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are you sure they can hear their masters' whistle?
Financial and UCA masters calling off their rabid attack dogs before the dogs savage the US/world economy with a shutdown.
are you sure they can hear their masters' whistle?
loud and clear, it would appear:
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-te...lt-4203978.phpSen. John Cornyn of Texas, the Republican whip, said in Houston Thursday that Congress will not allow an impasse over raising the debt ceiling to result in the federal government defaulting on its spending obligations.
"We will raise the debt ceiling. We're not going to default on our debt," Cornyn told the Houston Chronicle editorial board.
Cornyn's fellow Republicans, particularly in the House, have been trying to use the issue of the debt ceiling to force President Obama to agree to spending cuts.
Obama has said he will not negotiate on the debt ceiling. He has insisted that if Congress refuses to raise the debt limit, the nation will default on its spending obligations, including veterans benefits and Social Security payments.
"I will tell you unequivocally, we're not going to default," Cornyn said Thursday.
House Republicans, meanwhile, meeting at an annual retreat in Williamsburg, Va., told reporters that they are considering a plan to raise the legal borrowing limit for just a few months, postponing the debt-ceiling debate until March.
House Republicans are teeing up a vote this week on a new debt ceiling bill, marking the first legislative battle of President Obama's second term and one that could determine whether the country once again risks default over a political fight.
House leaders, after unveiling the legislation Monday, are planning to hold a vote Wednesday on their plan to allow the government to keep borrowing through May 18.
I'll be interested to see how many republicans vote for this.
Did you see the bull provision that makes the voter go "ALRIGHT! FINALLY" then the read the next few words and are like "MOTHER ER WHAT THE !"
Yes I am talking about the provision that says either chamber which holds up the passing of a budget will not be paid until they do.
Their pay will be held in escrow until they pass a budget and will then be paid to them.
presumably Boehner wouldn't schedule the vote if the thought his own caucus would screw him, but stranger things have happened.
There is a new series of articles on the internet (so therefore it must be true) that the 27th amendment expressly prohibits any congress from doing that during a current session. In other words, if they wanted that to take effect this year, they would have to have passed it in the prior congress.
No doubt this will be debated at length. Some legislators are saying it (varying the pay by denying it until a budget is passed) is clearly contrary to the 27th amendment, others are less sure.
Interesting times.
So many members of congress are so wealthy, how many could it actually hurt?
http://thehistorynerd.wordpress.com/tag/27th-amendment/Why did Madison want an amendment governing Congressional pay raises? He knew people didn’t always trust their lawmakers (surprise!). And some lawmakers once in awhile try to benefit from their position (surprise again!). Madison believed lawmakers shouldn’t be able to vote themselves a raise, unless they faced reelection before they actually got the cash. The election would allow voters, in effect, to give a thumbs up-or-down on the raise. Or at least if their particular lawmaker got to benefit from it.
The amendment won some support in the states. Six of the thirteen voted to ratify, but that fell short of the nine needed to put it in the Cons ution. So, the ratified amendments took effect, and Madison‘s Amendment, as it’s now called just sat…wherever it is failed amendments go. But all hope was not lost, because the Congress of 1789 did not put a time limit on the ratification process for the first proposed amendments (unlike today).
Decades passed, and Ohio ratified it. Meanwhile, the country continued to grow, meaning the number of states needed to pass the amendment grew too. By 1959, with the admission of Alaska and Hawaii, Madison‘s Amendment needed approval from 31 more states. A pretty daunting figure for an admittedly obscure amendment. But then something happened.
People began to get really pissed at their members of Congress. And the raises they sometimes voted themselves. A retroactive pay raise spurred Wyoming in 1978 to ratify the amendment. Then, during the 1980s, a college student researching it began his own Cons utional crusade, to get the amendment ratified once and for all. (See a real legal authority’s take on this here.) Ralph Nader came on board too, and as the effort steamrolled, a 1989 Washington Post article spurred the final push. And so the 27th Amendment came to grace our Cons ution.
Has the amendment impacted the lives of most Americans? I think we know the answer. The judicial system is not exactly flooded with cases relating to it. My quick research found just one U.S. Supreme Court issuance that referenced it: a dissent by Justice Stephen Breyer (joined by Scalia and Kennedy) on a denial of certiorari in Williams v. United States (535 U.S. 911 [1992], for all you legal geeks).
But I did find a more substantive U.S. Court of Appeals case that dealt with it, Boehner v. Anderson (30 F. 3d 156, 308 U.S. App. D.C. 94 [1994], and yes, the same House Minority Leader John Boehner now often seen on the news saying all those constructive things about our president). Read more at your leisure, but the gist was that a Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for Congress did not violate the amendment because the increase went into effect after an election. Boehner also argued that if that COLA law were cons utional, then a later elimination of the COLA violated the amendment because no election took place between the passing of the later law and the varying (lowering) of his pay. The court punted on that one and did not rule. The whole thing confuses me: Boehner says Congress couldn’t raise his pay with a COLA, but couldn’t take away the most recent COLA either? The court’s decision notes the “seemingly contradictory factual claims of injury.”
Like any bully, Repugs folded when Barry called their bluff. Barry hasn't budged, and probably won't in May, so the Repugs will fold again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isfn4OxCPQs
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