/lw/ - Legislative Watch

Here's some additional information about the bill.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/12/09/whats-in-the-spending-bill-we-skim-it-so-you-dont-have-to/?tid=pm_politics_pop

>>6
As someone who works for a bank and knows what they pull this is beyond unacceptable.

>oh look more money in politics
Of course it's bipartisan.
How do we stop these things. I mean I'm pretty sure most people are not happy about this and haven't been from similar bills in the past. How do we stop them from pulling this bullshit off time and time again?
Only thing I can think of is making sure that earmarks are banned.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/12/how-a-gift-to-wall-street_n_6317868.html

WASHINGTON – Less than a month after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) landed a new Senate leadership position, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and President Barack Obama risked a fight with her over government subsidies for risky Wall Street derivatives trading.

They won the near-term policy fight: After a bruising bicameral battle, the House of Representatives narrowly approved an annual spending bill that granted taxpayer support for the risky financial contracts at the heart of the 2008 meltdown.

But the bitter feud left Reid and Obama politically embarrassed, while consolidating a burgeoning populist movement within the Democratic Party that highlighted Warren's influence in wings of the Capitol far removed from her perch on the Senate Banking Committee. It also forced Obama and a host of Democratic leaders into the crosshairs of a critique Warren typically levels at Republicans: that powerful people in Washington are rigging the system to help Wall Street at the expense of the middle class.

Hours after declaring White House support for the package, Obama was forced to send Chief of Staff Denis McDonough to the Hill to round up votes – a public admission that the president's party wasn't taking marching orders from him. By the end of the night, Obama, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the nation's largest bank, JPMorgan Chase, were all whipping members to support the package – a tremendously damaging scenario for Obama's stature with the Democratic electoral base. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her allies, meanwhile, played the role of underdog, digging in for a Tim Howard-esque performance that emboldened progressives, even in defeat.

"I'm proud that I voted no," Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told HuffPost. "The fight was clearly good for morale."

>>18
Just more proof that there are only a few people in congress on either side of the isle that give a shit about the american public.

>>23
Warren is based as fuck on this issue for sure.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/senate-deal-vote-11-trillion-spending-bill

After days of rancor and uncertainty on Capitol Hill, the Senate has passed a massive spending bill, formally averting a government shutdown and sending the $1.1 trillion measure to the president’s desk.

The vote, which pitted both parties’ establishment against its more populist wings, was 56-40.

Twenty-one Democrats and 19 Republicans voted against the measure.

The bill funds most of the government until September 2015, although it sets up another battle over the funding of the Department of Homeland Security early next year. Republicans who opposed the legislation said it did not do enough to curb the president’s immigration policy; some Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, objected to the insertion of language rolling back Wall Street reforms.

>>6
There's so much pork in this bill. Its a free for all