Eh: McCain and Feingold together again
So, there’s some Beltway buzz about a line-item veto proposal introduced today by Sens. John McCain and Russ Feingold and Rep. Paul Ryan on the House side.
Pardon me while I suppress my gag reflex at another Feingold-McCain partnership — and at the Kabuki theater from the White House:
A bipartisan group is giving the line-item veto another go at it, albeit with some key tweaks, more than a decade after the Supreme Court struck down the procedure as unconstitutional.
Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on Wednesday will announce the introduction of a Line-Item Veto Act, which would enable the president to strike individual items like earmarks from a spending bill before signing it.
The White House has signaled that it is open to the idea. Asked about being given that authority, spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters last week: “Well, I can assure you he’d love to take that for a test drive.”
Gimmick. Distraction. Waste of time.
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Categories: Pork
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SC already ruled line item veto was not constitutional, a bill is a bill and allowing the President to get at political opponents by vetoing their pieces of a bill was not to be allowed.
Yeah, like he welcomes ideas from the other side. Look how that worked out in the Spending bill.
its too bad we couldn’t have taken Obama for a test drive I’m sure the country would not have bought it!
I have a better idea Juan. How about a constitutional amendment that requires all bills to be clean bills?
How about a balanced budget amendment???
yeah, I know….
Who?
Well, McCain would have been a better president than Obama.
In the same way that Norwalk Virus is better than Ebola.
have faith, obie is one and done. carter begat reagan. obie will bring in loads of conservatives.
A distraction to be sure, but I would relish the idea of a truly conservative president having access to that kind of fiscal tool.
Ruthie “Babsie” Ginsburg…since you cast the deciding vote on McCain-Feingold political contributions, I await your stance on the line-item veto!
Let me get this straight. They have passed or are considering more than $2 Trillion in pork-laden spending bills. One bill alone had over 9000 “ear-marks.”
Even if such a line item veto were passed and upheld why does anyone think Obama would use it? He is the one turning the spending spree process over to Pelosi-Reid. He signed a bill he didn’t even read. You have to READ a bill before you can use a line item veto.
Yet another “mavericky” waste of time…
Here we go again….Dumb and Dumber trying to solve political problems in a “bipartisan” fashion. Funny how “bipartisan” always means “screw the taxpayers”.
“Well, McCain would have been a better president than Obama.”
I think that depends on your point of view. If you take the long term, it just maybe that the very best thing that can happen to this country is to elect Obama and get this leftist mindset out in the open and finally crushed. What McCain and the Republicans have done by doing liberalism “lite” is kept it alive and by incrementalism it has crept in to our country. Now we see it in the light fully and it can tried, evaluated and rejected totally.
McCain would have done enough liberalism leftist stuff to appease the left, and then we’d not have the full rejection of the concepts that we are seeing now.
If John McCain had any common decency he would sit down, shut up, run out his term and then retire. At this point he has demonstrated the only thing he has to offer the nation is “socialism at a slower pace.”
We really don’t need the maverick to help with that…
The only good thing about McCain having ended up as the republican nominee is that he won’t be able to do it again. I had enough of him and his “crossing the asile” style of politics back when he decided that stabbing his party in the back with the gang of 14 was the right way to go.
It’s almost like McCain is coming up for election again soon. Oh, wait …
I think this is a great idea and a perfect tool for Repubs to use against Obami.
Dear Leader keeps telling us how he is against pork and waste. Lets pass this thing and hold the Messiah to his word. Give him the power to veto line by line and then whenever a pork project comes across his desk and he doesn’t veto it the Repubs can hammer him on it.
What a great opportunity.
Constitutional issues aside, why in the world would McCain want to hand that power to Obama???
Which reminds me, where the heck is Bill Grant anyway? We had a rather “spirited” run-in about a month ago and I have not seen him since.
The Reagan after Carter analogy (comparing Obama to Carter and McCain to Ford) only works if Obama and his co-horts permit free and fair elections in 2012 and 2016.
Rahm Emmanuel taking control of the census is a sign that analogy might not be a good one. Ditto the billions for ACORN.
I do believe that the ONLY way this will ever fly is by a Constitutional Amendment. That was what the SCOTUS said the last time this was tried…wasn’t it?
I’m guessing they’ll be some kind of national emergency declared (like maybe a depression greater than the last one) and the presidential election put on hold “until things improve”. Which will be until the pitchfork and torch parade descends on the Whitehouse.
One question regarding Feingold.
Just when did he cross the aisle and support something .. conservative?
That John McCain does not see the problem here speaks quite poorly of him.
Mew
Instead of the line item veto, we need this:
Okay, this might be a naive question, but how are they defining “line” in line item veto?
Tactically speaking, this could mean that bills will be written differently in order to ensure that portions are safe under a line-item veto.
It’s under this style of structural reasoning that Pres. Obama believes he gets away with saying there were no earmarks in the last spending bill. Instead of considering them as addendum, side agreements, they wrote them into the core of the bill. It didn’t make them any less of a pet project or any less as specific allocation, but they were written into a different section of the bill. At least, that’s how I see it. They’re playing games with the definition of “earmark”.
A line item veto is far too powerful in my opinion. I don’t much care for the idea of giving the executive branch some legislative powers, regardless of who is in office. The Democrats should consider how Pres. Bush might have used this ability before they get too excited about it.
Make Impoundment an enumerated executive power.
I have a better idea, let’s repeal the 17th Amendment.
I hope we can also bit adio to juan of az.
Say what you want about the line-item veto, pro or con, it has no basis in Constitutional law. It MIGHT do some good until some clever White House found a way to manipulate it into a rewrite of the law. Several states with the Line Item Veto have found that to be true. Personally I see it as weakness. If the Legislature, Governor or President objects to something fight it out in DELIBERATIONS as our Constitution provides for.
But as I said-the Line Item Veto has no basis in Constitutional law but dishonest and weak people such as John McCain and Russ Feingold have no respect for our Constitution, laws, traditions or history. But then our Constitution was written for a bunch of Dead White Guys by a bunch of Dead White Guys enumerating a Bill of Negative Rights as stated by Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama and all kinds of
Fascist, Statist and Socialist in between.
Or as John McCain said in defending McCain-Feingold “you can’t let technicalities get in the way of keeping big money out of politics”. How did that work for him in 2008? Now we have fascism AND big money, the twit. I got a solicitation call from a McCain worker today. My granddaughter is here-she likes to talk on the phone, problem solved.
—
Keep the change-I’ll keep my guns
…and once again McLame “reaches across the aisle”.
I wonder why he never put forth this bill when Bush was President?
Why did conservatives vote for this Clown (McCain)? I think the fate of the nation was sealed after the florida primary.
In the general election, because Obama would be worse, and he had Palin as a running mate.
Not a single conservative voted for him in the primaries. He was the only viable RINO/Republican-Lite in the field, and lib Northeast RINOs, and crossover Independents put him above the numbers four or five other candidates with some claim to conservative could split.
It will be worse in 2012, if the primary system isn’t fixed, because Obama will likely be unopposed in his party, and Markos Zuniga and Keith Olbermann can tell the communists who to vote for when they vote in open primaries.
The one non-liberal thing Feingold is known for here in Wisconsin is fiscal responsibility. Of course, his actual floor votes don’t exactly match up to his words, but he figures by conning his likely opponent in 2010 (Paul Ryan) into joining this meaningless sandwich, that will get ignored.
Two instant problems, beyond the fact that Obama would play politics IF this were ultimately declared Constitutional:
- The last time I checked, there was a 10-day (excepting Sundays) time limit on veto action in the Constitution.
- By bundling all the vetos into one massive fuzzball and then requiring majorities in both Houses of Congress to uphold the vetoes, the pork will invariably stay in.
The place to put the line-item veto in is in the Constitution, and then the normal veto procedure to run it.
Along the same lines, I was just listening to Hannity on my way home and heard him twisting the Rush flap into an opportunity for all REPUBLICANS (not conservatives) to rally to the defense of Michael Steele!
What a moron! Conservatives are in position to retake party leadership from the RINOs and mister “I’m a conservative first and a Republican second” pulls a standard McCain trick to undercut conservatives.
Please people, please tell me you don’t listen to this idiot anymore.
If you want to gag, wait until he interviews McCain again. To say he gushes at McAmnesty’s feet is a gross understatement.
In today’s politics, McCain is completely irrelevant.
Temporary insanity, drugs, booze? I have voted for the Turncoat wimp for the last time to be sure. I really wonder if the country would be any better run is this Manchurian Candidate had won.
He is all thrilled and happy with providing cover for Whitetrash Clinton establishing relation with Communist Viet Nam July 12, 1995 and providing Little Bush cover in giving Communist Viet Nam Most Favored Nation Status with out any pro quid pro from the commies.
All three of these cowards talked of healing wounds. Well I still use a cane, my brother-in-law is still missing a hand and a bunch of our buddies have other wounds, are dead or missing so I guess Manchurian Candidate McCain, Whitetrash Clinton and Little Bush are either lying, stupid, totally cynical or any combination of the three.
I use to sign my letters Bomb Hanoi but I have evolved and now sign
—
Keep the change-I’ll keep my guns
Consider this: the carbon credit section of Obama’s budget used to be known as the McCain-Leiberman Bill.
Also, McCain was an enthusiastic supporter of TARP.
Also, McCain was on ABC News a couple of nights ago stating “Obama is off to an excellent start.”
Finally, do you think every single House Republicans would have voted against the
ObamaMcCain Porkulus I, Porkulus II and Budget bills that he surely would have presented? Of course not. Boehner couldn’t even get them to sign the “no earmarks” pledge.No, I believe that the GOP created a situation where Obama winning was the better of the obnoxious choices. You should have voted for Barr or Baldwin like many of us did for which we were roundly criticized (“You’re throwing your vote away!”)
Had the 7 million Republicans who stayed home voted 3rd party instead, Obama would still have won but with less than 50% of the vote, he would have been denied a mandate.
That was the best we could have done. We got the second best thing.
Yes Pasadena Phil my voting for McCain was the throwing away of a vote- All the Perfume of Asia Shall Not Wash Away the Shame ( sorry William). I actually worked on his, the Manchurian Candidate, campaign for the House of Representatives-more perfume please-keep those Asians working.
—
Keep the change-I’ll keep my guns
AZ:
…much explained, sir. Thank you for serving Our Country in times past, and Our Constitution now, at the end.
:::::::::::::
Please don’t kid yourself. Even politicians don’t get away manuvering like he does and consistantly win re-election in a mostly Conserv. state. He’s NOT dumb!
Of course, it follows from there that he knows full well what he’s doing, and (for whatever reason) willingly abedding the destruction of our Republic.
I have an odd notion, it sounds slightly tin-hat, but involves turning our monetary system over to the UN & friends, what happens when people (or can w/nations) go bankrupt, and sovernty.
Looking for a good thread to bring it into discussion, bounce it around w/ya’ll.
Just think about these things, please…
Consider if:
(1) Prez Cucuracha is very smart
(2) that he speech-a-fies as Prez o’ Duh Woild
(3) knows exactly where he wants the USA to end up
(4) knows that you don’t tax a faultering economy with taxes that will reduce GDP by 3-5%
(5) Ayers has written that the oldest 3rd of the pop wouldnt be “re-educationable”
(6) he’s moving to take over the Healthcare system.
(7) He knows that if the USA is bankrupt, it will necessitate rationing medcare, at instead of simply at level “cruel” to move to level “inhuman”
(8) is currently doing so many things, so fast, so well co-ordinated that fit together in favour of destruction that they must have been worked out in advance (the bobbles are due to his inexperience…)
(8) is building a brownshirts group that will be the combat equal of the Army.
… thats enough for now.
I started listing these oddities on the Kunsan to McChord leg (19hrs of boredom) and kept up with it.
I now have a couple of pages of these oddities.
OHHHH, be still my heart… I can almost see FRED and GINGER dancing, with CHEEK TO CHEEK playing in the background… GUUUUUSH, I think I just felt a TINGLE!!!