As TPM notes, House Republicans are ready to shut down the government not over deficits, which they couldn’t care less about, but rather over Planned Parenthood and EPA. This is to be expected: they are far more interested in catering to their base than trying to help the country.
But what do you do about it? At some point, someone is going to have to give. Well, here’s a formula for the Planned Parenthood impasse, which I think will be used in some form or another in a lot of the issues. The proposed budget should contain this language:
No funds shall be spent for any programs operated by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Then Planned Parenthood creates a subsidiary, with an interlocking directorate, and the government funds programs through that subsidiary. Republicans say that they blocked funding of “Planned Parenthood,” the funding goes through, then the GOP goes to their base and say that they are shocked, shocked, that this could happen. It costs more money because of the additional paperwork, but of course as I said beforehand, Republicans don’t care about that.
It gives the country a few months.
Extend and pretend is a formula for stabilizing a predatory political economy. I’m not suggesting there’s a good alternative; I am suggesting that the elimination of any good alternative was part of the political setup for this kind of extortion drama.
They say a neurotic goes to psychotherapy seeking to become a better neurotic, and cannot overcome his neurosis, until he gives up that hope.
Technically, what you recommend is probably unconstitutional. Not that anyone cares any more about the rule of law than about the deficit, but I thought I would mention it.
Bruce Wilder is right. It’s a bill of attainder, at least as worded.
Didn’t Congress pass a bill very much like that, but only substituting ACORN?
I have a better solution: We fight.
Mr. Zasloff, your posts always make my day.
Sean says: I have a better solution: We fight.
And the meme to that end is the answer to this riddle:
Who had the boner of an idea to allow endless riders to the budget bill in the first place?
It’s not a bill of attainder, because Congress deciding that they’re not going to fund you isn’t a criminal penalty.
And I know you think the Republican base is stupid, but they’re not THAT stupid.
“Congress deciding that they’re not going to fund you isn’t a criminal penalty.”
Barring an particular, named organization from Federal funding is a penalty, and that would make it, arguably, a bill of attainder, under existing precedent. Of course, a Federalist Society judge would see it the way you do. Did I mention that no one cares anymore about the rule of law? It is pointless to argue over these kind of careful distinctions and procedural rules, if people are just going to use raw political power to do as they please. We’ve effectively voided laws and treaty obligations against torture, the right of habeas corpus, and the statute against frauds — bills of attainder are just a quaint footnote at this point.
The notion behind the prohibition against bills of attainder was that the government should not name specific entities to lose, but should use general principles.
eg, it is not a strictly a bill of attainder to say “no company except IBM can provide computers to the US Government”, but it’s in a similar category of bad law.
Likewise, naming specific companies as not allowed to get govt funds just by name, not behavior, is fundamentally unfair.
At the moment this is existing precedent, and it says it’s NOT a bill of attainder.
“It gives the country a few months.”
And the value of this is what?
Look, you may not like it, but we have here a situation like the Civil War — an irreconcilable minority that simply WILL NOT accept compromise, ever, in anything. Delaying a few months is not going to change that.
It took the Great Depression to finally get enough (and that’s all it was — enough, not “all”, not even “the vast majority”) of the plutocracy and their idiot hangers-on to finally concede to change. I don’t see any difference this time round.
And if we’re going to have a Great Depression 2, the sooner it comes (and thus the sooner we can all get on with serious restructuring of the energy infrastructure) the better.
not a “Bill of Attainder” but in my view, much like it. I never said it was one, just that it had the same flavor.