US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6674

On January 28 2017 13:20 zlefin wrote:
i'm now feelign even more unclear on what exactly legal's stance is.
at any rate, american manufacturing is competitive, which is why the US manufactures a lot of stuff, though maybe not the exact same set of stuff as it used to. not sure where the notion of US manufacturing not being competitive is coming from.

On January 28 2017 14:19 Scarecrow wrote:
Tourism and related jobs are going to take a hit if America's allies need to start going to embassies for visa interviews... For example an Australian living in Brisbane would need to travel to the embassy in Sydney just to get a visa. Fuck that.

http://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/hindi/en/article/2017/01/26/us-president-donald-trump-change-visa-process-australians

On January 28 2017 14:31 Sermokala wrote:

He means competitive in a weird sense of "we need to make everything" competitiveness instead of the high skill high paying positions of labor. There is still a ton of manufacturing in america and a ton of it again can be automated so that those jobs go away.

People need to appreciate the things that globalization gives. Like cheaper things on the basket at the cost of the lowest common denominator jobs. It just boils down to a gold<stuff argument that people aren't taught in high school.

On January 28 2017 14:49 ZapRoffo wrote:


Yes if I'm reading this correctly, all visitors, even tourist visas, from all countries now need to go to a US embassy for an interview.

edit: Now see that I am not--this is for the program for renewing visas, not the standard waiving of visas.

Sec​. ​8​. ​Visa Interview Security ​. (a) The Secretary of State shall immediately suspend the Visa Interview Waiver Program and ensure compliance with section 222 of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1222, which requires that all individuals seeking a nonimmigrant visa undergo an in-person interview, subject to specific statutory exceptions.

but don't worry, part b says we're going to expand the amount of interviewers!!

On January 28 2017 16:42 Belisarius wrote:

Could you clarify your edit? "All individuals seeking a nonimmigrant visa" seems pretty comprehensive, and our media is certainly taking it that way so far.

Minor as it is, this is the first thing Trump is considering that directly affects me, and I am unimpressed. If you guys could go ahead and unelect him now that would be awesome.

On January 28 2017 16:42 Belisarius wrote:

Could you clarify your edit? "All individuals seeking a nonimmigrant visa" seems pretty comprehensive, and our media is certainly taking it that way so far.

Minor as it is, this is the first thing Trump is considering that directly affects me, and I am unimpressed. If you guys could go ahead and unelect him now that would be awesome.

House Republicans, led by Paul Ryan, have been trying to give President Donald Trump an outlet for his protectionist impulses while avoiding any increase in tariffs. They hit on a clever plan -- but on Thursday a series of remarks by Trump spokesman Sean Spicer and reports by journalists showed that it might have been too clever.

The House Republican idea is to cut the corporate-income tax to 20 percent and modify it. Crucially, the new corporate tax would have a feature in common with most of the value-added taxes (VATs) that other countries use: It would apply to imports but not exports. The idea is to tax all domestically consumed goods, whether those goods are produced here or abroad.

This “border adjusted” tax wouldn’t be a tariff, because it wouldn’t discriminate between imports and goods produced in America for Americans. It therefore wouldn’t bias a consumer’s choice between a domestically produced good and a competing import.

Some Republicans think that other countries’ VATs help to reduce their trade deficits and that we could reduce ours by adopting a border-adjusted tax. They are probably wrong about that: Most economists believe that when countries adopt such taxes, their currencies appreciate and their total imports and exports end up roughly unchanged. (How fast this happens is an open question.)

But since we import more than we export, applying taxes to imports but not to exports also raises money for the federal government. The economist Martin Feldstein estimates that border adjustment could raise $120 billion a year. That’s another reason House Republicans like it: They could use the revenue to offset some of the tax cuts they want to enact.

The best argument for border adjustment is that it is a way for free traders to tell Trump that they are going to discourage imports and encourage exports, while at the same time they avoid outright protectionism. That rationale depends on Trump’s not quite grasping what’s going on.

Problem number one with this plan is that Trump’s understanding of it is a little too poor. He recently said that border adjustment was “too complicated” and sounded as if it could be a “bad deal” -- sounding as if he thought it had something to do with international trade negotiations, when it is actually something Congress could simply legislate. But later he said it would be an option.

Todd Gaziano on Wednesday stepped into a meeting of free-market attorneys, think tankers and Republican congressional staff to unveil a big idea. By the time he stepped out, he had reset Washington’s regulatory battle lines.

These days Mr. Gaziano is a senior fellow in constitutional law at the Pacific Legal Foundation. But in 1996 he was counsel to then-Republican Rep. David McIntosh. He was intimately involved in drafting and passing a bill Mr. McIntosh sponsored: the Congressional Review Act. No one knows the law better.


Everyone right now is talking about the CRA, which gives Congress the ability, with simple majorities, to overrule regulations from the executive branch. Republicans are eager to use the law, and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy this week unveiled the first five Obama rules that his chamber intends to nix.

The accepted wisdom in Washington is that the CRA can be used only against new regulations, those finalized in the past 60 legislative days. That gets Republicans back to June, teeing up 180 rules or so for override. Included are biggies like the Interior Department’s “streams” rule, the Labor Department’s overtime-pay rule, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s methane rule.

But what Mr. Gaziano told Republicans on Wednesday was that the CRA grants them far greater powers, including the extraordinary ability to overrule regulations even back to the start of the Obama administration. The CRA also would allow the GOP to dismantle these regulations quickly, and to ensure those rules can’t come back, even under a future Democratic president. No kidding.

Here’s how it works: It turns out that the first line of the CRA requires any federal agency promulgating a rule to submit a “report” on it to the House and Senate. The 60-day clock starts either when the rule is published or when Congress receives the report—whichever comes later.

“There was always intended to be consequences if agencies didn’t deliver these reports,” Mr. Gaziano tells me. “And while some Obama agencies may have been better at sending reports, others, through incompetence or spite, likely didn’t.” Bottom line: There are rules for which there are no reports. And if the Trump administration were now to submit those reports—for rules implemented long ago—Congress would be free to vote the regulations down.

There’s more. It turns out the CRA has a expansive definition of what counts as a “rule”—and it isn’t limited to those published in the Federal Register. The CRA also applies to “guidance” that agencies issue. Think the Obama administration’s controversial guidance on transgender bathrooms in schools or on Title IX and campus sexual assault. It is highly unlikely agencies submitted reports to lawmakers on these actions.

“If they haven’t reported it to Congress, it can now be challenged,” says Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Larkin, also at Wednesday’s meeting, told me challenges could be leveled against any rule or guidance back to 1996, when the CRA was passed.

The best part? Once Congress overrides a rule, agencies cannot reissue it in “substantially the same form” unless specifically authorized by future legislation. The CRA can keep bad regs and guidance off the books even in future Democratic administrations—a far safer approach than if the Mr. Trump simply rescinded them.

Republicans in both chambers—particularly in the Senate—worry that a great use of the CRA could eat up valuable floor time, as Democrats drag out the review process. But Mr. Gaziano points out another hidden gem: The law allows a simple majority to limit debate time. Republicans could easily whip through a regulation an hour.

Imagine this scenario: The Trump administration orders its agencies to make a list of any regulations or guidance issued without a report. Those agencies coordinate with Congress about when to finally submit reports and start the clock. The GOP puts aside one day a month to hold CRA votes. Mr. Obama’s regulatory legacy is systematically dismantled—for good.

This is aggressive, sure, and would take intestinal fortitude. Some Republicans briefed on the plan are already fretting that Democrats will howl. They will. But the law is the law, and failing to use its full power would be utterly irresponsible. Democrats certainly would show no such restraint were the situation reversed. Witness their treatment of Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominees.

The entire point of the CRA was to help legislators rein in administrations that ignored statutes and the will of Congress. Few White House occupants ever showed more contempt for the law and lawmakers than Mr. Obama. Republicans if anything should take pride in using a duly passed statue to dispose of his wayward regulatory regime. It’d be a fitting and just end to Mr. Obama’s abuse of authority—and one of the better investments of time this Congress could ever make.

On January 28 2017 17:13 ZapRoffo wrote:


It seems that it makes all individuals seeking a visa require an interview by ending the Visa Interview Waiver Program. However under the (different) Visa Waiver Program, citizens of US ally countries do not need to obtain a visa at all if they are coming for business or travel for less than 90 days. The change, and interview requirement would apply if you do need a visa, and anytime the visa needs to be renewed (staying for longer than 90 days for example).

On January 28 2017 15:14 ZapRoffo wrote:


appreciating the things globalization gives needs to happen times a million. Look at the poverty stats here:
https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/

"During the first half of the last century, the growth of the world population caused the absolute number of poor people in the world to increase, even though the share of people in poverty was going down. After around 1970, the decrease in poverty rates became so steep that the absolute number of people living in extreme poverty started falling as well. This trend of decreasing poverty – both in absolute numbers and as a share of the world population – has been a constant during the last three decades."

Basically you can just scroll through and look at the graphs though. But then there's the section titled "The population in rich countries is largely unaware of the decline of global extreme poverty" which is pretty amazing.

On January 28 2017 13:20 zlefin wrote:
i'm now feelign even more unclear on what exactly legal's stance is.
at any rate, american manufacturing is competitive, which is why the US manufactures a lot of stuff, though maybe not the exact same set of stuff as it used to. not sure where the notion of US manufacturing not being competitive is coming from.

On January 28 2017 22:10 nojok wrote:

I guess it's because there are a lot of automated factories which mostly benefit owners whereas the old factories would employ a lot of people. It's a good thing we got rid of those mind-numbing jobs but we have to ask ourselves if we should share the money generated by automation and digitization a bit more. The US have way more money than they need, your real problem is sharing it.

On January 29 2017 00:29 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


Any idea as to why he's not actually focusing on the relevant 9/11 countries as justification? Does he have business deals there/ conflicts of interest or something? Or does he really just have no idea which Middle Eastern countries are which?