Patterico's Pontifications

1/2/2013

Senate Voted on Fiscal Cliff Bill Three Minutes After Receiving It

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 10:14 am



Because the Senate is the Great Deliberative Body, that cools the passions of the electorate and carefully weighs decisions of great moment.

The U.S. Senate voted 89-8 to approve legislation to avoid the fiscal cliff despite having only 3 minutes to read the 154-page bill and budget score.

Multiple Senate sources have confirmed to CNSNews.com that senators received the bill at approximately 1:36 AM on Jan. 1, 2013 – a mere three minutes before they voted to approve it at 1:39 AM.

The bill is 154-pages and includes several provisions that are unrelated to the fiscal cliff, including repealing a section of ObamaCare, extending the wind-energy tax credit, and a rum tax subsidy deal for Puerto Rican rum makers.

Reuters has more detail on the goodies crammed into the last-minute legislation:

But senators also extended higher rum excise taxes to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and provided tax breaks to a wide range of other groups and interests, including motorsports entertainment complexes and mine rescue teams.

Among the other sweeteners:

* special expensing rules for certain film and TV productions

* tax-exempt financing for New York Liberty Zone, an area around the site of the World Trade Center.

* extension of American Samoa economic development credit

Thank God, we avoided the dreaded Dairy Cliff:

Also tucked in the bill, known as the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, are measures to avert the so-called “dairy cliff” – a steep increase in milk prices that would otherwise take place this year.

The measures would extend farm subsidy programs and prevent dairy subsidies from reverting to 1949 levels, which would have meant retail milk prices could have doubled to about $7 per gallon.

All hail government subsidies, without which we would be subjected to the working of the free market.

The composition of every post is becoming an exercise in making it to the end without using profanities.

33 Responses to “Senate Voted on Fiscal Cliff Bill Three Minutes After Receiving It”

  1. *&%*(&%*(&*(&(*^(&%

    Patterico (038ee9)

  2. As Steyn has put it many times, the Senate is an abomination.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  3. We get the government we voted for. In DC and CA, yours really sucks.

    PCD (1d8b6d)

  4. The thing about the dairy subsidies are that the free market is working fairly well. Dairy prices are down.
    My understanding of the Dairy Cliff was that it was going to *require* government to buy milk at remarkably over-market prices.
    You’d be an idiot not to sell your milk to the government until they couldn’t buy any more thus driving up milk shortages.
    So that’s the only thing I agree with in this bill, is fixing those subsidies so they don’t go into effect.

    tsrblke (work) (83ed43)

  5. Want even more reason for profanity? Chuck Todd:

    …yesterday we almost had the Republican leadership in the House almost completely undermine the Republican leadership in the Senate. It looked like they threatened to scuttle the whole thing, and they ended up helping Barack Obama raise taxes more than any Republican Party in a generation has helped anybody raise taxes, and they got nothing for it.

    (Emphasis mine)

    Tillman (51d7aa)

  6. Here’s a leader we can all vote for-

    “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our government’s reckless fiscal policies. . . . Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

    Senator Barack Obama, 2006

    Bugg (ba4ca9)

  7. I thank my stars every day that President Punish Success wants to end tax expenditures and special loopholes for wealthy Americans and large corporations while preserving them for special interest groups that make no economic sense, for the chirren, the earth and because of teh fairness of it all.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  8. “All hail government subsidies…”

    I dunno about this hailing business. For some reason, I never seem to get one of these subsidies. I’m just taxed to provide subsidies for other folks.

    Not that I’d take a handout from the worthless fucks in the federal government.

    Pardon my French.

    Dave Surls (46b08c)

  9. So you think Chuck Todd understands that the House and Senate are two different bodies which were specifically set up with different roles and for members to look at constituent issues separately, and vote on issues differently–not as clones of each other? His “scuttle” comment is bizarre but since it’s him I guess it’s not entirely surprising.

    elissa (243135)

  10. elissa, I don’t think that coordination between the House and Senate is unheard of. Don’t you think that it would be smarter politics for a party to have a unified vision?

    Tillman (51d7aa)

  11. One of my Democrat senators voted against the deal, Tillman. And 16 House Democrats voted against it. So what does that say about Democrats?

    SPQR (768505)

  12. tillman– for a possible stab at an answer to that question see the Rubin article I posted on the other thread.

    elissa (243135)

  13. It’s what to expect from a turd world govt.

    mg (31009b)

  14. SPQR, “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” – Will Rogers

    Tillman (51d7aa)

  15. Toughened the filter for Tillman’s comments and deleted the ones that have appeared. He is banned for good cause and this is what happens when you try to get around a ban.

    Patterico (038ee9)

  16. Patterico, I’m not P. Tillman if that’s who you’re thinking of. I’m not banned.

    Tillman (51d7aa)

  17. That is who I was thinking of.

    Patterico (038ee9)

  18. Can we pluck out their eyes since they don’t seem to need them for their job?

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  19. The Senate lost its specific function when they passed the 17th Amendment.
    Another victory for Progressivism!

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  20. Re: #5…. I dream of a genuine journalist having a sit down with POTUS and asking him to read his own former statement aloud, and asking him to elaborate, at length, as to why he position…evolved.

    An adversarial press is necessary. Too bad we have pom-pom cheerleaders.

    Simon Jester (6a1d5a)

  21. There isn’t a JournoLista that would ever ask him that question. Unicorns are more real.

    JD (5ed6bd)

  22. * extension of American Samoa economic development credit

    Isn’t Hunter S. Thompson’s attorney Samoan?

    CrustyB (69f730)

  23. D.C. must be the cesspool of lawyers gone wild.

    mg (31009b)

  24. We are all wrong about the election.Kirsten Powers, former girlfriend of Anthony Weiner and Fox News contributor, said that Obama voters were “thoughtful intelligent people.”

    I take back everything I have said about them. She says he saved us from another Great Depression.

    Who knew ?

    Mike K (5552a4)

  25. Someone was thinking with her t.ts again.

    askeptic (2bb434)

  26. “I dream of a genuine journalist having a sit down with POTUS and asking him to read his own former statement aloud, and asking him to elaborate, at length, as to why he position…evolved.”

    Seems pretty simple to spin. The economy has… evolved … quite a bit since 2006.

    Then again the other spin is much more cynical — the debt limit always goes up and the party out of power always complains.

    NelsonK (06e6ef)

  27. Evolved? What utter horse manure.

    SPQR (768505)

  28. I just figured he’d like to hear his own turn of phrase. But things are certainly quite different now.

    NelsonK (06e6ef)

  29. Now we’re buying our own bonds, because the Chinese are ‘skittish’ to keep buying, how did that official
    in that SNL sketch put it?

    narciso (3fec35)

  30. NeksonK is the newest iteration of one of the regular old banned trolls. New year, same nonsense.

    JD (78d90b)

  31. I said it from the beginning and I’ll say it now, this president is out to bring this country down which ever way he can. It’s that simple. Why is it so difficult for these so call analysis to see it? God help us.

    Tom (d965a4)

  32. I think your characterization of the dairy c liff is a bit off.

    The issue is not that subsidies are artifically holding down dairy prices which would otherwise be higher under true market conditions. That *may be true*, but that’s not why the farm bill expiration would have caused prices to rise, and the result would not have been a free market.

    The 1949 Agricultural Act requires the Secretary of Agriculture to set a price floor for milk and requires the DoA to buy enough milk to prop the price up to that level. The recurring farm bills since then have temporarily suspended this requirement, but the expiration of the farm bills restores the 1949 rule.

    The 1949 Act establishes rules that the AgSec must follow in setting these prices, and the estimate is that if those rules are followed, the support price for milk would be four times the support price under the farm bill (and twice the current market price).

    aphrael (e0cdc9)


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