Reply #40: Awesome! [View All]

[sofa king]

I've been sitting on this for almost a month, but now the cat is out of the bag and it's safe to say this without concern for screwing up the plan by yakking about it.

The President gamed that debt deal so thoroughly that I think he can now do pretty much whatever he wants.

Part of the swindle was that the President freely gave away "discretionary spending," that is, money allocated to the Executive Branch but not specifically directed to any program. On the surface, that is bad for the President, which is why the Republicans bought the deal. In just the past week, several Republicans tipped their hand that further cuts to the President's discretionary spending was going to be their next target.

But discretionary spending doesn't mean shit anymore, because at the same time, the President made sure to tuck in an unusual agreement: the President snookered Congress into delegating the authority to fund much of the Executive Branch to the President himself, through the ruse of raising the debt ceiling. And, they basically reversed roles. Now, Congress can only register a "vote of disapproval," effectively a veto, but the President can veto that, and Congress can only override the veto with a 2/3 majority vote in both houses of Congress, which is never going to happen.

So now, I'm pretty sure, the President can devise pretty much any job creation program he wishes, totally outside of the review of Congress, pay for it himself, and thwart any attempt to stop him.

Interestingly enough, I think that there is plenty of precedent to do just that, thanks to the Bush Administration's creation of a number of shadowy domestic surveillance bodies that were studiously ignored by Congress, as well as a nice stack of Republican-backed Supreme Court decisions that backed up old Georgie no matter what he did. But this President is not an asshole, so rather than spy on our citizens, he seeks to employ them.

Oh, and to all of you who bored me all summer long with your sarcastic multi-dimensional-chess/rope-a-dope comments: THIS IS THE FUCKING ROPE-A-DOPE, and you whiners have been working for the Republicans all summer long. You should be deeply ashamed of yourselves, and I will be there to publicly embarrass you with your prior comments if you continue.