Clean Bandit … dust clears
Late Tuesday night, congressional negotiators unveiled a spending deal to keep most of the government funded through September 2015, but on Wednesday it became clear that the substantial policy concessions made by Democrats in a bid to attract enough Republican votes to keep the government open are likely to shrink the coalition supporting the last-minute bill.
The 1,600-page spending document could be forced through the House and Senate in less than one week, giving lawmakers little time to review its contents but enough time to be angered that certain controversial provisions were included, most notably major changes to two of the biggest laws approved by Congress since 2000, which had rewritten Wall Street rules and reformed the campaign finance system.
The current government spending bill expires on Thursday, and failure to pass new legislation by then will trigger another shutdown a little more than a year after Republicans forced a 16-day government closure in October 2013. That GOP standoff over defunding the Democrats’ health care law cost the nation an estimated $24 billion.
Though the so-called cromnibus bill funds the majority of the government through an omnibus package for the rest of the fiscal year, it pays for the Department of Homeland Security only through February via a stopgap measure known as a continuing resolution, or CR. Conservatives hope to isolate the department, which is tasked with implementing President Barack Obama’s recent executive order exempting millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation, and the bill will give Republicans a chance to freshly debate its funding in the new year, when they will control both the House and Senate.
Yahoo News’ list of the most interesting and significant policy changes in the year-end spending bill:
Eliminating a key Wall Street reform. The Democratic-controlled Congress in 2010 approved sweeping changes to the nation’s financial systems, many of them tailored to prevent the kind of crisis that tanked the economy in 2008. One of the centerpieces of the bill was a measure designed to spin off banks’ riskiest activities into subsidiaries, isolating the main functions of banks from those risks and also ensuring that taxpayers would not be on the hook to pay for losses created by those risky trades in the event that they failed. The spending bill approved by Congress eliminates the so-called push-out provision from the Dodd-Frank law, meaning that the trading of derivatives — the risky swaps or bets made against the rise and fall of value in assets — can now once again happen in-house in Wall Street’s largest banks.
Democrats led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren are outraged by this return to old ways, and she has said she will oppose the whole bill if the provision remains in it.
Dismantling what was left of campaign finance reform. The Supreme Court since 2010 has repeatedly struck down political donation restrictions approved by Congress in the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. With the spending bill approved by Congress this week, lawmakers at the last minute agreed to undo the most significant remaining changes from the law: the limits for individuals on how much they can give to political parties. Before the change, which was inserted in the last few pages of the mammoth spending bill, the most any one person could give to a party group like the Democratic National Committee or Republican National Committee was $32,400 per year. Now any individual will be able to give anywhere from $97,200 to $777,600, depending on the interpretation of the language included in the government-spending bill.
Meddling in D.C. politics. Because the District of Columbia is not a state, it relies on Congress annually to appropriate its budget. And so Washington, D.C., perennially bears the brunt of congressional compromises as Republicans target D.C. programs to highlight social issues they oppose and Democrats acquiesce in the knowledge that the District will vote overwhelmingly for Democrats no matter what Congress does. During the first shutdown threat of Obama’s tenure in 2011, the GOP pushed through a ban on funds for abortion services in D.C. and started a school voucher program.
This year, Democrats agreed to support Republican language targeting a D.C. ballot initiative legalizing recreational marijuana, which voters approved by nearly 70 percent in November. The wide-ranging appropriations bill bars funds from being used for the implementation, regulation and taxation of marijuana and also, adding insult to injury, mandates that no money provided by Congress can be used by D.C. officials to petition for representation in Congress. Instead of a regular congressperson, D.C. has a delegate, Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton, who does not have voting privileges in the House.
Cutting IRS and EPA funding. Republicans are touting cuts to the budgets of the Internal Revenue Service and the Environmental Protection Agency. The spending deal reduces IRS spending by $345 million in an olive branch to conservatives still miffed over a scandal involving the agency and its targeting of political groups that were using nonprofit loopholes to avoid paying certain taxes. The IRS funding levels in 2015 will now be lower than they were in the 2008 fiscal year.
Republicans have cut the EPA’s budget for the fifth consecutive year. In a press release the day after the deal was announced, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, touted cuts to the EPA as one of the “Ten Things You Should Know About the Omnibus Appropriations Bill” and the fact that the bill reduces EPA staffing “to the lowest level since 1989.”
Setting up a messy immigration funding fight. A key feature of the deal for Republicans is that it funds most of the government while specifically preventing Congress from filling the Homeland Security department’s coffers. That particular bargain will allow the House and Senate GOP majority in 2015 to fight over how to appropriate overall Homeland Security programs while withholding funds for the implementation of the president’s immigration executive order. As Yahoo News previously reported, it will be difficult for the GOP to defund implementation of the order because the DHS agency that oversees immigration status changes is self-funded through fees it levies on immigration applications. And yet by agreeing to this particular deal, Democrats are setting themselves up for a messy fight with Republicans about the immigration issue at a time when they will have much less leverage to get their way.
Rolling back truck safety regulations. A policy rider added to the bill to sweeten the deal for Republicans will roll back truck safety regulations issued by the Department of Transportation in 2011 to prevent traffic accidents resulting from trucker fatigue. The two basic requirements were that drivers take a 30-minute rest break within the first eight hours of their shifts and take a “restart” period of 34 hours of rest weekly. According to the Department of Transportation, the “net effect of these changes was to reduce the average maximum week a driver could work from 82 hours to 70 hours.” Trucking companies have been lobbying against these changes and now appear to have secured a victory by getting their repeal included in the spending bill.
India’s coal king is bidding for a $1 billion bank loan to turn one of the world’s ecological treasures into a major shipping lane. But if we act fast we can block his billion and keep the Great Barrier Reef home for whales and dolphins, not hulking coal ships.
UNESCO says the project puts the Reef in danger and eight leading international banks have backed away. Now it’s up to the State Bank of India to make or break it. The Bank’s Chairwoman has staked her reputation on cracking down on “bad loans” — and a massive global campaign can persuade her to scrutinise and stop this crazy coal project.
Public pressure has already changed other banks’ minds, so add your name now to say no to the world’s worst loan. When we hit a million, we’ll prep a definitive dossier showing its financial and environmental problems, then deliver it to Chairwoman Bhattacharya with legal letters and a media blitz:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/india_great_barrier_reef_loc/?biEWLbb&v=49294
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living organism on Earth and home to thousands of protected species. In the past three decades it’s lost around half its coral, due to pollution from mines, climate change and other factors. German magazine Der Spiegel reported that “if current trends continue, the unthinkable could happen: the Great Barrier Reef could die.”
This wild coal rush is toxic for the planet. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel, and to get the coal to India, Adani would need to expand a shipping lane right through the Reef. Some argue that India needs coal to pull people out of poverty, but India’s own coal minister just announced that India should be able to phase out coal imports in the next three years, long before the Australian mine is ever completed!
Campaigns by Avaaz and others, plus doubts over the project’s viability, have persuaded banks like Citigroup and Deutsche to say no to Adani’s planned Carmichael coal mine and infrastructure complex. Now the State Bank of India is under fire from India’s press and political opposition.
69% of Indians polled said they were against this project. As the head of India’s largest state-backed bank the Chairwoman will have to listen to public opinion and our million-strong petition, a flood of messages, ads, and reports can encourage the Board to turn Adani down. Add your voice now to hit a million against the reef-wrecking coalmine:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/india_great_barrier_reef_loc/?biEWLbb&v=49294
Time and again this year our community has shown it can rise to the challenge of making our climate safe for future generations. We’ve been fighting for the Great Barrier Reef for a long time so let’s ensure we unite again to save it from this catastrophic coal complex.
With hope and determination,
Danny, Nick, David, Alex, Oli, Alaphia, Nic, Ravi and the whole Avaaz team
MORE INFORMATION
Adani’s Australian project gets $1 billion SBI loan (The Times of India)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Adanis-Australian-project-gets-1-billion-…
Adani group’s Great Barrier Reef project in troubled waters (Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghabahree/2014/05/29/adani-groups-great-barrier-reef-project-in-troubl…
India could bankroll Adani group’s delayed Australian coal mine (IB Times)
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/india-could-bank-roll-adani-groups-delayed-australian-coal-mine-1475143
National Stock Exchange of India quizzes Adani on loan for Galilee Basin coal project (Sydney Morning Herald)
http://www.smh.com.au/business/mining-and-resources/national-stock-exchange-of-india-quizzes-adani-o…
SBI’s $1 billion loan to Adani makes no sense, here’s why (firstbiz)
http://firstbiz.firstpost.com/economy/sbis-1-billion-loan-to-adani-makes-no-sense-heres-why-108668.h…
India rejects Galilee Basin Coal (Market Forces)
http://www.marketforces.org.au/indiacoalpolling

With less than two days to go before another government shutdown, last night House and Senate leadership unveiled compromise budget legislation nicknamed the “cromnibus” — a portmanteau of continuing resolution, or CR, and an omnibus spending bill. While the main flashpoint going into these negotiations was conservatives’ radical reaction to President Obama’s executive action on immigration, in the light of day, a number of other odious provisions threaten to derail the bill’s passage.
ThinkProgress has a good run-down of the cromnibus’ troubling last-minute additions: handouts to Wall Street, cuts to IRS enforcement, interference in D.C.’s new voter-approved marijuana legalization, and a cold shoulder to students, the homeless, and those in need of affordable housing.
But today’s focus is on how Congress tried to sneak through the removal of more campaign finance limits and hand more even more control of the political system to the wealthiest and corporations. On page 1,599 of the 1,603-page cromnibus, the last-minute provision dramatically increases the caps on donor contributions to the national political parties. Right now, the most any single person can donate to candidates, parties and federal PACs was $129,600 in a single year (already more than 2.5 times the nation’s median income). But in the current version of the cromnibus, a donor’s maximum contribution would shoot up all the way to $777,600, by raising the cap on donations to party conventions from $32,400 to $97,200. In addition, it allows the national party committees to establish separate accounts for buildings and separate accounts for recounts and legal fees. Add it all up and it means a new flood of money in politics from wealthy donors and corporation– indeed, it’s a crafty way to create a solution where a problem doesn’t exist.
While that provision is particularly noxious, Common Cause also reports that there’s an additional attack on transparency tucked away in the cromnibus. The bill blocks the President from requiring federal contractors to disclose their political donations. So not only could companies that deal directly with the federal government hide their donations in plain sight, their contributions to officeholders could jump dramatically.
BOTTOM LINE: This cromnibus is a canary in the coal mine for how Republicans plan to govern in 2015. It reflects their priorities to increase the influence of the wealthy while cutting transparency at the same time. It will take continued vigilance to make sure that people like incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who profess to be for the middle class, don’t get even more opportunities to take speech away from the average person and give it to those at the very top
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