ACES in 60 Seconds
My colleagues at Progressive Media put together a 60 second compilation of yesterday’s floor debate on the American Climate and Energy Security Act:
To make just one semi-serious observation about this it was striking to me watching some of this unfold on C-SPAN how often complaints—particular from Boehner to the end—would come down to the observation that a bill comprehensively overhauling American energy policy was really, really complicated. And, indeed, it’s a really complicated bill. But to anyone being halfway honest about it the reason a comprehensive overhaul of energy policy requires a complicated bill is that existing energy policy is already very complicated and has tons and tons of legislative language behind it.
So what kind of congressman looks at a complicated effort to overhaul a complicated subject matter, then kind of shrugs and says “well this is complicated and I’m too lazy and stupid to be bothered to figure out what’s happening!” Well, I know what kind of congressman does that. But it’s pretty irresponsible.
17 Responses to “ACES in 60 Seconds”
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June 27th, 2009 at 11:54 am
So, BigY. Have you actually read the bill in question, or are you pontificating as usual? And if so, which bill? The 1200 page or 300 page version?
I’m guessing you haven’t read either, and are just hoping for the best while groping in the dark.
June 27th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Boehners’s objection puts me in mind of this exchange from Monty Python:
Colonel: Watkins why did you join the army?
Watkins: For the water-skiing and for the travel, sir. And not for the killing, sir. I asked them to put it on my form, sir – no killing.
Just change “army” to “Republican Party”, “water-skiing” to “hookers”, and “killing” to “complicated legislation.” “Travel” can stay where it is.
June 27th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Have you actually read the bill in question, or are you pontificating as usual?
Yeah! You really do have to read all 1200 pages in order to be certain that a bill is, in fact, complicated. What if you only read 1199 pages and it turns out the last page says “Scratch that! Party on, dudes! Business as usual!”?
Thanks, pooter242, for alerting us to the dangers here. You should know, having read it all yourself, right?
June 27th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Remind me again why this matters. It barely made it through the House, which means it’s dead on arrival in the Senate. Ain’t no sixty votes in the Senate for this bill. What’s going to happen is that the bill will turn into subsidies for offshore drilling to pass the Senate. So KILL IT NOW. It’s dead, don’t make it writhe in pain before it gets twisted into a genetically altered form before it dies. It’s damn clear that the only energy policy change that can happen is MORE OIL! The only way offshore drilling will not happen is to leave the policy the same. Oil companies already don’t want to drill there because it’s not cost effective. They need massive government subsidies to turn a profit, and they’ll get it in the Senate. The Democrats should refuse to debate the policy.
June 27th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Or perhaps he believes that comprehensive changes are unlikely to work and generally likely to lead to unintended consequences, and as such has a bias toward more targeted, piece-meal legislation. Whether this bill brings benefits strong enough to overcome that presumption is of course a separate question.
June 27th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Aaron Says:
June 27th, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Or perhaps he believes that comprehensive changes are unlikely to work and generally likely to lead to unintended consequences, and as such has a bias toward more targeted, piece-meal legislation. Whether this bill brings benefits strong enough to overcome that presumption is of course a separate question
Yes, that is EXACTLY what Boehner’s objection to this bill is.
June 27th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
The video really makes it clear with side is full of chicken littles.
It’s suicide! This bill will turn out the lights on America! It’s tyranny! Hold me, Mommy!
June 27th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Why doesn’t Bachman have her own FOX show already?
Financial firms are lobbying hard for cap&trade because they expect to make tons of money from the new market – that’s why even Republican House members from NY, NJ and IL voted for the bill. So it may pass the Senate, while a carbon tax would have no lobby at all to defend it (only the government would get revenues and not banks).
June 27th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Have you actually read the bill in question, or are you pontificating as usual?
While I know this is the current Republican talking point, it really shows the intellectual capacity of a middle schooler. Unless you’re advocating a complete overhaul of the entire US legal code (which I’ve never heard you advocate for), most bills on any subject that do much of anything are going to run several hundred pages just because of how complicated our laws are and how much arcana has to be written down in order to actually do what you want to do.
No, neither Matt nor myself and probably very few of the Democrats in Congress read the entirety of a 1200-page bill, in which regard this differs from the vast majority of bills passed precisely none. It’s been hashed out in committee for months, and there are many detailed summaries out there (such as the whip brochures) explaining exactly what the bill does if you’re interested.
If your suggestion is therefore to spend months debating every bill so that everyone voting on it understands every subsection and clause, then I might suggest that you’re entirely nonsensical. And disingenuous, since I’m sure the same Republicans who rammed through the Patriot Act and Medicare reform before people could read it would abandon their current stance the moment they regained power. And indeed, I’m sure almost none of them (as well as you) read the Republican alternative they all voted for. Just more empty posturing from a party without ideas.
June 27th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Being a member of Congress is just so HARD. It isn’t fair.
June 27th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
These bills are like Al Gore’s speeches: too long with too many big words for the pundits and Mr Boener to get through.
June 27th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Well, actually they added 300 pages the night before. But I’m sure that was just another great job by Democrats fighting for that .1 degree temperature reduction in 2100.
June 28th, 2009 at 7:08 am
IIRC,
Boehner had a malignant mass removed from his brain.
When he met with the surgeon, Boehner complained that the standard treatment was way too complicated and asked for simple excision.
June 28th, 2009 at 9:53 am
What DTM said. We need a GOP Congressional Barbie doll to say, “Legislatin’ is hard.” Oh, the unfairness!
The bill coulda been a bit simpler, and the legislatin’ a bit easier, if they’d been willing to just go along with a straight cap-and-trade with 100% auctionable permits, and most of the money from their sale to be rebated to the citizenry on a per-capita basis.
If not doing so made their jobs more difficult, they’ve only themselves to blame. Dipshits.
June 28th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
[...] aren’t warning that the bill won’t halt global warming, they’re arguing that global warming doesn’t exist and that this bill is just a waste of money that will hurt the economy. But when the economic [...]
June 28th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
[...] ACES in 60 Seconds (Matthew Yglesias) Matthew Yglesias embeds a nice 60-second pastiche of the floor debate, and observes: So what kind of congressman looks at a complicated effort to overhaul a complicated subject matter, then kind of shrugs and says “well this is complicated and I’m too lazy and stupid to be bothered to figure out what’s happening!” Well, I know what kind of congressman does that. But it’s pretty irresponsible. [...]
June 29th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Jobs through public subventions and by protectionnism are not a good economic thing. What we see and what we don’t see. Check Bastiat.
American Congress is re-doing, in the midst of a severe financial crisis, the ultra protectionist Smoot-Hawley Act.
The latter, in mid discussion in 1929 and finally passed in June 1930 despite opposition from more than 1,000 economists of the time, had imposed tariffs on 20,000 products imported from leading trading partners in the USA (with retaliations of the same nature), which had reduced the world trade more than 66%, contributing significantly to transform the financial crisis of 1929 into a depression lasting widespread.
If Waxman Markey Bill passes the Senate cap, then the future looks dramatic.
While the American Congress plunged into the horror of protectionism ; around the world, skepticism is gaining ground. According to this article in the Wall Street Journal, a vague sense of being overwhelmed many nations. Australia and New Zealand even came to cancel their “anti-carbon” law that they had enacted. The Polish Academy of Sciences and Japan have published documents openly taking a stand against.
“The collapse of the “consensus” [...] Republicans in the U.S. have, in recent years, turned ever more to the cost arguments against climate legislation. That’s made sense in light of the economic crisis. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to push through her bill, it will be because rural and Blue Dog Democrats fret about the economic ramifications. Yet if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science. One thing for sure: They won’t be alone.”
The Democratic Majority, forgetting the lessons of the past, is ready to trigger an economic catastrophe, all under the leadership of a clique that has interests (Al Gore,…). The scam will destroy millions of jobs worldwide, may cause serious geopolitical crises (economically desperate people sometimes have unpredictable reactions), without a doubt serious diplomatic tensions, a background of wars which it is hoped they will remain commercial.
While the major financial crisis.