Morning Awful: Super Congress

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Matt Osborne

Small-gummint, nothin-is-Constitooshinul teapublicans have decided to ignore the Constitution and enlarge the government:

The next round of $1.5 trillion in cuts would be decided by a committee of 12 lawmakers evenly divided between the two parties and two chambers. This so-called super Congress would have to present its cuts by Thanksgiving, and the rest of Congress could not amend or filibuster the recommendations.

And don’t even start with the horse-shit about Obama “caving.” News flash: the president doesn’t get to write the budget with a veto pen. Unlike this “super Congress,” that little bit is actually written in the Constitution.

I warned you all this nonsense would happen if teapublicans were allowed to take over any part of Congress, but instead of listening and doing something about the tea tide, emo progressives stayed home to bitch and moan about OBAMA OBAMA OBAMA on the internet. Sadly, nothing is changing.

About Matt Osborne

Veteran blogging the culture wars from Alabama. Video journalist, mash-up artist, aspiring novelist, and metalhead. Expect bunnies, geekery, dark humor, and snarky empirical analysis to annoy idealists of all stripes. You can follow me on Twitter, but be ready 'cause it might get loud.
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  • Anonymous

    I was a fan of the “giant platinum coin” option, if for no other reason than because it’d be awesome if the solution to the problem came from Bruce Wayne’s basement.The deal has no SS cuts, no Medicaid cuts, and while there’s cuts to providers for Medicare, that isn’t nearly as bad as benefit cuts. Defense cuts are a nice enough silver lining, so – yes, I will admit that so far, I was wrong.

    But it still sucks. It may suck less than out and out default – but it still sucks. People are telling me to look for the silver lining, and it’s there – but it’s a silver lining on a very dark, hailstone-filled cloud. When both Bob Cesca and Oliver Willis, not exactly the Dynamic Duo of firebagging, say it sucks – then it sucks. Whoever’s fault it is for it sucking, it still sucks. (For the record, I place the bulk of the blame on the GOP – while I think Obama is not entirely blameless here, if we’re going to mete out punishment we should start with the GOP for reasons that I hope are obvious.)

    You’re 100% right that this is a problem solved with retaking the House. I used the analogies of “compare 2009′s budget with 2011′s and note the factor that changed in between” and “11th Congress, most productive since LBJ – 112th Congress, least productive since Truman.” Amanda at Pandagon puts me in the shade, however, pointing out expertly how both theories of Obama’s morality have the exact same solution. What’s brilliant about this post is that it goes “even if you are 100% right about Obama being evil, we still need to solve it this way.” It renders firebagging irrelevant in practical terms without addressing it directly.

    I’m not sure how to turn “this deal was signed in by a Democratic Senate and a Democratic POTUS” into “vote Dem,” though. Distilling it down will be tricky.

    When you do that interview with the protestors, you should ask if they have any plans for November. That’s when the Kryptonian Super-Congress emerges from the Phantom Zone with the cuts. I think we need to bang this drum for the next three months, get people turned out, protesting, phonebanking, whole nine yards. I sadly can’t participate since I don’t live down there – even though austerity in the US hurts our economy up here – but this whole affair has had me contemplating dual citizenship for the first time in my life, just to see if a dual citizen can donate to PACs and the like.

    Oy, what a long comment! Anyways, glad to have you back online.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SQSVYHHTS2SO4UE4E53PXWJCRM Ian

    http://larouchepac.com/node/18977 The Super Congress is Obama’s latest unconstitutional effort to work with Wall Street and the corrupt credit rating agencies of London to collapse the U.S. economy. This is a foreign-led British coup against the U.S. Constitution and our sovereign nation. It is unnecessary to sell government bonds to raise capital, when there is a clear directive of the Federal Constitution to have an economic policy based on a credit system. The U.S. government needs a credit system to directly fund the real physical economy in areas of agriculture, industry, transportation, and scientific research.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SQSVYHHTS2SO4UE4E53PXWJCRM Ian

    http://larouchepac.com/node/18977 The Super Congress is Obama’s latest unconstitutional effort to work with Wall Street and the corrupt credit rating agencies of London to collapse the U.S. economy. This is a foreign-led British coup against the U.S. Constitution and our sovereign nation. It is unnecessary to sell government bonds to raise capital, when there is a clear directive of the Federal Constitution to have an economic policy based on a credit system. The U.S. government needs a credit system to directly fund the real physical economy in areas of agriculture, industry, transportation, and scientific research.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_SQSVYHHTS2SO4UE4E53PXWJCRM Ian

    http://larouchepac.com/node/18977 The Super Congress is Obama’s latest unconstitutional effort to work with Wall Street and the corrupt credit rating agencies of London to collapse the U.S. economy. This is a foreign-led British coup against the U.S. Constitution and our sovereign nation. It is unnecessary to sell government bonds to raise capital, when there is a clear directive of the Federal Constitution to have an economic policy based on a credit system. The U.S. government needs a credit system to directly fund the real physical economy in areas of agriculture, industry, transportation, and scientific research.

  • http://www.osborneink.com OsborneInk

    You lost all credibility at “LaRouche.”