The CrOmnibus Is Upon Us

The incoming GOP leadership and the outgoing zombie Senate leadership have finally found something to agree on...spending your money. Lots and lots of it.

Dubbed the “cromnibus,” the package includes 11 appropriations bills to fund most of the government through September 2015, and tacks on a continuing resolution to fund the Department of Homeland Security through February 27.

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The funding bill would force the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to withdraw a rule that outlined numerous exemptions to the Clean Water Act for farmers. Republicans and agricultural groups complained that it appeared to outlaw scores of other common practices that were previously allowed. The GOP also attached a rider that would restrict the listing of the sage grouse as an endangered species because Republicans argue that would prevent oil-drilling projects.

Taking aim at school nutrition standards championed by first lady Michelle Obama, the spending package includes a provision that provides flexibility to schools to implement some of the standards and to ease some of the new sodium guidelines.

A number of other contentious riders didn’t make the cut, such as restrictions on President Obama’s proposed regulations to reduce power plants’ carbon emissions.

Oh and the GOP successfully fought to modify DC's pot legalization plan. So there's that.

I know you're tired of hearing from me about the GOP caved and is doing everything they can to avoid living up to the promises they won on six short weeks ago. So I'll let John Hayward do it for me.

"Strong opposition to the House budget plan from the Republicans’ conservative wing could force GOP chamber leaders to rely on Democratic votes to avert a government shutdown. House Speaker John Boehner can afford to lose only 17 caucus votes before he must turn to support from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi, D-Calif., has said her party would be willing to help but has signaled she may make some demands."

Wonderful. Let’s have a big round of applause for the GOP Establishment, ladies and gentlemen! They managed to throw away the most remarkable electoral victory in a generation in only one month, maneuvering themselves into a position where the losers who got crushed will be making demands to win their support for a bill that effectively ratifies their will through half of their sojourn in electoral exile.

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"Senate Republican aides said Monday that they didn’t expect their bosses to fight in a way that risks a partial shutdown. They suggest that the timing, with the Senate not expected to take a crack at the bill until Thursday or later, makes it difficult to launch a major fight.

“It cuts against us,” one Republican Senate aide said. “Leadership has played its hand very well.”"

Why any of these leadership strategists think voters will reward them in 2016 after they (a) give the country away to Emperor Obama and his new imported class of super-citizens, and (b) allow the defeated minority party to effectively run Washington for a year, remains a mystery. Presumably they think their own base really isn’t all that serious about the rule of law and U.S. citizenship – it’s a bout of intense anger that will pass, perhaps aided by some idle speculation about all the wonderful things a Republican president can do with Obama’s imperial powers. The same leadership geniuses will sit in shock, mouths flapping helplessly like beached fish gasping for air, when the Beltway media complex instantly strips Obama’s Republican successor of those powers before his first hundred days are over. When they lose their majority to Democrats, they’ll sob and beg the new masters of Congress to remember how well Republicans treated the decimated Democrat Party in 2014… while the Democrats ruthlessly set about marginalizing Republicans, stripping them of power, and throwing their wadded-up budget proposals right back in their tear-streaked faces.

I've pushed the limits of what I can quote to entice you to read the whole thing, so just go read it.

One thing I'd say to John is the problem isn't simply that the GOP leadership is playing their hand poorly, it's that they don't define "winning" in the same way the people who vote for them do. Boehner and the rest WANT amnesty. They just want some credit for it. They WANT more spending so getting the Democrats to shoulder the load of passing it helps them. If they passed a short term CR there would be pressure on the them to use their majority to cut spending and they can't have that.

The GOP leadership isn't stupid. They understand the results of November's elections weren't an endorsement of pushing back too hard on Obama, they were proof that the GOP can do anything and win as long as they say the right things. Until that calculus changes, nothing else will.

posted by DrewM. at 11:24 AM

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