The Smoke Eater For Dec. 2, 2020
The troops, McConnell's Turd, and legal weed
Good evening, this is The Smoke Eater for December 2, 2020, and if I had wings...
Quick Hit
* Assume the cabinet position * The damn NDAA * COVID relief * House cleaning * Prison labor and legal weed *
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Cabinet Chaos
Thomas Friedman had a sit-down with President-elect Joe Biden for the New York Times. Their interview briefly touches on all the things you'd want, like COVID relief, the rural health care and broadband, GOP obstructionism, the JCPOA, and Trump's trade war(s), Chinese aggression, but you'll still walk away wondering if there was a point. Biden's transition team plans to sidestep some of the nefarious confirmation snags by appointing lower-level deputies, Politico reports. This has the added benefit of ousting lackeys from Trumpland, and filling positions that have long been vacant.
Hashtag Support Our Troops
Predictably, Trump is threatening to to stall government funding (again). The latest tantrum is trying to stop passage of the the $740 billion military funding bill, the National Defense Authorization Act. Trump is demanding Congress remove liability protections for tech companies granted under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. Both the House and Senate appear to be ignoring Trump's veto threat and moving ahead with floor votes anyway, Bloomberg Government's Roxana Tiron reports.
The whole fracas is leading to some real *chefs kiss* quotes. Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Jim Inoffe tells Politico that he told Trump, "You can’t do it in this bill. That’s not a part of the bill." Jack Reed, the ranking Democrat on the committee, tells Defense News' Joe Gould, "It would be irresponsible of President Trump to hold the well-being of our troops hostage because he doesn’t like what’s trending on Twitter." One anonymous GOP legislator told Politico, "Republicans are sick of this shit," and a senior House staffer griped, "It's a fucking joke," adding, "This is a complex debate that has no business as an eleventh-hour airdrop."
In November, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows started floating the idea to repeal Section 230 in exchange for signing off on an NDAA which which contained legislation to change names of military bases named after Confederate generals -- something both the House and Senate support -- as a way to get Trump to sign the damn bill. On Monday, Axios' Ashley Gold and Margaret Harding McGill reported that even though both House and Senate versions of the NDAA had enough support to override Trump's veto, some Senate Republicans seemed willing to play games just days before funding runs out on Dec. 11. Late last month, House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Adam Smith commented to the Council on Foreign Relations that Trump was simply trying to sue social media companies for being mean to him.
Interestingly enough, both the House and Senate bills are reported to still contain legislation that will rename military bases named after Confederate generals.
NOTE: Nerds are sick of constantly explaining Section 230. It's simply not what most people think it is. Here's The Verge's Adi Robertson's 2019 interview with Jeff Kosseff, a guy wrote a damn book about the law. It starts with porn in the 1950s, and ends with a bunch of idiots grunting in the 2020s.
A Giant Turd
COVID relief negotiations are all over the place right now. Yesterday a group of House and Senate lawmakers put forward a $908 bipartisan compromise between the House Democrats' $2.4 trillion proposal and the Senate GOP's "skinny" $650 billion counter offer just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin started speaking again. Then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell complicated everything by floating his own hastily handwritten turd. Now things are only getting worse -- there's little daylight between Pelosi and McConnell; some reporters guestimate that McConnell is playing Congressional chicken, daring Pelosi to flush his turd after Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Trump loved the size of McConnell's turd.
HOWEVER: Some Republicans are wrinkling their noses at McConnell's turd, and Speaker Pelosi and Ranking Member Sen. Chuck Schumer have offered support for the $908 billion deal. Some form of McConnell's beloved turd has already failed to pass twice, and it's likely to get flushed again after new reporting from the Washington Post revealed that more than half of all money for PPP loans intended for small businesses -- hundreds of billions of dollars -- went to 600 large companies, some of them with national franchies.
Assuming Trump doesn't shut the government down (again), the prevailing winds suggest one of two things will happen: something will get attached to the omnibus spending bill and everyone will fight about a second round of stimulus checks and unemployment benefits after Jan. 20, or congressional leaders agree to disagree and just kick the can into 2021 (again).
Here’s the four out of five pages of McConnell’s turd.
BONUS: Federal News Network reports federal employees who were forced to work with out pay during Trump's 35-day government shutdown in late 2018 can continue shaking down Uncle Sam for their missing paychecks. The judge, Patricia Campbell-Smith, presided over a similar case over lost wages as a result of Ted Cruz's 2013 shutdown, ultimately ruling in favor of the federal workers who got screwed.
Congress Critters
Roll Call's Nathan Gonzalez has a round-up of the House Democrats who might not vote for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House for the 117th Congress. The most obvious defections will be from Abigail Spanberger, Kathleen Rice, Ron Kind, Conor Lamb, and Matt Cartwright, and they'll be names to watch on any controversial legislation as the Democratic majority is a thinner than it was during the 116th.
Robbie Grammer has a piece in Foreign Policy about the weird fight to head up the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Rep. Gregory Meeks has won the recommendation of lawmakers for the post, but Rep. Joaquin Castro is trying to gin up support for a long-shot bid. Progressives are trying to sink Meeks, Axios' Alexi McCammond reports, because of his support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
FUN FACT: After the U.S. walked away from TPP, the Chinese courted and cornered the very same Pacific markets the TPP was designed to protect with their alternative agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
BONUS: Whomever takes over the HFAC, they're going to have a hell of a time smoothing over the damage from Trump loyalists still scurrying around the federal government, like Pete Marocco. The dude was shitcanned from the State Department for trying to carry out some wackadoodle anti-immigrant stuff, but Trumpland stuck him at USAID to hack and slash international aid programs that had bipartisan support. He randomly ghosted for two months, and nobody is sure why.
Republican Rep. Mike Rogers is set to replace Rep. Mac Thornberry on as the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. Rogers was an architect of what we now call the Space Force and his district has part of Ft. Benning, so he'll be a key figure in the 117th's inevitable fights over defense spending.
Senate Republicans are probably going to confirm Christopher Waller to the Federal Reserve Board tomorrow following a procedural vote earlier today, but the nomination of Judy Shelton is probably doomed after former astronaut Mark Kelly was sworn in as the junior Senator from Arizona earlier today. The Wall Street Journal notes that if the out-going Trump White House can get its shit together on Jan. 5, Republicans would have a 15 day window to confirm Shelton before PE Biden's inauguration (provided there aren't any more Republican defections).
Andrew Duehren and Andrew Restuccia report for the WSJ that Trumpland is racing to implement the Schedule F order, but they keep running into snags from Democrats, federal labor unions, bureaucracy, and good government groups that argue making it easier to fire hundreds of thousands of civil servants is a potentially catastrophic and stupid idea.
One More Thing...
Some members of Congress have proposed amending the 13th Amendment to the Constitution to ban forced labor in prisons. The practice of using prison labor, supporters of the change say, is a glaring hole in the Constitution that allows the practice of human slavery in the 21st century.
Earlier today the House Rules Committee passed the MORE Act, HR 3884, removing it from the Controlled Substances Act so that federal law and state laws surrounding marijuana are not in conflict. The bill also puts a 5% federal tax on non-medicinal cannabis products, and contains provisions similar to Illinois' legal weed law, the Chicago Sun-Times Tom Schuba notes, like a way to expunge weed convictions, and a grant program for people who've been screwed over by the war on drugs. The bill is set for a floor vote on Thursday, but is likely to die in the Senate under McConnell. In a related story, the United Nations voted today to reclassify cannabis for medical use as a less dangerous drug.
OK, here's a cute critter video: IT'S PABU!
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