Latest Furious Kindergarten House Debate Ends In... A Passed Jobs Bill?
Whoa hey what the hell: The House of Representatives, the envelope-pushing absurdist sitcom that ended the laughtrack era, passed a "jobs bill" called the JOBS (an acronym for "who cares") Bill with bipartisan support and 390 billion votes. Finally, the modest regulatory tweaks to certain small business' capital formation processes that Americans have been clamoring for all these years. The system works, folks, so how should we celebrate -- massive tax cut or sandwich platter party in the conference room? Trick question, there's no time for celebration. Congressmen are still busy fighting each other as if they were still gridlocked children, over who gets credit for this legislative maintenance that none of them actually give a poop about.
Yesterday's big "heated moment" in Congress naturally involved old, retiring Barney Frank, who doesn't care about anything anymore and just goes from congressman to congressman telling them to piss off:
On Wednesday, Frank called out the House GOP leadership for purloining that measure, slapping Quayle’s name on it, and handing him the credit.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) — a member of GOP leadership — scolded Frank for getting exercised over the credit rather the policy itself. To which Frank replied, “For the gentleman from Texas, having been part of the leadership that engaged in that shameful maneuver, to now accuse us of being excessively concerned with credit, is the most hypocritical and dishonest statement I have heard uttered in this House.”
That, according to the chair, violated House rules which forbid members from lobbing personal attacks at one another on the floor. And as a result Frank was put in timeout for the rest of the day.
Here are three paragraphs from Roll Call summing up why people hate Congress or at least having to pay attention to it:
But despite the overwhelming bipartisan support, Democrats and Republicans are still tussling over who should get primary credit for the measure.
The Cantor package is made up of six existing bills, some which had Democratic sponsors and had passed the House with heavy Democratic support. A Cantor aide said the Majority Leader had identified small business capital formation as a possible area of bipartisanship in a memo he released in September.
But Senate Democrats see Cantor’s move as a victory for them and an effort to work with Democrats on their initiatives. They note that the capital formation initiatives were part of a White House white paper released in January and chalk up the turn of events to House Republicans failing to win public support for their effort to roll back government regulations.
“They were losing the message [war] so they just bundled together a bunch of bipartisan bills that were independently already in the works,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide, who added that the deregulation bills were seen as ideological measures.
Blah blah blah pfft, just give us our small business free abortion vouchers already.