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Why the tea parties don't matter
The "Tea Party" movement is a symbolic failure.
The original tea partiers engaged in criminal acts and risked arrest and imprisonment to destroy product from a company being propped up by unfair reduced taxes by the government, at the expense of what, at the time, amounted to "small business:" the domestic importers of tea who competed with the East India Company.
The current teabaggers are buying tea and throwing it around. That's it. When the DC teabag crew showed up with a truckload of tea bags (yes, I'm serious) to dump in Lafayette Square (because dumping in the Potomac is illegal, can't do that, after all) they were informed that they didn't have the correct permits to dump their load.
So they took it away. They're a bunch of pussies. "Civil disobedience" and "protest" are just words to them. They'll always cave in to authority rather than take a risk for their alleged principles. Samuel Adams would have dumped the tea right then and there.
If they wanted a real symbolic connection with the original Boston Tea Party they would be stealing Chrysler and GM cars and trucks from distribution centers and dumping them in the drink.
But they're not.
Pussies.
The original tea partiers engaged in criminal acts and risked arrest and imprisonment to destroy product from a company being propped up by unfair reduced taxes by the government, at the expense of what, at the time, amounted to "small business:" the domestic importers of tea who competed with the East India Company.
The current teabaggers are buying tea and throwing it around. That's it. When the DC teabag crew showed up with a truckload of tea bags (yes, I'm serious) to dump in Lafayette Square (because dumping in the Potomac is illegal, can't do that, after all) they were informed that they didn't have the correct permits to dump their load.
So they took it away. They're a bunch of pussies. "Civil disobedience" and "protest" are just words to them. They'll always cave in to authority rather than take a risk for their alleged principles. Samuel Adams would have dumped the tea right then and there.
If they wanted a real symbolic connection with the original Boston Tea Party they would be stealing Chrysler and GM cars and trucks from distribution centers and dumping them in the drink.
But they're not.
Pussies.
Re: Off Budget?
"Emergency spending measures?" That's it? That's the "corruption" you claimed? That's the "hidden" spending? That's what Obama is now being "honest" about? Wow, that's some great innuendos there Andy and all about teacup temptests.
The "off budget" items were as out in plain sight and accountable as you can get. They also enjoyed continuous Democratic support throughout the Dubya's years. And such "spending tricks" are hardly proof of corruption. Good thing to, as the Democrats in Congress used such "off budget" maneuvers to keep from having to include Social Security in their budget and thus were able to gain polically from having "balanced" the budget.
Come on Andy, this was a pretty sly thing to try and weedle through here. Particularly with the inference that it was something the Dubya / GOP dreamt up on their own and somehow was proof of "corruption."
Madoc
Re: Off Budget?
Re: Off Budget?
Okay, so in a very short bit of posting you've gone from slyly alleging that Bush's "off budget" stuff was a thing of "corruption" to being "spending tricks" and now it's just a "delay in the full accounting." Nice attempt at a smear job there Andy.
What the Bush administration has done with the supplemental funding requests has been anything but an attempt to "hide" those moneys. Those requests have come in and gone through their full and just "due diligence" in the appropriations process. They've also been ultimately accounted for. There's nothing "hidden" or "spending trick" about them.
If anything, by funding the Iraq fighitng in such a separate process that has given Congress more visibility into it and thus has a better grasp as to the detail of the expenses.
That Obama is now rolling it all together may make it appear a more nice 'n tidy thing but does not enhance its transparency on the whole. Yet another promise by Obama (his pledge of increased "transparency" in his administration) that he's happily reneging on.
Madoc
Re: Off Budget?
You might note, for example, that Clinton's budgets didn't contain budgetary line-items for, for example, Bosnia, or Kosovo, or Haiti, or E. Timor. Neither Bush Sr. nor Clinton put Somalia ops in the budget. Gulf War 1 was funded by extraordinary funding requests.
Nice trope, but factually inaccurate.
Re: Off Budget?
Were the Vietnam or Korean wars funded primarily through emergency spending?
Re: Off Budget?
Military Operations: Precedents for Funding
Contingency Operations in Regular or in
Supplemental Appropriations Bills
Short version?
Korea: In 1951, 2/3 of funding was via supplementals (13/32.8 bn in regular/supplemental appropriations). In 1952, the #s shifted to 55.2/1.4, and in 1953 were 44.3/0
Vietnam:
FY65: $.7bn in supplemental, 0 in regular
FY66: $1.7bn regular, $12.3bn supplemental
FY67: $10.3bn regular, $12.2bn supplemental
FY68: $20bn regular, $3.8bn supplemental
FY69: $25.5bn regular, $1.3bn supplemental
FY70: $23.2bn regular, 0 supplemental
FY71: $20bn regular, 0 supplemental
FY72-75: SEA costs not differentiated
Persian Gulf War: $42bn supplemental for FY91
Somalia/etc. "In the early 1990s, operations in Somalia, Southwest Asia (including Operations Provide Comfort, Southern Watch, and Northern Watch), Haiti, and Bosnia were funded annually in successive supplemental appropriations acts.
In action on the FY1996 defense appropriations bill, however, Congress decided to include funding for ongoing operations in Southwest Asia in regular appropriations bills rather than in supplementals, and it directed the Administration to request funding for ongoing military operations in regular bills in the future.
Subsequently, in the FY1997 defense budget and in later requests, the Clinton Administration included funding for ongoing operations, including operations in Southwest Asia and in Bosnia, in the regular defense budget."
Kosovo was handled the same way.
Re: Off Budget?
Korea and Vietnam underwent a slow and orderly shift from primarily supplemental funding to budgeted funding.
The Gulf War didn't run over a budget cycle. The Clinton-era war efforts started with supplemental funding, and moved towards primarily budgeted funding.
Supplemental/emergency funding falls outside normal budgeting rules. I don't see how that's at all a positive thing from a fiscally conservative viewpoint.
Re: Off Budget?
Let's look at Korea. The shift to funding in the budget, vs. supplemental, tracks closely with the shift from fighting North Korean forces, to fighting Chinese main force units. Basically, it had shifted into a heavy, "conventional" war, which is more amenable to that kind of funding, because it's more predictable.
Or we can look at Vietnam, where the shift from supplemental to on-budget funding heavily tracks with the shift in combat from facing VC irregular troops, to facing NVA units after the VC was largely destroyed during Tet 68 and Tet 69.
The Clinton-era efforts shifted from supplementals to on-budget funding mostly once it became clear that they were extended, multi-year commitments of a definable size and operational scope.
The problem is, in Iraq and Afghanistan, we've been facing an evolving, insurgent war with a constantly changing size and scope. Seriously - there has been no way to reliably predict, 18 months out, what the size and scope of operations would be, in either country.
And yeah, you're right - supplemental funding is runs counter to fiscally conservative approaches.