Cromnibus or just crumminess?
Things in Washington this week have taken on a sense of life imitating art — if you take the prickly image of the Capitol dome enshrouded with scaffolding as an iconic and ironic snapshot of our time.
Carl Hulse with The New York Times in his Friday "First Draft" blog called "the near-death experience of a bipartisan, governmentwide funding bill" an indicator of "the lost art of compromise."
It's little wonder many of us are disgusted with our politicians. What should be a simple exercise of passing a funding measure to keep our government open became the vehicle for giving excessive perks to Wall Street banks and fat cat political donors. The $1 trillion-plus funding bill dubbed the "Cromnibus" had so many extra measures tacked on that it tallied about 1,600 pages. The House on Thursday voted 219-206 to pass the bill. The Senate on Friday delayed a vote.
The result of this shutdown-or-pass-everything gauntlet was that the bill came under attack from almost all the vocal factions of our Congress just hours before the government was to run out of money. Conservative Republicans saw it as doing nothing to challenge President Obama's immigration policy. Some Democrats refused to vote for a measure that contained many provisions they favored because of a single provision they saw as too generous to Wall Street banks after a Citigroup-drafted provision was added to roll back a key Dodd-Frank measure designed to prevent big banks from using taxpayer-insured money to bet in the derivatives markets.
But that was far from the only slipped-in give-away. Campaign spending rules also were eviscerated. Now a super rich couple may give up to $3 million to a national political party in a single two-year election cycle. And thanks to the trucking industry, the spending bill also carried a provision to override rules to reduce truck driver fatigue. Trucking profits are more important than lives, right?
And talk about some strange bedfellows and allies! The White House joined with House Speaker John Boehner to rally support for the measure, and most House Democrats agreed with a small group of Republicans -- including Rep. Michele Bachmann -- that the bill should be rejected. Chattanooga's tea party-leaning GOPer Chuck Fleischmann voted to pass the bill. GOP Representatives Scott DesJarlais, Marsha Blackburn and John Duncan opposed the bill, as did Democrat Rep. Jim Cooper, who said this about his "no" vote: "Congress had all year to do its job. But it again waited until the final hours and made shady backroom deals. This bill is no way to govern."
In weeks to come, we'll learn more about what got passed in addition to the spending bill.
Georgia, Tennessee schools No. 1 and 2 -- with a bullet
Nearly two years after the tragic school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a new report documenting the almost 100 school shootings since reveals that Georgia is No. 1 in the nation for school shootings and Tennessee is tied with Florida for the No. 2 spot.
The report, prepared by Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, found that Georgia has had 12 school shootings and Tennessee has had eight since the Newtown tragedy on Dec. 14, 2012.
Nothing -- nothing -- is more unacceptable than this.
The groups tallied each time a firearm was discharged inside a school building or on school or campus grounds as documented in publicly reported news accounts. Nationally there were at least 94 school shootings in 33 states -- an average of nearly one a week -- in the two-year period ending Dec. 9, 2014.
Tennessee and Georgia lawmakers are the sweetheart darlings of the National Rifle Association, and our state solons have done everything possible to thwart commonsense gun rules to earn their NRA badges and donations. In April, Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal signed a law that's been called the "guns everywhere bill." The NRA called Georgia's new Safe Carry Protection Act "the most comprehensive pro-gun reform bill in state history."
Perhaps the NRA will also celebrate Georgia schools' new No. 1-with-a-bullet designation.