Pelosi

Discussion this morning with my cousin on the possible replacement of Rep. Pelosi as Speaker of the House in the new Congress.  We agree on two points, which may not be compatible: (1) Democrats in the House need new leadership in the future and (2) Pelosi needs to be Speaker when the House organizes in January.

She's about a year older than I.  She seems not to have lost much, if anything, unlike me.  :-(

Why the Change in 1842 to FY?

Here's a piece on a proposal to make the government's fiscal year jibe with the calendar, something which was last true before 1842.  I wonder why Congress made the change back then.  Were they having problems passing appropriations bills timely even then?

DOD and the Wall?

Today's story is that President Trump wants the military to pay for his wall on the Mexican border.  He's being mocked for it, and deservedly so.  But I believe that a good liberal congressman once upon a time put money in the Pentagon's budget for medical research.

"The Office of Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) is funded through the Department of Defense (DoD), via annual Congressional legislation known as the Defense Appropriations Act. For most programs, the DoD sends a multi-year budget request to Congress in the form of the President's Budget. However, dollars for the CDMRP are not considered part of the DoD's core mission, and are therefore not included in the DoD's requested budget. Rather, the dollars to fund CDMRP are added every year during the budget approval cycle by members of the House or Senate, in response to requests by consumer advocates and disease survivors."

"The CDMRP originated in 1992 via a Congressional appropriation to foster novel approaches to biomedical research in response to the expressed needs of its stakeholders-the American public, the military, and Congress."

CBO has an old post supporting the ending of this practice.

Be Nice to Republicans Day

From Joe Biden:

" "You may remember, you were a little kid, your dad took care of my Beau ... Your dad became friends with Beau and Beau talked about your dad's courage, not about illness, but about his courage."

No, I didn't know that and John McCain doesn't strike as a great baby sitter, if that's what he did, but it's generous.

Maintenance Isn't Sexy: USNavy

I see I've not set up a label for "maintenance", but I'm sure I've observed that it's an important and often overlooked issue.  What happens when you build a system, as we were building a software system in the mid-80's, is you can't keep building without adding more people/resources.  If you start with 10 people working on the new, once it gets deployed, you need 1 person to maintain the deployed software, leaving only 9 to build the next phase.  And so on.

Furthermore, maintenance is not sexy. You can't tell the people who are paying the bills they won't get anything for their money, just a continuance of the current service (maybe sneaking in a couple tweaks along the way).

The DC area Metro system has found this out.  They built a system starting in the mid-70's, but skimped on maintenance along the way.  Consequently last year and this service has been restricted on various sections so they could do catch-up maintenance.  People aren't happy about it.

Now it seems the USNavy is in the same boat.  GAO has surveyed their shipyards and produced a video of their major points.  An example, using 80+ year old equipment to service nuclear submarines, then discovering the furnace didn't heat the parts evenly, so they had to reinspect years worth of work.

I'm cynical today, so I'm sure Congress will continue to give DOD new weapons/things they don't ask for and fail to provide the money to fix the shipyards.  That will go until we lose a ship because of faulty repairs.  (Training is "maintenance" of your human equipment and lack of training is blamed for the recent collisions the Seventh Fleet has experienced .)

Cottonseed Again

Illinois extension has a piece on the cottonseed provisions of the 2018 Senate Ag appropriations bill. To my jaundiced eye, it looks as if the cotton growers are trying to get a goodie added through the backdoor--using appropriations to change policy.  If they do, we'll see what Brazil and the WTO think of it.  If they do, the professors will have another example to add to their picture of how government really works.

The Dilemma Will Hurd Poses

Run across the Republican Congressman from Texas Will Hurd a few times in the media.  He seems impressive, human, ex-CIA, not too partisan (he was half of the two Congressmen driving from TX to DC and recording it on social media).  But he's a Republican, and vulnerable.  His district is the Rio Grande area of TX, heavily Hispanic (opposes Trump's wall despite having the longest section of US-Mexican border of any Congressman).

So, on the one hand I want the Republican party to have more such representatives, rather than the Cruzes and the Gowdys, the wing nut.  On the other hand, I want the Democrats to take control of the House in 2018, and Hurd's seat is a good target.  Unfortunately I can't donate to the DCCC and specify--don't fund Hurd's opponent. 

So I'm torn.

Prediction: Classic Logroll--Harvey Aid Plus the Wall

A politico piece rehashing the NY/NJ grievances with TX Congress people, especially Sen. Cruz.  Since Harvey relief will be must-pass legislation, many people (i.e. me) predict that money for Trump's wall will be folded in with it, and Dems will vote for it.

Politics and the Grim Reaper

The last few days of drama over "repeal and replace" has shown the importance of individual senators, and the McCain operation has perhaps reminded people that death awaits us all.

As a morbid thought, suppose a Republican senator dies this month--how does that change political calculations?  Or suppose it's a Democratic senator, they have some old ones too? Or to really go for broke, suppose there's an accident which takes out two or three senators? 

[Note: this was written before announcement of Sen. McCain's cancer.]

[Added: note that Sen. Menendez (D-NJ) goes on trial later this year and Gov. Christie could appoint a successor.]

How To Influence Congress: Townhalls

The Congressional Management Foundation has a helpful post.

Overstaffed Congress

" "People think Congress has all these resources and staff. In fact Congress hasn't increased its resources since 1974, and the House of Representatives cut its budget by 20 percent since 2011 for each Member office."

From Congressional Management Foundation 

Part of the problem is the (mostly Republican) Congressional desire to be seen as responsible trustees of the taxpayers' dollar. The one thing they can control is the staff and their salaries.  And then they complain about lobbyists and the power of the bureaucracy. 

No Purity Here

I agree with Jonathan Bernstein's lecture to Democrats on what their priorities should be, notably creating primary challenges to Heitkamp and Manchin as lowest.

I've no problem if my senators Kaine and Warner support Gorsuch--if you can't win a fight, IMHO there's not much point in fighting.

Moving as a Metaphor for Budget Cutting

In my view of government, legislation is a compromise among different interests and people, assembled by politicians to get a majority of votes.  Some laws are narrow in focus and effect, often driven by one or a few politicians under the stimulus of a narrow and small group of fervent believers.  Think perhaps of an earmarked program for research by NIH on an uncommon disease.  Call these the laws of passion. Other laws are broader in focus, meaning more politicians came together in a compromise, often through judicious backscratching and logrolling. Call these the laws of interest.

Once legislation is enacted, and appropriations made, there develops the familiar iron triangle, of  bureaucrats who administer the law, the interest groups supporting it, and the legislators who derive votes from passing and maintaining it. 

As time passes, technology changes, and society changes, some laws lose their relevance, or become a misfit with the environment. But because people are creatures of habit, it's easiest not to rock the boat.

I can argue that there's value to having a Trump come along with a drastic budget proposal simply because it forces the reevaluation of existing laws.  Is there still a valid coalition backing the law--does the old combination of passion and interest still live, does it still have the clout it had back in the days of creation?

I'd compare the situation to moving: a family buys a house and gradually fills it with things.  Time passes and they need to move, to downsize to an apartment. Then you discover which things are useful enough to take to the new place and which are not.  Or maybe instead of moving to an apartment you need to move to a McMansion.

Chevron and Regulations

One of the big things about Judge Gorsuch as he tries to be confirmed by the Senate is his position on
Chevron, not the oil company but the Supreme Court case which determined how much deference, if any, should be given to an executive agency's interpretation of laws which resolve ambiguities in the language of the law. The majority opinion said courts should defer; Judge Gorsuch says "no deference" (very short summary there).

As a bureaucrat you know I come down on the deference side.  One of my reasons isn't much discussed: the reality of Congress and politicians.  For a given issue politicians have to come to some consensus, some resolution, else they'll get blasted as "do-nothing" by Harry Truman or the Dems in 2018.  But the reality is resolution is hard in a democracy--there's no magic sauce to make everyone happy.  The result is that Congress cobbles together something to show the voters.  That "something" is often a law which straddles both sides of the issue, or fuzzes the issue with vague language or lawyerisms such as "as appropriate", "reasonable", etc. etc.In other words, Congress often doesn't make decisions, it kicks them over to the poor bureaucrats in the agency who have to implement the law.

IMHO the people who agree with Gorsuch are living in a dream, one where ambiguities in legislation are mistakes by Congress, mistakes which can easily be fixed if the Court, instead of going along with the agency's fix by regulation, kicks the problem back to Congress for an easy and expeditious fix. 

In my view ambiguities aren't mistakes, they are features of the democratic process of legislation.

Barney Frank: Say Thank You

Barney Frank writes on how to be effective in influencing your representatives.  Mostly common sense, but common sense can surprise, as in: when your representative's vote surprises you favorably, tell her "thank you".

Congressional Research Reports

This site has Congressional Research Service Reports.

A couple recent ones:

Farm Bill  "The new five-year estimated cost of the 2014 farm bill, as of August 2016, is now $466.5 billion for the four largest titles, compared with $484 billion for those same titles two years ago. This is $17 billion less than what was projected at enactment. SNAP outlays are projected to be $24 billion less for the five-year period FY2014-FY2018 than was expected in February 2014. Crop insurance is projected to be $4.4 billion less for the five-year period and conservation nearly $4 billion less. In contrast, farm commodity and disaster program payments are projected to be nearly $15 billion higher than was expected at enactment due to lower commodity market prices (which raises counter-cyclical payments) and higher livestock payments due to disasters. 

Conservation Compliance

I Was Wrong, Again

Sometime recently I believe I blogged about the difficulty in undoing regulations which had been finalized after the rule-making process.  The idea was, and is, that an agency needs to go back through the rule-making process in order to revoke a reg, a process which takes a while and can, in controversial cases, result in lots of comments to respond to.

That's still the case, but I'd forgotten Newt's baby, which is briefly referenced in this post.
It's the Congressional Review Act, part of Gingrich's Contract with America, which allows simple majorities in both Houses to nullify major regulations within 60 legislative days of promulgation. With divided government it hasn't been used, hence my forgetting about it.  Twill be interesting to see how many of the candidates the Republican Congress actually nullifies.  My bet is a minority, perhaps a small minority, unless some wiseass packages a number into one legislative act.

Young Protestor: Write or Visit Washington

As a followup to my previous post, Emily Ellsworth has a set of suggestions for how people  should work to influence Washington. 

Go To Washington, Young Protestor

The research shows that the way to have impact on politics is face to face.  So instead of marching in protests the protestors should plan on visiting DC to talk to their elected representatives. Granted that it doesn't provide the emotional release of marching, but it's more effective long term.

[Turns out the women are planning a march on Washington for Jan. 21.  Hope they plan on visiting their representatives as well as talking. ]

Drum's Crystal Ball

Kevin Drum had a crystal ball post--how will Paul Ryan and Clinton work together after the election. He got a lot of comments.

All I know is it's going to be interesting.  One problem for the Democrats is the number of senators up for reelection in 2018, including a number from red states (Manchin, Heidtkamp, etc.).  So there's a strategic choice in the Senate: either go for broke on liberal issues (assuming you can get the Dems to buy it) and sacrifice your majority in  2018; or try to preserve your majority in 2018 by dodging the more controversial issues, at the risk of aggravating the left and laying the ground for a challenge in 2020.