(2005-09-23) Taibbi Congress Process

Matt Taibbi on Game Playing at the US Congress, leading up to the Energy Policy, Highway Bill, CAFTA, and Patriot Act extension. Bush's summer bills were extraordinary pieces of legislation, broad in scope, transparently brazen and audaciously indulgent... But the drama of the legislative process is never in the broad strokes but in the bloody skirmishes and power plays that happen behind the scenes... The Ex Im loan was a policy so dumb and violently opposed to American interests that lawmakers who voted for it had serious trouble coming up with a plausible excuse for approving it. In essence, the U.S. was giving $5 billion to a state-subsidized British utility (Westinghouse is a subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels) to build up the infrastructure of our biggest trade competitor, along the way sharing advanced nuclear technology with a Chinese (China) conglomerate that had, in the past, shared nuclear know-how with Iran and Pakistan... Congress isn't the steady assembly line of consensus policy ideas it's sold as, but a kind of permanent emergency in which a majority of members work day and night to burgle the national treasure and burn the US Constitution. A largely castrated minority tries, Alamo-style, to slow them down - but in the end spends most of its time beating calculated retreats and making loose plans to fight another day.