In an odd show of unity and organization from congressional democrats, this thing has been kind of a success. Who knows wether the Senate will implement this stuff or what effect it will ultimately have, but thus far I'm pleasantly surprised that the HOuse has actually been able to do most of this stuff. One of the surprising things noted here and commented on here is that a surprising number of Republicans have crossed over and voted with the democrats on a lot of these issues. The lowest number of "crossovers" was 24 on Medicare drug costs, for yesterday's student loan bill it was a whopping 124 Republicans voting w/the democrats (356-71 total). IMO it shows how totally out of touch and beholden to the hard right wing nut job brigade (the Grover Norquists of the world) that the former House Republican leadership was - I mean some of this stuff (lower student loan rates, lobbying reforms, minimum wage) are just absolute political no brainers that they would not budge on for the sake of mega-hard right ideology. Stupid, IMO.
And this refers to actual "hours worked", hours in the office getin' it done, right? Not even sure why I asked...curiouso.
They actually had an article about it in the Times last week. Some really anal congressional staffer in Steny Hoyer's office keeps an official clock - they only count hours when the House is in session but do not count those hours (forgot the name of them) where no bills can pass where congressmen are just reading things into the record like "congrats to our pop warner football team from my district!" etc.
just an aside, i ran into grover in vegas last week, paling around with some folks from the RIAA. weird.
here's the actual clock in real time: http://democraticleader.house.gov/ but I think they just passed the last bill with a bunch of hours to spare. Maybe they'll take thenext 59 hours off.
Good start for them. Just shows you how much better Politicians can do when properly motivated. Anyone else in favor of hard set term limits? I wonder whatever happened to those anyway...sigh. power corrupts, truer words have never been so well said.
the following bill was passed between 1:00 am and 2:00 am Many republicans voted for the bill, I'm told that they were motivated to vote with the democrats when Keifer Sutherland showed up and yelled, "We're running out of time!!!! You have to trust me on this!!!"
what do you think about grover? theres a lot of hardcore animosity towards him from many republican circles.
i don't run in republican circles, so i'm not really qualified to comment. moreover, i have only a vague understanding of who he is, and what americans for tax reform is all about. w/o knowing whether this is what norquist is in favor of, i would say that i'm in favor of some sort of massive overhaul of the tax code, and find the flat tax concept appealing, although i doubt it could ever be quite that simple. but one sure way to eliminate federal waste, and create additional tax revenue, would be to eliminate a large federal department...like the IRS.
That'll never happen, the poor congressman brave enough to sponsor this kind of bill or anything close to it would find himself, his in laws, his parents, siblings, and everyone else he knows including his pets and probably the guy who works at the corner Starbucks on a VERY VERY short list of people to audit ASAP.
I don't know if he's been audited, but John Linder (no relation) introduces this bill every year. He's the one who wrote the Fair Tax book with Neil Boortz.
