A Vote Nobody Likes

Members of Congress don’t like having to vote to increase the federal debt limit.

It’s not a fun vote; it doesn’t build a bridge, a dam or even a wall.

The debt limit is the total amount of money the federal government is authorized to borrow to meet its legal obligations. The money’s already spent; the bill is just due.

The current debt ceiling is going to be reached relatively soon, so members will have to go to the floor in each house, hold their noses and be adults.

Or will they?

House Democrats this year have reinstituted a modified version of what is known as the “Gephardt Rule,” authored by former Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) in 1979.

The rule was a trick to avoid having to vote directly on the debt limit. Simply put, it said that once an agreement was reached with the Senate on a budget resolution, the House was deemed to have increased the debt limit.

No separate vote.

And it then went to the Senate, which didn’t have a similar rule.

Clever, isn’t it?

Republicans dropped the rule in 2001, when conservatives argued that members should be held accountable for votes. Members should have to go on record, eat their vegetables and accept responsibility for having spent so much money on bridges, dams and walls.

In 2003, Republicans reversed course and adopted the rule again, to the glee of the Democrats who then called it the “Hastert Rule,” named for then-Speaker Rep. Denny Hastert (R-Ill.).

Now, jump ahead to this year. In this day of gridlock, it is often impossible for the House and Senate to agree on a budget resolution. It’s going to be even more difficult this year, because the Democrats control the House and the Republicans control the Senate.

And, under the old Gephardt rule, if no agreement is reached, there’s no automatic debt limit boost.

Well, Democratic leaders apparently didn’t like that.

And so, they changed the Gephardt rule. Now, the debt limit would be suspended when the House passes its version of the annual budget resolution. No agreement with the Senate needed.

And members no longer have to swallow hard and face an issue that few enjoy facing.

Payday Payback?

Of all the luxury conference centers in the United States, for the second year in a row, the association representing payday lenders is having its annual conference at a hotel owned by the Trump family.

The Consumer Financial Services Association of America’s conference will run from March 18 through 21 at Doral Miami, the same venue the association held its conference at last year.

Is it a coincidence that at every turn, the Trump Administration has made decisions that favor the payday lenders, many of whom have been blasted for being predatory lenders that hook borrowers into a cycle of debt?

The administration has kept the payday lenders happy.

For one, there’s the CFPB’s proposed revised payday lending rule, which would repeal the requirement that lenders check to see if a borrower has an ability to repay their loan before extending credit to the person.

And to make matters even cozier, there’s the lawsuit filed by the payday association against the CFPB, challenging the strict payday lending rule issued by then-agency Director Richard Cordray.

The Trump CFPB, under then-Acting Director Mick Mulvaney, went so far as to side with the payday association, saying that the Cordray rule was unfair.

I’m not drawing any conclusions, but it’s not difficult to connect the dots here.

Line-Standing

No, it’s not a take-off on line dancing. It’s a common practice that folks on Capitol Hill barely notice because it’s gone on for so long.

But new members of Congress noticed.

“Shock doesn’t begin to cover it,” freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) recently tweeted. “Today I left a hearing on homelessness & saw tons of people camped outside committee. I turned to my staff and asked if it was a demonstration. ‘No,’ they said. ‘Lobbyists pay the homeless + others to hold their place so they can get in 1st.’

Of course, since Ocasio-Cortez has 3.2 million Twitter followers, people noticed.

But the practice is nothing new. Lobbying firms, and others, hire people to stand in line to ensure that their people will be able to gain coveted access to congressional committee meetings.

There isn’t always enough room to accommodate everyone who wants to attend high-profile hearings. And no client wants to pay the large fees lobbyists charge to have them stand in line.

The U.S. Capitol Police investigated the practice in the 1990s and apparently found nothing wrong, because the practice has continued.

Full disclosure – journalists with congressional press passes don’t have to stand in those lines. For high-profile hearings, there’s sometimes a press line. And generally, committee staff or staff from the congressional press galleries make sure that everyone gets in.

Words Do Have Meaning

On Feb. 11, a cameraman for the BBC was attacked by a member of the crowd at a Trump rally in El Paso, Texas.

Fortunately, he was not injured. And Trump did ask if he was OK.

But six days later, Trump was up to his old tricks, tweeting: “THE RIGGED AND CORRUPT MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

And he recently tweeted that the New York Times is a “true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.”

Now, the definition of enemy is someone who is actively opposed or hostile to someone or something.

There are a lot of crazies out there. The slayings of five employees at the Capital-Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Md., last year can’t be pinned on a Trump supporter. The alleged killer had a personal grudge against the news organization.

Still, a survivor of the shootings recently tweeted, “As one of six survivors of our nation’s only newsroom mass shooting, seeing generalized media-bashing tweets from the president makes me fear for my life. His words have power and give bad actors justification to act.”

If your president says the media is the enemy and you’re not the most stable person in the world, you might just take the matter into your own hands.

And the next time, someone might get hurt.

David Baumann is a correspondent-at-large for CU Times. He can be reached at dbaumann@cutimes.com.