Deal Reached To Avert Shutdown (repeals Dodd-Frank provision)

[Jim Lane]

17. The population in general will suffer from this bill AND from the precedent.

The population in general, as taxpayers, will be on the hook for the next bailout.

If you persist in not caring at all about "banking shit" (as if most people were somehow walled off from it), you should still bear in mind the other obnoxious provisions of the bill, such as the one facilitating the Kochs' control over future elections, or the one partially abrogating the self-government of an entire city (Washington, D.C.).

By "population in general" you probably mean the human population, but some of us humans also care about the provision that will threaten species extinction, even if the (immediate) victims are nonhumans.

But let's just say that you don't care in the slightest about any of that, and your concern is solely for the ACA and so on. You still haven't responded to my point about the precedent. To wit: Citigroup and the Kochs and anti-marijuana crusaders wanted specific laws passed, but they knew Obama would veto the bills. Their Republican lackeys in Congress therefore included those provisions in an omnibus bill, trying to get around the veto problem by threatening a government shutdown. It worked. They have established the precedent that simple majorities in each chamber, too weak to override a veto, can nevertheless ram through something that Obama opposes, by using the politics of extortion.

Okay, so what happens at the next deadline (September, I think), when the anti-ACA crusaders say: "In 2014, the House voted to repeal Obamacare, but it died in the Senate. In 2015, with majorities in both chambers, we passed a repeal bill but Obama vetoed it (or we didn't even bother trying because we knew a veto loomed). Now, however, the government is about to run out of money again. We want repeal attached to the continuing resolution. We want you to do for us what you did for other interest groups in the Republican Party." How, exactly, is the Republican leadership supposed to respond? Are they supposed to say that it would be wrong to attach such unrelated provisions to a necessary continuing resolution? Obviously, they can't.

Obama will need to make a stand sooner or later or his final two years in office will be largely ceremonial. Given that, he should have made that stand sooner rather than later.