US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1671

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders are refusing to support legislation that funds the Department of Homeland Security without imposing immigration policy restrictions, a sign that the department is headed for a partial shutdown Friday night.

The legislation is all but guaranteed to pass the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have championed it in an agreement to bring up immigration bills separately. Even conservative firebrand Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has signaled he won't hold up the "clean" DHS bill ahead of the Friday midnight deadline to avert a shutdown.

But in the House, it's a very different story. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), facing a rebellion from his members, isn't ready to swallow the standalone DHS bill just yet, and is exploring options to continue fighting President Barack Obama's initiatives on immigration.

"We want to stop the president's immigration actions with regard to immigration," Boehner told reporters Thursday. "It's outrageous that Senate Democrats are using Homeland Security funding for blackmail to protect the actions of the president. ... We're waiting to see what the Senate can or can't do, and then we're going to make decisions about how to proceed."

He declined to say what he'd do once the Senate passes a clean DHS bill, even blowing air kisses to Washington correspondent and radio host Todd Zwillich of The Takeaway as he pressed him.

There's a strong appetite among Republicans in the House to amend the bill and send it back to the Senate with some immigration restrictions, senior aides say, even if it's not the sweeping slate of limitations that the House passed in its January DHS bill, which would effectively call for deporting everyone in the U.S. illegally.

"We'll probably ping something back, then it'll be up to Harry Reid if he wants to filibuster that again," Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) said. "But I think most Americans — even if there was a partial slowdown of DHS, they'll wake up the next morning and not notice a difference at all in their lives."

Republican congressmen are apoplectic about the president's immigration initiatives, which combines two of their greatest resentments: Obama making robust use of his executive authority, and leniency for undocumented immigrants.

"It has to have some mechanism to make sure that the president can't go ahead with his executive order. And if not, I can't support that," Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) told TPM. "Even if it was a clean bill and we bring up blocking his executive order [separately], if he doesn't sign it — there's no impetus to sign it."

Yoho cast doubt on proposed legislation by Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) to block Obama's 2014 actions to protect undocumented parents of U.S. citizens, while allowing his 2012 program to shield people brought to the country as children. He fretted that Obama could simply expand "DACA" to include millions more.

GOP lawmakers also kept open the possibility of a short-term bill to keep funds flowing to DHS while the immigration fight continues to play out.

The more senior Republicans are keeping their powder dry.

"We're looking at a lot of different options," House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) told TPM.

On February 27 2015 03:53 farvacola wrote:
The ISPs lost! That's all that counts in my opinion lol.

On February 27 2015 02:10 hannahbelle wrote:


I find it odd that you equate being intellectual with not being fiscally and socially conservative.

WASHINGTON -- Democrats indicated on Thursday that they won't give House Speaker John Boehner much room to maneuver on a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security, including on a possible short-term bill to avert a department shutdown.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she told Boehner that Democrats want a full-year funding bill, not something that will only keep the department open for a matter of days or weeks.

"We can't get involved with five days, seven days and all of that nonsense," she said at a joint press conference with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "Let's just get the job done on time."

A short-term bill may be needed to avert a DHS shutdown if lawmakers cannot pass a bill by the end of the day Friday, when department funding will run out. House Republicans have remained insistent that they must wait for the Senate to act before they can discuss their own path forward, including whether they will approve the "clean" DHS bill that the Senate is set to pass, or send it back with immigration measures attached.

Reid didn't explicitly vow to block a short-term funding bill, but did lay out his own red line: Senate Democrats, he said, will not compromise if the House sends the Senate bill back with riders that block President Barack Obama's deportation relief policies. This is a real possibility, given that many Republican members say they will only agree on a funding bill that includes such riders. Reid said if the House passes a bill with immigration measures, they should get the blame for a DHS shutdown.

"We've heard all kinds of rumors that the House is going to take our fully-funded bill and send it back with a number of riders on it," Reid said. "It is a waste of time. We will not allow a conference to take place. It won't happen."

The two minority leaders' remarks made clear that DHS is still very much at risk of a shutdown, which would begin on Saturday. Under an agreement reached Wednesday, the Senate will vote on a clean DHS funding bill -- that is, without immigration measures -- and will vote later on separate legislation that would limit Obama's deportation relief programs. Reid said Democrats will not stand in the way of that later vote, as long as DHS gets funded. It's still uncertain what the timing will be for the vote on the clean funding bill.

Meanwhile, it remains unclear what the House will do. Boehner refused repeatedly at a press conference on Thursday to answer questions about how his caucus will move forward, saying he would first have to see what the Senate passes -- even after one reporter pointed out that the upper chamber's leaders have already reached a deal.

Boehner responded simply by blowing kisses at the reporter, "The Takeaway" host Todd Zwillich.

"When we make decisions, I'll let you know," the speaker added.

On February 27 2015 04:15 dAPhREAk wrote:
so, net neutrality was approved and the internet is a utility. can someone more knowledgeable than me tell me the benefits of this (other than faster netflix i assume)?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/02/26/fcc-approves-net-neutrality-rules/24053057/

edit: looks like this was already announced in this thread. just came on my news feed.

On February 27 2015 05:06 WolfintheSheep wrote:

The benefit is that your ISPs don't get to double dip and charge you for services that you already paid for.

The basics of it is that your service providers were selling Bandwidth with the expectation that no one ever needed as much as they were advertising. A few years ago it was mostly torrent traffic that was maxing out network lines, so they could freely throttle that under the pretense that "it's all piracy".

Then P2P became used by every company and their grandmother for things like updates, services like Netflix started popping up, internet streaming exploded, and the ISPs panicked because the Bandwidth people were paying for was being used (the horrors).

End result is that your ISPs wanted to cut down usage of the service they'd sold off, or to make more money from companies and products they had no right being gatekeepers for.

For what changes, nothing really should (unless your ISP is currently throttling specific traffic). It just means your internet bill won't be getting additional fees for the "privilege" of going to Google or Twitch, or using Netflix.

A leading House Democrat is laying out a new approach for the party to controlling carbon pollution that ultimately could return as much as $1,000 to every legal U.S. resident.

The money would come from auctions of pollution permits to oil, coal and natural gas producers.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat whose name has come up as a potential replacement for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco should she retire, introduced the legislation Tuesday as a marker for Democrats heading into the 2016 presidential election, when he said he expects climate change to play a prominent role.

Several Bay Area Democrats signed on as co-sponsors, including Contra Costa County freshman Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, and San Jose Reps. Mike Honda and Zoe Lofgren.

The cap-and-dividend scheme is modeled on Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which shares the state’s oil royalties with every resident. Last year, every Alaskan — children included — received a check for $1,884.

Van Hollen billed his Healthy Climate and Family Security Act of 2015 as a market-based approach both to climate change and income inequality. The dividends would start at just under $400 for every U.S. resident but would grow as the pollution cap was lowered.

The cap-and-dividend scheme would cap total U.S. carbon pollution and auction pollution permits to producers of oil, coal and natural gas. The cap would be ratcheted down gradually, raising the market price of the permits.

The plan would return 100 percent of the revenue to every legal U.S. resident, regardless of age or income.

On February 27 2015 05:06 WolfintheSheep wrote:

The benefit is that your ISPs don't get to double dip and charge you for services that you already paid for.

The basics of it is that your service providers were selling Bandwidth with the expectation that no one ever needed as much as they were advertising. A few years ago it was mostly torrent traffic that was maxing out network lines, so they could freely throttle that under the pretense that "it's all piracy".

Then P2P became used by every company and their grandmother for things like updates, services like Netflix started popping up, internet streaming exploded, and the ISPs panicked because the Bandwidth people were paying for was being used (the horrors).

End result is that your ISPs wanted to cut down usage of the service they'd sold off, or to make more money from companies and products they had no right being gatekeepers for.

For what changes, nothing really should (unless your ISP is currently throttling specific traffic). It just means your internet bill won't be getting additional fees for the "privilege" of going to Google or Twitch, or using Netflix.

On February 27 2015 05:18 dAPhREAk wrote:

Thanks.

I wonder if ISPs are going to increase prices now to offset the contracts they now cant make with content provider (e.g., the netflix/comcast fiasco).

i was mostly curious if this was one of those legislations where they name it one thing, but it means something entirely different.

On February 27 2015 05:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

I thought it was charges on the B2B end?

House Republicans are considering passing a short-term bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security for less than one month, according to multiple GOP sources.

GOP leaders are expected to use a 5 p.m. meeting in the Capitol to gauge the reaction to the emerging strategy.

With DHS slated to shut down Friday, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) are trying to show they are still willing to mount a fight against President Barack Obama’s immigration policies — but unwilling to shut down the domestic anti-terrorism agency.

If Boehner goes this route — which is not guaranteed, other options are also being discussed — it doesn’t appear that it would meet much opposition in the Senate. Asked if the Senate would accept a stopgap measure if that’s what passes the House, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) replied: “And the alternative is cutting off funding? Sure. [But] then we’re back in this again and again, and that to me is not desirable.”

If Republicans settle on a short-term measure, they will have spent all of February and a chunk of March on debating the funding of DHS. It will also represent a failure by a Republican majority, which promised to do away with legislative crises.

On February 27 2015 05:55 WolfintheSheep wrote:

I think it was all of the above. There was lots of talk about internet bundling (like cable service), lots of complaining about how internet businesses aren't "paying for usage of lines", some stuff about certain traffic getting network priority.

It all comes down to how they were planning to milk more money out of the service they're already providing, without making any improvements.

On February 27 2015 07:03 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

I don't think they'd be bothered by people using existing capacity. Sounds like they're looking to pay for additional capacity in a way that would be more beneficial to themselves.

On February 27 2015 06:50 Introvert wrote:
On a quick note, I'd like to say, as a self-identified Tea Party person, that I'm not liking Ben Carson. He keeps saying stupid things and probably should have stuck to medicine.

It seems to me he's a good, soft-spoken guy, but he doesn't really know how to "do" politics.

Bush is really struggling with conservative voters. Among 'very conservative' voters on this poll, just 37% rate Bush favorably to 43% with an unfavorable opinion. By comparison Carson is at 73/2, Walker at 68/3, and Cruz at 68/8 with those folks.

On February 27 2015 07:13 WolfintheSheep wrote:

Your Telcos have been whining about people using existing capacity for the last several years, and a lot of its about how companies are getting "free rides" on their networks, or blaming slow traffic and network congestion on people using the bandwidth they paid for.