The Insidious Fine Print
NYT editorial
It looks like a small throwaway line in a 2012 spending bill: no federal funds may be used to carry out chapters 95 or 96 of the Internal Revenue Code. A little digging shows that those chapters happen to authorize the presidential election public financing system. A few House Republicans, who have long hated the system, thought they could get rid of it by inserting the line in a bill to keep the government from shutting down this weekend.
The provision will eventually be deleted, but it is only one of scores of policy riders that Republicans have tried to insert in the spending bill. Most have nothing to do with Congress’s basic job of financing the government, but nongermane provisions have become standard procedure for conservative lawmakers to pursue ideological goals with a few words in must-pass bills. Like pieces of shrapnel, they have to be extracted one at a time, but a few always seem to remain, doing a great deal of damage.
The 2012 omnibus spending bill was actually proceeding rather smoothly. Lawmakers from both parties had largely reached agreement on how much money would be given to the various federal departments, in part because the overall spending limit was set by the debt-ceiling deal last summer. But that made it a more attractive target for the ideologues, and it quickly began to sag under the weight of its attachments.
Some riders border on the ridiculous. One would end the ban on firearms and crossbows on water projects managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican of Arizona, (supported by a few Democrats, as well) said campers on corps lakes need to be able to defend themselves.
(More here.)
It looks like a small throwaway line in a 2012 spending bill: no federal funds may be used to carry out chapters 95 or 96 of the Internal Revenue Code. A little digging shows that those chapters happen to authorize the presidential election public financing system. A few House Republicans, who have long hated the system, thought they could get rid of it by inserting the line in a bill to keep the government from shutting down this weekend.
The provision will eventually be deleted, but it is only one of scores of policy riders that Republicans have tried to insert in the spending bill. Most have nothing to do with Congress’s basic job of financing the government, but nongermane provisions have become standard procedure for conservative lawmakers to pursue ideological goals with a few words in must-pass bills. Like pieces of shrapnel, they have to be extracted one at a time, but a few always seem to remain, doing a great deal of damage.
The 2012 omnibus spending bill was actually proceeding rather smoothly. Lawmakers from both parties had largely reached agreement on how much money would be given to the various federal departments, in part because the overall spending limit was set by the debt-ceiling deal last summer. But that made it a more attractive target for the ideologues, and it quickly began to sag under the weight of its attachments.
Some riders border on the ridiculous. One would end the ban on firearms and crossbows on water projects managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican of Arizona, (supported by a few Democrats, as well) said campers on corps lakes need to be able to defend themselves.
(More here.)
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