmark" is like "pork" - it's a political term that simply refers to spending that some people think is unjustified. There's no way to define it or ban it categorically. They have attempted to address earmarks by requiring identification of members sponsoring spending amendments, and by limiting out-of-committee amendments. Those are procedural moves - the only way to address the problem. They have also tried to eliminate as many earmarks as possible in the current budget (in order to go over those issues in an above-board way). That's a way of getting at the current situation. How is this not an earmark bill?

Again, the Republican leadership thinks it is one. So do the Republicans who, with many Democrats, have been trying to expand the bill to include "earmarks" for federal-agency spending as well as non-governmental spending. They seem to think they're doing something about earmarks. It's unlikely this is a perfect bill, or perfectly comprehensive - but to say it's not a bill at all, or is just window-dressing, is absurd.

By the way, the House version of the bill passed at the end of January, 286-140, with 57 Republican Congressmembers stupidly accepting the NDC's talking points. The Senate version passed yesterday, 81-15, with 33 GOP Senators, including Alexander, Bunning, Crapo, Domenici, Hatch, Hutchison, Lott, Lugar, McCain, McConnell, Specter, and Stevens stupidly accepting the NDC's talking points. (That's interesting: a front-running GOP presidental candidate, several former candidates, and the current and former GOP Senate leaders all stupidly accepted the NDC's talking points on this bill. Boy, the party must be going downhill faster than I realized!)

The bill was sent to the White House yesterday. George Bush has indicated he will stupidly accept the NDC's talking points later today.

12

I just want to point out that you can easily imagine an anti-abortion congressman wanting to block the measure because of the first part of the bill regarding the testing of the mother. Primarily on the assumption that a mother that knows she is HIV positive might be more inclined to abort her child.

13

So Kevin thinks the Republicans are unfairly taring the Democrats on this one. Take a deep breath Kevin, it's what both parties do with great regularity. The Democrats surely should have seen it coming.
For a pittance we can reduce the number of HIV positive mothers giving birth to HIV positive babies to 1 or 2 percent. Leaving compassion out, which it shouldn't be, it's a no brainer just on the money saved.
On the bright side, the program has recieved attention and both parties now have an interest in seeing that it gets funded.

14

jd
It's obvious from your post that Sen. Reid prevented Coburn's amendment. Recriminations start at his door. This is Democrats in action. You seem reluctant to say that it's Dems and not Republicans who are responsible for this

I'll be interested to see Kevin T Keith's outraged reaction when it's shown to be Democrats who are responsible for this "incredible" sounding omission.

From reading Keith's post it seems like this is what's going on:

1. In order to challenge pork and earmarks there is a law to clean the slate killing thousands of earmarks at once.

2. After this, worthy programs will be funded again per their merits.

3. Since up until now Republicans have controlled Congress many earmarks have been for their pet groups and donars...and this most recent Republican Congress has been notorious for littering the budget with billions in earmarks wasting money on a scale never seen before.

4. Naturally many Republicans would like to kill the 'kill earmarks' bill but of course they don't want people to see them killing the bill. So sabatoge is the preferred method. Let one amendment through to 'save the AIDS babies' and you'll open the door to dozens of others. Before long the bill to kill the earmarks will either die on its own or be weighed down with so many amendments that Republicans and Dems (but mostly Reps in this case) will be able to slip in the infamous "$55million to study potatoes" type of amendments).

Needless to say there are plenty of stupid sheep that will fall for this tactic. It didn't take long for one to turn up here on post 5! John M

I'll tell you why the Democrats blocked this program. Because any type of pre-natal care initiative is based on the idea that a fetus is a person and deserves humane treatment. And that would contradict their dogma of abortion at any time for any reason. Why treat a child when you can just kill it?

Yea that's it. Democrats want more AIDS babies. Are you this stupid John or do you just think we are? Or both?

Joe
Also, to claim this is an anti-earmark bill is just to stupidly accept the DNC’s talking points. How can it be and “anti-earmark bill” when it (a) doesn’t define what an earmark is, and (b) doesn’t ban earmarks? I know that Democrats believe language is flexible but shouldn’t an anti-earmark bill actually include language that is “anti-earmark”?

AS Keith pointed out there is no good definition of an earmark. So how do you 'ban' them? By killing thousands of lines that fund specific programs in one shot. This is similiar to how they did military base closings a while ago. The agreement was to have an up or down vote on the entire bill. It would not have worked any other way because as soon as you permitted votes on individual bases (or amendments to exempt individual bases) politics would rear its head. Representative X would vote to exempt the base in Representative Y's district in exchange for Y voting to exempt X's base and so on.

Will some earmarks come back after this wholesale slaughter? Probably but at least the uphill fight will guarantee that fewer will come back than if the bill is permitted to be sabatoged beforehand through hundreds of tiny cuts (I'm sorry, amendments).

Keith
I knew I should have known better than to take the Republican's word for anything.

To be fair this is an old type of tactic. Plenty of stories about "Reagan cut money for the homeless, the hungry, the ill clothed etc." probably were based on silliness just like this. However you are right this time around it is a Republican trick. It's ironic how stupid conservatives have become. Even after you nicely demonstrated how the trick works this crowd is still lapping it up from the GOP. There was a time when conservatives were the minority but were intellectually more sophisticated than liberals. That table has been turning for quite some time now.

15

Mike O

On the bright side, the program has recieved attention and both parties now have an interest in seeing that it gets funded.

You don't get it. The program is not in real danger. Read Keith's post carefully:

The same bill stipulates specific levels of funding for different departments, and in some cases specifies that that funding should be used in certain ways. (E.g., one section states that "the level for `Employee Benefits Security Administration, Salaries and Expenses' shall be $140,834,000, of which no less than $5,000,000 shall be for the development of an electronic Form 5500 filing system (EFAST2).")

Are you worried that your mother will not get her Social Security check because every employee of the SSA will have their salary cut to $0!?

16

Joe C-

I have never been to a website that gets more hostile comments, in both quantity and viciousness. I've been responsible for a few of the critical comments, and for that I apologize.

You wouldn't be getting these if you weren't doing good work. Keep it up.

17

Joe:

You keep insisting that this is some sort of personal perfidy enacted by vicious Democrats. In fact, your own quote demonstrates that Coburn was knowingly grandstanding, and got slapped down on a purely procedural move.

Coburn made a motion from the floor: "I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside and my amendment No. 234 be called up". That motion would have suspended all action on the bill and given his amendment a direct vote in order to put money into one specific program, in a bill intended to remove as many such earmarks as possible. Sanders was managing the bill for the majority - he was temporarily appointed "Presiding Officer" with the parliamentary role of making sure the debate was conducted properly, and the way the majority intended it. Coburn's motion to evade the established procedure required unanimous consent. The bill manager's task is to prevent such things - so (acting on one hand as Acting President Pro-Tem of the Senate, and on the other hand as a regular Senator) he filed a pro forma objection which kept the debate on track, and incidentally prevented Coburn from earmarking the anti-earmarking bill (and simultaneously throwing the entire anti-earmarking bill back into conference committee, since the House version had already passed without Coburn's special earmark). Sanders, and other Senators sitting in the chair, routinely blocked many such motions. Only Coburn threw a tantrum afterward.

Sanders is not singling out AIDS funding for "blocking". He was acting to prevent the bill from being derailed, and to prevent all the other Senators from demanding that their own special earmarks be inserted into the anti-earmarking bill. And the consequences are precisely nothing. Nothing about this prevents the AIDS program from being funded. It undoubtedly will be. Nothing about that program has to be, or likely will be, changed as the result of this. They just have to fund it under the new accountability rules that every funding provision must go through.

Coburn knows all this. He himself stated that he knew he could not get the Senate to agree to start the entire process over again just for his one special earmark. He states, in the same sentence in which he offers the amendment, that he knows his motion is out of order. He submitted the amendment in order to get it shot down. Immediately afterward, he submitted a string of 5 similar motions, including one referring to a farm subsidy; each was blocked in the same manner, without Coburn grandstanding for 15 minutes on the "shamefulness" of failing to pass farm subsidy earmarks. But he somehow thinks it's shameful to deal with AIDS funding through open debate and not private earmarks. He's entitled to his opinion but nobody has to take him seriously.

What nobody here seems to get is that this whole debate is not about AIDS. The AIDS provision occupies one half-sentence in a bill that addresses thousands of programs throughout the entire federal budget. The question is whether they were going to start with a fairly clean slate on single-program funding initiatives, and work out the issues in debate, or whether everyone was going to pile on with their pet programs and hold the entire budget hostage until they got what they wanted.

The budget authorization for the previous fiscal year ends today. The earmarks bill was passed yesterday. It got passed only because the Senate leadership of both parties agreed to limit debate and prevent further earmarking. One of Coburn's amendments was to re-open the entire bill to debate (which might just possibly have included a few earmarks from, say, Coburn) for another two weeks. They shot him down the same way you would shoot down a nut who decides he's going to drive the bus and suddenly jumps into the driver's seat just as it approaches a bridge.

Members of both parties were unhappy with the process. Many wanted more debate. The leadership - apparently correctly - thought they could only get a bill out the door by insisting on a clean bill and a straight vote. (Which partly is constantly harping on "up or down votes"?) That's politics. Was it the best way to deal with the earmarking issue? I don't know. But only the GOP and their Kool-Aid-addicted lackeys tried to spin a bill reforming the entire federal budget process as a deliberate partisan effort to kill children with AIDS. (And one of you here managed to work it around to being an abortion bill, proving as ever that your obsessions scoff at rationality.)

Your entire description of this process has been false. Your ascriptions of malicious intent to perfectly ordinary procedural moves are both uninformed and made up. Your insistence - in the face of the work of your own party! - that this is some kind of partisan issue is absurd. Quite simply - and not for the first time - everything you've said about this issue has been either factually false or completely made up. Your interpretation of its significance, standing on that ground, does not inspire confidence.

18

John

You wouldn't be getting these if you weren't doing good work. Keep it up.

Well actually if Joe was doing bad work I imagine that would generate critical comments. Here, though, I think Joe did good work. He clearly has misunderstood the entire issue but by blogging about it he opened the door for us to learn a bit about parlimentary procedures that we would have never bothered to explore if we weren't temporarily fooled into thinking Congress wanted to cause babies to get AIDS!

19

Kevin Obviously there was a lot of staff work on the original draft of the bill - that's how bills get written. But to say that "staffers decided" to cut this particular program - while cutting hundreds and hundreds of other allocations in a bill designed to cut allocations - is just fantasy. The Baby AIDS provision - again, along with hundreds and hundreds of similar cuts - was in the bill from the very beginning.

Seriously, Kevin, set aside your partisanship to take a realistic look at this issue. This is not an “anti-earmark bill.” In fact, it contains earmarks in the bill itself! It is simply an appropriations bill. If there were “hundreds and hundreds of similar cuts” then why don’t we see “hundreds and hundreds” of similarly worded sections that say “None of the funds appropriated by this division may be used to fund X”?

The reason is because this program was specifically targeted because it was introduced by Coburn and the people who did it (whoever they may be) knew that no one would care. The conservatives won’t even notice it. And if the liberals notice, they won’t say anything because it helps the GOP and hurts the Dems. Do you hear any liberals making a stink about this?

Clicking the earlist version and finding the right section (it's in Chapter 6) will prove that the wording of the section you refer to in the current bill is precisely identical to the wording already in the bill when it was first placed in the hopper - before going to committee.

No, Kevin, that is the version that comes out of committee and is voted on by the House. (Notice the wording “Introduced in House”). The language was added—as all the language was added—in committee.

I suppose it's also to stupidly accept Mitch McConnell's talking points, and those of every Republican who supported the bill.
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. I personally don’t care about earmarks. I do care about babies. I’m also not the type to give much thought to what the GOP does. They aren’t exactly my favorite people.

How is this not an earmark bill?

Because it doesn’t do any of the things you listed. Did you actually read the bill?

Again, the Republican leadership thinks it is one.

Well, then they’re idiots. There is nothing that makes this bill an “anti-earmark” bill.

20

Some Dude Says:

"I have never been to a website that gets more hostile comments, in both quantity and viciousness. I've been responsible for a few of the critical comments, and for that I apologize.

You wouldn't be getting these if you weren't doing good work. Keep it up."

I've never understood these types of statements. Basically, Joe says a bunch of stupid stuff, and then people point out that he's saying all sorts of stupid stuff. The obvious conclusion to draw from this is that he's doing something right?

The other thing that is kind of funny (or sad) to see from this thread or whatever is that so many of you actually seem to be unable to grasp how this bill works at a conceptual level.

21

This is not an “anti-earmark bill.” In fact, it contains earmarks in the bill itself! It is simply an appropriations bill.

They're all appropriations bills. Earmarks are just appropriations - the term has no legal meaning and no clear informal meaning. There is no way to eliminate "earmarks" as a category. So they eliminated as many single-program procurements as they could, and revised the process for creating them. The next step is to go back and restore funding for the ones that survive the new, more open process.

Of course the bill contains earmarks - earmarks are just appropriations. Nobody intended to cut off all funding for every government operation. They kept funding for programs that have to remain untouched, reduced funding for many more, increased funding for a few, and - what is unprecedented - rescinded funding (subject to later restoral) for large numbers of programs. If you look, you'll find that most of the intact funding is general allocations for agencies and institutions; it's the single-program line items that mostly got cut. Those are the ones that are generally considered earmarks. But the bill - along with procedural reforms that were previously instituted - is a major revision of funding and the funding process. It's useless to pretend it's not, or that they were going through all this for nothing.

If there were “hundreds and hundreds of similar cuts” then why don’t we see “hundreds and hundreds” of similarly worded sections that say “None of the funds appropriated by this division may be used to fund X”?

From Chapter 1 alone:

"Notwithstanding section 101, the level for each of the following accounts for Agricultural Programs of the Department of Agriculture shall be as follows: . . . `Agricultural Research Service, Buildings and Facilities', $0 . . .

[and with simlar language:]

"for payments to the 1890 land-grant colleges, including Tuskegee University and West Virginia State University (7 U.S.C. 3222), $37,591,000'; by substituting `$0' for `$128,223,000'"

"`Natural Resources Conservation Service, Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations', $0."

"`Rural Utilities Service, Rural Telephone Bank Program Account', $0."

"`Foreign Agricultural Service, Public Law 480 Title I Ocean Freight Differential Grants', $0;"

"title VII of the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006 shall be applied to funds appropriated by this division by substituting $0 for the following dollar amounts:
- section 721, $2,500,000;
- section 723, $1,250,000;
- section 755, $1,000,000;
- section 764, $650,000;
- section 766, $200,000;
- section 767, $2,250,000;
- section 779, $6,000,000;
- section 790, $140,000, $400,000, $200,000, $500,000, and $350,000; and
- section 791, $1,000,000."

"Of the unobligated balances under section 32 of the Act of August 24, 1935 (7 U.S.C. 612c), $37,601,000 is rescinded."

"Of the unobligated balances of funds provided pursuant to section 16(h)(1)(A) of the Food Stamp Act of 1977 (7 U.S.C. 2025(h)(1)(A)), $11,200,000 is rescinded."

"Of the funds derived from interest on the cushion of credit payments, as authorized by section 313 of the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 (7 U.S.C. 940c), $74,000,000 shall not be obligated and $74,000,000 is rescinded."

Etc.

The reason is because this program was specifically targeted because it was introduced by Coburn and the people who did it (whoever they may be) knew that no one would care.

You're making this up. You have no evidence why it was done, and it hardly matters anyway: it's precisely the sort of thing that would get caught up in the earmark bill by design. You also have no explanation why anybody would go to the trouble to seek out one program by one GOP Senator and give it the axe - there were huge numbers of cuts but nobody else is complaining that they were targeted by "liberals". You also have no explanation why this one particular cut is an underhanded political trick, while hundreds of similar cuts to programs sponsored by Republicans and Democrats were not. Coburn grandstanded with his amendment and is now creating a controversy, Bill Donohue-style, to make himself look big.

The issue right now is the funding bill. Coburn was trying to derail the entire budget reform process for one program that comes to about 1/100,000th of the entire budget. (The House version passed two weeks ago. If Coburn's amendment had passed in the Senate, it would have blocked the entire bill from passing until the difference was resolved in a House/Senate conference committee.) When they blocked his killer amendment, as they did for many amendments offered by many other people, he alone chose to whip it up into a contrived partisan controversy.

Do you hear any liberals making a stink about this?

Nobody's making a stink about it except Coburn and some partisan liars. It's not an issue. He's going to get his money. Almost all the axed programs are going to get their money. He'll just have to stand in line and go through the process like everyone else. Nothing has happened here. Not one program has been shut down. Most of them are not going to be shut down. There's an emergency spending bill to re-authorize some deleted programs in the works right now. They'll get to the others later. That's what this process was for.

to the wording already in the bill when it was first placed in the hopper - before going to committee.

No, Kevin, that is the version that comes out of committee and is voted on by the House.

You're right about that. I apologize.

But even so, there's no reason to think that this particular line item in the bill is any different from any of the many others in the same bill. If they're going to prevent spending without oversight, they've got to call a sudden halt and start the process over. That's what they did. Necessarily, a lot of good programs, including ones that weren't created through trickery or favoritism, got caught in the net. Everybody's ox got gored - which is the only way these big bills get passed. Now they're going to start re-funding programs under the new rules. In the meantime, the agencies and departments have discretionary funds (which is why the bill does contain some funding - the anti-earmark bill was never a shut-down-the-government bill). Most of it will be sorted out in a few weeks - and I'm still betting the AIDS program will get its money.

Making one single aspect of the earmark reform bill out to be some sort of political attack, somehow different from the way every other of hundreds of line items in the very same bill were handled, is ridiculous. It's yet another manufactured controversy intended only to score points - by, in typical Republican fashion, projecting their own behavior onto their opponents.

22

In addition to Kevin's comments, there are good reasons to oppose mandatory newborn testing in any form -- and the only really controversial thing about the Ryan White Early Diagnosis Grant Program is the mandatory newborn testing.

First of all, anyone who loves freedom should always hesitate to take rights away from parents and give them to the government. I'm not saying that mandatory is always bad; but it should not be the default.

Secondly, testing newborns is almost completely useless for preventing mother to child transmission. It's obviously too late to prevent transmission to newborns who already have HIV; and the test results take too long to arrive (six weeks or so) to prevent breastfeeding, which is the other way young infants can acquire HIV from their mothers.

Third, there's no effective, accurate way to test if a newborn is HIV positive; all the tests really do is tell us if the newborn's mother has HIV. But if what we're testing for is the mother's medical condition, then we shouldn't do that without her consent.

The proven, effective method of reducing mother-to-child transmission is effective, widespread prenatal care; mandatory infant testing is a waste of money and a threat to civil rights. The $30 million should be spent on better programs.

23

Keven,
"Every time I believe the GOP - or evangelical Christians - about anything at all, out of the belief that there's a level they can't sink below, I'm forced to recalibrate that level. Every time I tell myself I'll never do it again. Every time I wind up trusting them again, and later have to remind myself, again, never to do it again. Thanks for the reminder."

You can say this after they cheered the president's torture bill on? The low was there.

24

Kevin T. Keith and Joe Carter:
Great interaction: informative and for the most part civil.

I think Kevin T. Keith showed good evidence that the baby AIDS program was not the only program that was specifically allocated $0.

The question is: are there single procurements for programs (like the baby AIDS program and the many Kevin T. Keith cited) which HAVE been allocated funds of not $0?

If so, then it really wouldn't be an "anti-earmark" bill and would thus be open to accusations of favoritism since the baby AIDS program was not funded and others were...

That seems like a easy thing to validate or invalidate.

25

giggling:

The question is: are there single procurements for programs (like the baby AIDS program and the many Kevin T. Keith cited) which HAVE been allocated funds of not $0?

As I've already said, the bill defunds some programs entirely, and adjusts the funding of some other programs up or down. It's very hard to figure out exactly what is going on in many cases because of the way the bill is written (which, just to forestall another paranoid conspiracy theory, is not deliberately intended to deceive, it's just a feature of the way laws in general are written).

This bill is a followup to the overall federal budget bill for 2007, which was previously passed. That budget was filled with the usual line-items for various programs, many of which were criticized by opponents, as usual, as being "wasteful", "pork barrel", and "earmarks". The "earmarks" issue got traction in the recent election, and both parties decided they wanted to do something about it. (The Republicans passed their own earmark bill right at the end of the last Congress, when they still held the majority. It mostly addressed the procedural issues - stopping anonymous amendments.)

This new bill addresses the so-called "earmarks" in the current budget, by sweeping the deck and requiring that programs be refunded anew under the new rules. As such, it is filled with references to funding established in the original budget bill - but to find out what the changes those references impose, you'd have to go back to the budget bill to look up what the original programs and funding levels previously were. The new bill just gives you the changes. (Anyone who has served in a parliamentary body will be familiar with this. This is how laws get written.)

A typical passage: "Sec. 20109. Notwithstanding section 101, the level for `Food and Drug Administration, Salaries and Expenses' shall be $1,965,207,000, of which $352,200,000 shall be derived from prescription drug user fees authorized by 21 U.S.C. 379h, shall be credited to this account and remain available until expended, and shall not include any fees pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 379h(a)(2) and (a)(3) assessed for fiscal year 2008 but collected in fiscal year 2007 . . ."

I have no idea whether that's an increase or a decrease. To find out, you'd have to find the corresponding line item in the original budget bill, and the corresponding budget amount from last year's budget, and then compare those two to see if there was an increase from 2006 - 2007, then adjust for the various levels and categories defined above. So it's not as easy as it looks.

However, it's easy enough to see that there are at least some passages that do specify considerable amounts of funding. That has to be. There is a great deal of spending that has to go on. If they set every budget line funding level to zero, the government would crash down instantly (literally: since every action, however trivial, technically requires some expenditure of funds, if only to pay for the paper clips or staff time used, then literally nothing whatsoever can be done, in a program or the whole government, if funding is zero; that's the standard way to halt programs that can't be killed outright).

But, while providing funding for some programs, they also made a concerted effort to remove as many of the single-program line items as possible, in order to force them through the new, more open funding procedures. That's what the defunding provisions of this bill do - in some cases zeroing out entire programs, in some cases eliminating specific aspects of ongoing programs. And in addition to the provisions of the bill, the Congressional leadership spent days swatting down amendments like Coburn's that would have inserted specific funding items into the bill. (Go to the THOMAS site mentioned previously and find the bill. If you click the bill number, then click the link to the Congressional Record, you'll find pages and pages of motions to insert amendments, which were all turned down - and whose authors did not then run off in a sulk to right-wing blogs and complain that "the liberals" were trying to kill people to make them look bad.)

So, if your question is whether there is any small program that remains funded under this bill, I'm sure the answer is yes. But it doesn't seem to me to follow that the reason for that is "favoritism" or that the anti-earmark campaign wasn't really the reason for many of the provisions in this bill. You can certainly eliminate most earmarks without eliminating them all - which is what they did. Then they held the line by prohibiting amendments. And remember, again, that there is no strict definition of "earmark". But they did the best they could and intentionally swept with a broad broom. They affected large numbers of programs, sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans, and - and this was the crucial point - did so by treating them all equally and not trying to cherry-pick some among others.

It seems obvious to me that this was an "anti-earmark" bill because it eliminated vast numbers of earmarks - for the first time ever. It seems equally obvious that you can't say it isn't an anti-earmark bill just because it didn't eliminate them all. And, finally, it seems obvious that Coburn's program funding was treated no differently from that of hundreds of other programs, and his disruptive proposed amendment to put his one, personal pet project back in the bill was treated no differently from dozens of other amendments to do similar things. What I don't see is any evidence at all that this was some sort of personal vendetta by unnamed "staffers", or that the drafters of the bill hate kids with AIDS any more than they hate the flu vaccine, the Rural Phone Bank, or water projects on Indian reservations.

26

It's very clear Keith has done his homework here and is right about this. It's sad that Joe cannot admit he is wrong. It's not like anyone of us would normally know this much detail on parlimentary procedure or the Congress's budget procedures but it was interesting to learn. Joe should admit his error but chalk this up as a good learning experience.

As a rule of thumb whenever you hear about a politician being accused of some really horrendous, mindbogglingly dumb position then there's almost certainly more to the story. This was true back when liberals claimed Reagan wanted homeless people chopped up and made into dogfood and it's true now.

27

I consider myself politically conservative. I’m an evangelical Christian. I’ve enjoyed this particular blog for quite a long time now. I clicked over to Kevin T Keith’s website and instantly regretted it. And I’ve learned to basically skip anything Boonton or The Raven post here. So, believe me, I come to the table here with a strong bias toward Joe Carter and his views.

But I tell you now: reading Keith’s posts and watching the reaction of “my side” has sent me into a spiral of soul searching. If even half of what Keith wrote was true, Carter is being outright deceitful in suggesting that left-leaning passivity is behind the AIDS deaths of infants. But what has been “our” reaction?

Commenter Mike O: “[unfairly tarring the opposite party is] what both parties do with great regularity.” So, you believe that Republicans are unfairly smearing Democrats, ergo, Carter is actively participating by reposting slanderous material? And you’re OK with this dissemination of lies? Because it will maybe save babies or something?

Commenter John Salmon: “You wouldn’t be getting [critical comments] if you weren’t doing good work.” Or, maybe, Carter is wrong and this post actually isn’t “good work”? Did you consider that possibility?

And Joe Carter Himself: “I thought you were actually going to veer from the party line” “do you hear any liberals making a stink about this?” “[the GOP] aren’t exactly my favorite people” “I…don’t care about earmarks. I do care about babies”. OK, moving past the emotional pleas, ad-homs, and blame shifting, Carter at least addresses the meat of Keith’s objection. Unfortunately he does so by suggesting that the bill didn’t contain “hundreds and hundreds” of cuts, which appears to be factually wrong. Incredibly, this is after Carter accuses Keith of not reading the bill!

Of course, nothing obligates Joe to apologize, or retract, or clarify, or state his source for this opinion, or anything. That is, unless the trust of readers like me, who are predisposed to take him at his word, is important to him or the organization (FRC) he represents. A trust that, for me, has just stretched dangerously thin.

28

Joe, you make a good case for testing and treating pregnant women who may have AIDS. I'm curious though - do you now support a single-payer universal health care system (ala Canada) for all health issues? Or only when the Democrats oppose it?

29

Kevin You keep insisting that this is some sort of personal perfidy enacted by vicious Democrats. In fact, your own quote demonstrates that Coburn was knowingly grandstanding, and got slapped down on a purely procedural move.

I don’t even know where to start sorting out this mess.

Coburn was attempting to add an amendment to a bill to rectify a change that was added during committee. Coburn’s amendment was a means of restoring funding to a program that was established by both the House and the Senate. To have the program created by Congress and then have a committee staffer thwart the will of the people is wrong, a wrong that Coburn was attempting to rectify.

Coburn made a motion from the floor: "I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendments be set aside and my amendment No. 234 be called up". That motion would have suspended all action on the bill and given his amendment a direct vote in order to put money into one specific program, in a bill intended to remove as many such earmarks as possible.

Stop and look at that first sentence: “I ask that pending amendments be set aside…” What amendments is he referring to? You say that Coburn was making a “motion to evade the established procedure” but you don’t seem to be aware of what that procedure is – or that is it a rare ploy.

Reid pulled a stunt called “filling the amendment tree." A bill under debate is considered the trunk of the tree, and the branches growing out from the trunk determine where and in what order amendments can be offered. As Majority Leader, Reid gets favored status to offer one amendment after another until the “amendment tree” is full. No other amendment can be added until the others are decided. Reid filled the tree with junk so that no one else could offer anything up.

In essence, this shuts out any Senators who want to offer an amendment. It’s a cheap stunt first invented by the GOP that essentially circumvents the will of the people by parliamentary stunt. Coburn wasn’t “knowingly grandstanding” he was going through the motions in order to show that majority was willing to put their silly games ahead of the health of children.

To be honest, the fact that you would support this type of thing surprises me.

The question is whether they were going to start with a fairly clean slate on single-program funding initiatives, and work out the issues in debate, or whether everyone was going to pile on with their pet programs and hold the entire budget hostage until they got what they wanted.

The bill was nowhere near a “clean slate.” I don’t think any Senator would describe it that way. The Miami Herald has a clearer picture of what it really is:

A massive spending bill to fund the government through September contains billions of dollars in savings that exist only on paper, but which free up real money to spend on discretionary programs Bush has sought to cut.

''It's a way of finding some money to reassert Democratic priorities without being labeled big spenders,'' said Tim Penny, a former Democratic congressman from Minnesota.

It got passed only because the Senate leadership of both parties agreed to limit debate and prevent further earmarking.

Lets be clear, the “Baby AIDS” program is not an "earmark" in the way that term is usually defined. The fact that you keep describing it that way shows that you are unclear on the concept. Unless you think that everything that gets funded is an “earmark” then you really shouldn’t use that term to describe funding of a program that was recently created by Congress.

But only the GOP and their Kool-Aid-addicted lackeys tried to spin a bill reforming the entire federal budget process as a deliberate partisan effort to kill children with AIDS.

A bill reforming the entire federal budget process? Are we talking about the same bill? This is an omnibus bill that Democrats tried to pass off as a continuing resolution (CR) expecting us to be too stupid to know the difference (okay, maybe they were right on that point). This bill has nothing to do with earmark reform. Just because a few earmarks weren’t included does not make it a---what was the silly phrase you used--- a “bill reforming the entire federal budget process.”

Your entire description of this process has been false.

Listen, Kevin, I understand that you probably scoured a few websites to come up with that info. That’s fine and if you want to believe that Schoolhouse Rock via the DNC version of how a bill becomes a law, you have a right to think so. But to claim that my description—a description based on what really happened rather than the DNC’s spin—is false is rather unfair. I don’t buy the nonsense that this bill had anything to do with “earmark reform.” I think that is rather obvious by the end product.

Also, here is what it comes down to for me. I don’t care about procedure. I don’t want to hear that babies in New York will get AIDS because of some stupid parliamentary procedure designed by some Senator to stick it to a colleague.

I want a Congress that says, “We created this program two months ago, therefore we have to fund it” and then provides the money. I don’t want to hear this idiotic Dilbert-esque nonsense about “that’s the way the game’s played.” I want a government that is willing to be able to differentiate between funding life-saving treatments for babies and dishing out more pork for Sen. Byrd.

Is that too much to ask for?

30

ex-preacher …do you now support a single-payer universal health care system (ala Canada) for all health issues?

You’re not seriously implying that anyone who says “I support the government funding AIDS prevention for poor babies” is being inconsistent if they don’t support a “single-payer universal health care system”, are you? That would be a rather bizarre claim.

31

So where do you draw the line? As you say, "One would think that protecting sick babies is an issue that both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, would fully endorse." Is it only AIDS that babies deserve protection from? And why is it the federal government's job to do this?

Yes, I think you are inconsistent. The arguments you use to favor this are all excellent arguments for universal health care.

32

It's amazing how stubborn Joe can sometimes be. Kevin did his homework on this one, Joe didn't.

33

Joe:

To have the program created by Congress and then have a committee staffer thwart the will of the people is wrong, a wrong that Coburn was attempting to rectify.

You keep going on about "staffers", but you yourself stated earlier you don't know who marked up the bill or how. As for defunding a program, it's perfectly legal and it's largely what this bill was designed to do.

If "the will of the people" created the program, it was "the will of the people" that (temporarily) defunded it. "Staffers" do not create laws. This bill went through 5 versions, and passed both the House and Senate, with that language intact. (And it wasn't like nobody knew about Coburn's program. He's a world-class whiner and made several speeches about it.) The bill was voted out by the House by a margin of 2:1; the Senate approved it by a margin of 6:1. Ninety Republican Congressmembers voted in favor of it in both Houses together. You can't complain that there was anything improper about the process.

“I ask that pending amendments be set aside…” What amendments is he referring to? You say that Coburn was making a “motion to evade the established procedure” but you don’t seem to be aware of what that procedure is – or that is it a rare ploy. Reid pulled a stunt called “filling the amendment tree." . . . No other amendment can be added until the others are decided. Reid filled the tree with junk so that no one else could offer anything up.

It hardly prevented anyone from offering anything up - if you search the Congressional record for amendments to HJRes20, there were almost 30 Republican amendments offered.

You're right that Reid blocked the amendment tree. (It's hardly a rare tactic - Frist used it to pay off the NRA, and Trent Lott used it on almost every bill - but it is certainly hardball.) It's an ugly move - but it blocked every amendment, including the 28 others that weren't about the Baby AIDS program. It had nothing to do with Coburn, or AIDS for that matter.

Lets be clear, the “Baby AIDS” program is not an "earmark" in the way that term is usually defined. The fact that you keep describing it that way shows that you are unclear on the concept.

There is no way that term is usually defined. That's what I keep telling you. There is no definition of "earmark". Some people use it to mean any program-level line item, some use it to mean any program sponsored by a single legislator, some use it to mean any program that benefits only one legislator's constituency, some use it to mean any bad program. All of the above got cut by the bill, but all of the above are "not earmarks" by at least someone's definition.

Most of the programs cut by this bill were good programs. All of them had someone who wanted them funded. At least 29 of them were targeted for special exemption by Republicans offering amendments that would have sent the entire bill into conference committee. There is absolutely no reason to think that this program was treated any differently from any other - or that it won't be funded when the time comes.

Unless you think that everything that gets funded is an “earmark” then you really shouldn’t use that term to describe funding of a program that was recently created by Congress.

Every program was created by Congress. "Recently" has nothing to do with it. If they're going to re-visit funding for as many programs as possible, all of which were funded under older, non-transparent rules (though not all funded non-transparently), why would they possibly care how recent a program is? You seem to be implying that Congress has no right to change its own mind. But that's exactly what this bill was intended to do, in essence.

A bill reforming the entire federal budget process? Are we talking about the same bill? This is an omnibus bill that Democrats tried to pass off as a continuing resolution (CR) expecting us to be too stupid to know the difference (okay, maybe they were right on that point). This bill has nothing to do with earmark reform.

Um, it is a continuing resolution. What are you talking about?

The original budget bill sets spending levels, but the money, under the Constitution, has to be transferred from the Treasury by act of Congress. Not all the money is usually provided in the budget bill itself (that would give Congress little control for the next 12 months). Continuing resolutions transfer funds as needed, and usually provide an opportunity to revise the budget as the year unfolds. The existing funding resolution expired yesterday. This was the continuing resolution needed to keep the government funded for the rest of the fiscal year.

It is also the earmarks bill. Before the last session expired, the GOP enacted some useful changes to the budgeting procedure (prohibiting the kind of midnight amendments you are complaining about here), but they didn't address the earmarks that already existed under the 2007 budget that had already been passed. This bill - because it directly addresses program funding, was an opportunity to do away with earmaks now, rather than waiting for next year. (This was politically desirable, because earmarks had been a campaign issue. The procedural reforms had not yet taken effect, so this was a way not only to save some money but to make a show of getting on the problem immediately. And, as politics goes, that's not the worst thing in the world.)

Thus, the bill contains numerous line items funding various programs and agencies at stipulated levels. But many of those line items specifically exclude parts of programs, or specific programs within particular agencies, from continued funding. And many of them entirely eliminate funding that had been written into the original budget. Get it? It funds some programs, and defunds others. The defunding part is very different from a typical continuing resolution, and it is a direct response to the political pressure over "earmarks" - the same pressure that prompted the Republicans to offer their own bill after the election last fall. You can do two things at once with the same bill, you know.

to claim that my description—a description based on what really happened rather than the DNC’s spin—is false is rather unfair. I don’t buy the nonsense that this bill had anything to do with “earmark reform.” I think that is rather obvious by the end product.

What end product? You mean the hundreds of zeroed-out programs and the many others with reduced funding?

And you keep harping on "DNC spin". Maybe I wasn't clear enough before, but the purpose of pointing out that the GOP leadership, a major GOP presidential candidate, 2 or 3 former GOP presidential candidates, and a total of 90 GOP legislators all voted for this bill, and George Bush signed it yesterday was to suggest that maybe the "DNC trickery" line isn't really all that convincing. I don't think those people are all that smart, but I don't think their support for the bill was entirely due to "stupidly accepting the DNC's spin", as you put it.

As for "what really happened", I told you what really happened. Much of it is in direct contradiction to what you keep saying - and you still have no evidence whatsoever of your main claims: that this provision was sneaked into the bill, that it was motivated by some sort of animus to Coburn, and that it was blocked only for partisan political purposes.

It seems much more reasonable to accept the obvious implications of what really happened: the provision is one tiny part of a huge bill with many, many program cuts (including one for flu vaccine in the very same sentence you insist was intended only as an attack on Coburn); many of those cuts completely defunded programs, at least until they can be debated under the new rules; amendments to exempt specific programs were proposed almost 30 times by 15 different Republican Senators, all of which were blocked by the same procedural moves; the Republican Minority Leader publicly supported Reid in demanding no amendments to the bill; the bill was extensively debated on the question of the best way to handle "earmarks". Given all that, it seems reasonable to imagine that the AIDS program was defunded in the same way and for the same reasons as all the other programs, Coburn and his amendments were treated exactly the same way as everyone else, and that Coburn's amendments were opposed by his own party leaders, not just Democratic revenge-seekers. There is no evidence for any other explanation.

Also, here is what it comes down to for me. I don’t care about procedure. I don’t want to hear that babies in New York will get AIDS because of some stupid parliamentary procedure designed by some Senator to stick it to a colleague.

Again, you're making that up.

And as for the funding, it will get done. Under the new rules. That was the whole point.

There is absolutely nothing to prevent Coburn from introducing a bill today to refund that program. Or from attaching it to a larger funding bill that will probably be coming down the pike addressing all those defunded programs. It could be done in a matter of days. He'll just have to convince people it's a good idea. And, this time, he only has to convince them the AIDS program is good - not that they should hold up the entire government funding resolution for that one reason. Why is that a problem?

I want a Congress that says, “We created this program two months ago, therefore we have to fund it” and then provides the money.

Why would you possibly want that? That doesn't make any sense.

They should continue to fund the program if it's a good idea - not just because it was in a budget bill months ago! They don't have to do anything. They haven't tied their own hands - in fact, one purpose of continuing funding resolutions is to give them a chance to stop and re-think periodically. They've done so in a radical way this time, but that doesn't mean they'll never fund anything again. What you don't want is a Congress that dishes out $3 trillion dollars at a time and never asks what's being done with it.

Finally, it seems as if you are just looking for a controversy. Your original complaint (never substantiated) was that "staffers" were playing politics with the AIDS bill to get back at Coburn (for what was also never explained). You also said Coburn was being singled out, and implied there was no other explanation for why his amendment was rejected. Then you complained that anyone who supported this bill was "stupidly accepting the DNC's spin". Then you complained that Reid was blocking debate. Now you complain that the real issue is ensuring funding for the AIDS program.

First, note again that most of your complaints are unfounded or false. There is no evidence that this provision of the bill was underhanded or malicious. Coburn was obviously treated in the same way as everyone else in the same position. His AIDS amendment was rejected in the same way, and for the same reason, as all his other amendments and those of 14 other GOP Senators. The GOP leadership themselves accepted the bill as a way to deal with earmarks, and supported Reid's "clean bill" strategy. And the bill itself does not prohibit funding for the AIDS program, it merely forces it back onto the table along with all the other programs. I don't see what you have to complain about at all - but, more than that, your complaints have generally been at odds with the actual facts of the case, yet you keep making them.

34

Kaffinator:

Thanks for visiting.

I'll admit that my blog color scheme is a little bland, but the content? Pure gold, baby!

35

Joe,

This is why lawmakers are able to get away with murder and I mean that literally. Not only is it complicated but they have friends like Kevin T. Keith who will help obfuscate their practices and pick up the party line.

Now imagine that plus the MSM being in bed with the Democrats and we start to have an inkling of why they ever get elected to any office.

36

Keven T. Keith
So, if your question is whether there is any small program that remains funded under this bill, I'm sure the answer is yes. But it doesn't seem to me to follow that the reason for that is "favoritism" or that the anti-earmark campaign wasn't really the reason for many of the provisions in this bill. You can certainly eliminate most earmarks without eliminating them all - which is what they did. Then they held the line by prohibiting amendments. And remember, again, that there is no strict definition of "earmark". But they did the best they could and intentionally swept with a broad broom. They affected large numbers of programs, sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans, and - and this was the crucial point - did so by treating them all equally and not trying to cherry-pick some among others.

Yes, it's true that the funding of some small programs/line items and the non-funding of others would not necessitate the existence of favoritism. It could be that the Dems really did "the best they could" with a "broad broom sweep" and missed a few here and there.
The fact that no evidence has been shown that Democrat programs were funded/de-funded in ways that Republican programs were not is a pretty compelling indicator that there was no favoritism, despite my admitted suspicions of liberal politicians.

It's also unclear to me that it was a personal vendetta against Coburn or babies. Moreover, if this isn't an "anti-earmark" bill--since no one seems to be able to articulate what an earmark is and is not--it certainly has the characteristic of substantially reducing the number of pet programs/line items on the bill (for better or for worse). This point is evident.

I can also see why Reid would want to clear the slate, even if it throws out the uh.. puppy with the bathwater.

So it seems to me that Kevin T. Keith is right on this issue. My initial suspicions of the Democrats were unjustified here. Of course, I will change my mind if the Dems end up not funding the program when it comes up in a separate bill.

But well done, Kevin T. Keith. You've convinced me.

Kaffinator:
I consider myself politically conservative. I’m an evangelical Christian. I’ve enjoyed this particular blog for quite a long time now. I clicked over to Kevin T Keith’s website and instantly regretted it. And I’ve learned to basically skip anything Boonton or The Raven post here. So, believe me, I come to the table here with a strong bias toward Joe Carter and his views.

First of all, Boonton's usually pretty sensible. He just starts out with some anti-biblical foundations which lead his strong thinking to wrong conclusions in some cases. That's alright.
The Raven on the other hand really is arrogantly ignorant and generally illogical, usually negligently and sometimes maliciously bringing down the level of discourse, especially when it comes to Christianity which he thinks he understands. These points I've shown in previous comment threads.

But Kaffinator, if you choose to invoke your communal identity as an evangelical and a conservative to bolster your credibility, I think you are wrong to neglect my own comments--which have been quite fair and reasonable--when you criticize "your own side."

You may not have intended to, but you paint a picture of (our shared community of) evangelicals and conservatives which is unfair in its totalizing criticism with respect to this post, when there are some "on your side" who have been thoughtfully dealing with the issues here.

I think you took the easy way out by unfairly portraying your side with your quotations as monolithically and unjustifiably uncritical, and it's wrong to use your communal identity to bolster yourself without doing justice to the community as well.

Plus I feel slighted after my hard work in reading and writing all this stuff. ;)

37

The fact that no evidence has been shown that Democrat programs were funded/de-funded in ways that Republican programs were not is a pretty compelling indicator that there was no favoritism, despite my admitted suspicions of liberal politicians.

Well it's not like every line item in the budget is labeled "Republican" or "Democratic". Take this program for AIDS and babies, is it a Republican one or a Democratic one? At first glance it actually seems more Democratic. A conservative would probably ask why the states couldn't and shouldn't be the ones to fund pre-natal AIDS testing and treatment? A lot of programs are often co-sponsored by both a Republican and Democratic representative (or even more if it's something that sounds good and lots of people want to put their name on it).

First of all, Boonton's usually pretty sensible. He just starts out with some anti-biblical foundations which lead his strong thinking to wrong conclusions in some cases. That's alright.

See everyone loves me!

38

Still waiting for an answer, Joe. By what logic do you support federal dollars to prevent AIDS in a baby, but not to treat leukemia in a 12 year old or heart disease in a fifty year old?

39

Boonton:
Well it's not like every line item in the budget is labeled "Republican" or "Democratic".

True, but my point is basically just that programs can be clearly associated more with a partisan cause (pro-life statutes, tax increases) or with a particular Congressman or Senator, and may be treated on that basis as a matter of politics.

40

You're free to try such an analysis. Good luck to you trying to figure out whether the "Rural Utilities Service, Rural Telephone Bank Program Account" is Republican, Democrat or both.

I think this bill hits Republican pork more for two reasons. First Republicans had control of Congress so they had the chance to put make pork more centered on their side. Second the last Congress was notorious for being extravagant with pork/earmarks/whatever.

To be honest with you I think this program sounds more Democratic than Republican.

First take the name of the program. Ryan White! He was the kid who got AIDS from a blood transfusion and became a minor celebrity in the 80's. If you recall AIDS, especially in the 80's was a Democratic issue...and yes Ryan White was used to bash the Reagan administration for doing nothing on AIDS. Anyway Dems firmly controlled Congress through the 80's into the early 90's so this program was created with Democratic support.

Second take the program. Here the Federal Gov't is spending money to test babies for HIV. The first question a good conservative would ask is why does this have to be done by the Federal gov't? Why can't the states do it? It says a lot that such a question doesn't even seem to occur to so-called conservatives. Face it, the program may be very good but it is very liberal...very liberal.

41

Ex-preacher:

Morality kind of works like universal subsets, you can choose a variable (call it 2x) without including x. Likewise, Joe can support allocating federal dollars for AIDS babies, but ignore the 12 year with leukemia and the 55 year old with cancer...

but it's kinda heartless...

42

Hi Giggling,

I read all of Carter’s posts but not all of the comment threads, and we’ve never directly interacted (that I know of) so, as speaking as anonymous pseudonym to another, no slight was intended; I didn’t even know you as an evangelical or a conservative…anyway I’m glad to hear that you are attempting to thoughtfully deal with the issue.

But even as you’ve posted, we see “Baggi” picking up on the “party line”/ad hominem/meme that Joe kicked off. So, your posts notwithstanding, I don’t yet see that my original criticism was unfair.

Oh well, by now this post is buried anyway.