djones520 wrote:They didn't pass a bad bill. Good for them.
Only 10 billion of that "relief" bill was slated to be spent in 2013. The rest didn't hit until 2014. 10 billion of it didn't even have anything to do with "relief" and was just pure pork.
Right, because the only infrastructure that needs rebuilding in the wake of disaster is the infrastructure that gets built in the next 12 months. Yep, that's totally how reality works.
Oh, and when you hear complaints about pork in a bill, and then hear mentions of a million here or there for not necessarily disagreeable but admittedly out of place items like new vehicles or fisheries funding... then what you're looking at is political theatre that is looking to confuse people who don't understand how the US political system works.
Automatically Appended Next Post: djones520 wrote:Bills are fluid things. It's easy to slip any "pork" into the bill, especially the larger it is. A 2,000 page document can have a 3 line amendement added to page 547 appropriating funds, and no one would know until afterwards.
Uh no, it doesn't work like that. Riders are known and well publicised - no-one is sneaking them in to legislation without the rest of government being aware of them.
Rather, they work because in the most common situations the bills themselves are all or nothing affairs. The House, Senate and Presidency must approve them in their entirety or reject them in their entirety. Rejecting the bill based on a rider will derail the entire process, force the presentation of a revised bill to be debated and voted on all over again (with no guarantee it won't include riders of its own).
Automatically Appended Next Post: 
MeanGreenStompa wrote:Your government system is weird. How on earth can you put fisheries aid for something on the other side of your continent sized country into an aid plan for the Eastern seaboard?
Can you link me something to read on this broken down into what's in it, because that's so boggling to me as a dirty foreigner. **edit** thanks Alf... that is insane. Why and how does all this gak get tacked onto an aid bill?
Can't the government here say 'we wish to pledge X amount to aid a disaster zone and here's how it's broken down'???
There's not anything in the Westminster system that prevents the same thing. In theory you could have a bill for improving clean air that's got stuff in there for making rodeos illegal. Basically, there is nothing in legislation that requires a bill to be focused, because such legislation would be impossible to enforce.
The real difference comes from the nature of the US system compared to our own. Over here the parties place tremendous control over the pre-selection process, so if a member of government said 'I won't vote that Clean Air bill unless it includes a bit about wiping the scourge of rodeos from the modern world' then the Chief Whip will walk into his office and say 'you fething well will vote for this as it stand or you will not get selection for parliament next time around you little gakker'. Crossing the floor is rare, a big deal when it happens, and largely on a matter of strong conscience and only really survivable if you're a high profile member. But in the US each member is far more independant, as they're not dependant on the party for pre-selection or for campaign funds, and as a result the whips are far more neutered in getting individual members to toe the line. As a result riders are used to bribe members to come on board with bills they otherwise don't like.
Our system means you tend to get less obvious pork, and bills that are focused on the overall national good, not a collection of direct benefits to particular states. But as a state politician over here told me years ago, the plus of the US system is that because each member is making his own mind up on the merits of each bill, it means they actually read the things.
Automatically Appended Next Post: djones520 wrote:No, the "stronger" government has less checks and balances to prevent this sort of stuff.
You've made an assumption that 'stronger' means less control, and that's just wrong.
If control were held by one or a just a few people who were directly accountable for the whole of government spending, this kind of pork barrel wouldn't exist. That's the case in Westminster governments, as one party under a handful of ministers will have power to pass bills through the lower house without needing to bribe individual members to gain their support. Checks and balances still exist. There's still Question Time to challenge them. They're still acountable to the people for the budgets they pass at election time.
There are other strengths to the US system (as I mentioned above in the US you get politicians reaading the bills a lot more often), but those strengths have nothing to do with checks and balances.
Automatically Appended Next Post: 
kronk wrote:But...the house and senate are 1/3rd of our federal government. What we need is a more responsible federal government.
People act according to the incentives of the system they're presented with. It's no different with politicians.
Simply demanding that people start acting differently and not looking at the system that drives their actions is, frankly, a complete waste of time.
Automatically Appended Next Post: 
Seaward wrote:Bingo. Pork makes its way into bills because it helps get senators and congressmen reelected. It helps them get reelected because people go, "Oh, I like that!" They may decry pork for everyone else, but they certainly want it for their state, their city, their community center, their whatever.
I'd blame our greedy, ignorant, entitled populace, but pork's nothing new. We do still have a greedy, ignorant, entitled populace, though. Congress could work just fine if we didn't.
People, like politicians, works according to the system of incentives they're presented with. People are not, and never have, all of a sudden en masse started rejecting pork that benefits them through a sudden rise in utopian morality.
It's kind of funny that people who are so quick to talk about why capitalism is a must because of the profit motive (and communism can't work because you can't just wish people into being utopian) suddenly start pretending personal incentive can just be wished away when it comes to Federal politics. It can't, and talking about how nice things would be if it could is, like I said to kronk, a waste of time. Instead the only conversation that makes any sense is one that looks to change the nature of the system.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Seaward wrote:And the pork isn't the problem, anyway. It's a problem, but not the problem. The problem is an idiotic electorate.
"Other people are stupid" is not the cutting political commentary you assume it is.
And no, they're not. Well, at least not any dumber than they've ever been. As with all things, people are remarkably smart at figuring out what directly benefits them and remarkably resourceful at doing that thing as much as they can.
But they're incredibly stupid at seeing the combined effect of everyone doing that which benefits themselves, and realising that is all the result of the overall system in place, and making the further realisation that to change how people act, you must change the system in place.
And so, in this case for instance, if you want less pork barrelling, you must produce a system in which there is no scope for politicians to demand pork to gain their vote. It isn't even that hard of a change - you just have to have make politicians more accountable to their own parties.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
I made a few predictions at the start of fiscal cliff stuff.
I said the negotiations would be much more sensible this time around, as Obama had set up the terms of the negotiations much more competently (instead of announcing a compromise point and then budging no further from that place, he started out at a position he could move in from) and because the elections had produced a more sobre Republican party less committed to antagonising and stunting the Obama presidency. Got that one, with both parties moving in considerably from their opening position.
I said Republicans would win the negotiations, despite holding less power. They did, as all they gave up was an unsustainable, vote losing tax cut on the top 2% of income earners, and in return Democrats gave up any future bargaining power over the other tax cuts as they'll have no more sunset clause with which to work future negotiations.
And I said the political theatre demanded this would drag out to the very end, with a last minute deal. Got that one bang on.
Automatically Appended Next Post: 
AustonT wrote:I suppose in whatever fantasyland you live in that statement makes sense.
It happens pretty often, actually. There's been a few farcical cases where clever clogs politicians have added stuff to the bill to get them killed, then its looked like the bill is going to pass anyway and they've had to vote against the bill and stated it was because of the pork they personally had added to the bill.
I'm not saying this is one of those cases (as $150 million here and $2 million there just isn't the stuff that gets bills killed... it isn't even the stuff that gets paid real attention, outside of the context free world of political blogs).
