Let’s put aside the great issues of the day for a moment, shall we, and take a look at something that is going to bite on the ass real quick if something doesn’t happen.
 
There are a lot of distractions. The President accepted the Nobel Peace Price as a down payment on what he might- or might not- do in the next three years. Five local kids were busted in Pakistan, American citizens all, apparently headed for the Tribal area of North Pakistan.
 
That is pretty disturbing, but the tug of events before the holidays is dragging my attention back to the Hill.
 
The money we have not thrown away on the TARP is now being targeted for jobs. Not a bad idea, I suppose, and FDR’s WPA did some great work back in the day. Senator Boxer, bless her, along with Speaker Pelosi, is pushing for strong climate legislation that has the promise of bringing the same sort of success to the rest of the United States that she has helped impose on poor California.
 
I am tired of trying to analyze the arguments over the tree-ring reconstruction of some selected fossil and sub-fossil trees in the polar Urals, near a place called Yamal. Keith Briffa held the day for nearly a decade, the length of time the Congressional Budget Office uses for its projections.
 
He held his data back from review for that long, despite the dogged determination of a Canadian scientist named Steve McIntyre to access the information for independent verification.
 
It is a great story, and I encourage you to look it up. It is exciting, in a way, though one that is possibly even more mind-numbing than the story of the Federal Budget.
 
It could well be that we are doomed by our actions. It is also possible that we will have to accommodate whatever is nature will deliver on its own, while attempting to mitigate our contribution acceleration of those trends.
 
In all that has gone before in the life of this globe, temperatures have gone up, and then they have come down.
 
The corollary, of course, is somewhat analogous to the debate on Health Care; which is to say that the Lord Kenyes was right about what happens to us all in the long run, and we should recognize that even as we strive to ameliorate discomfort on the journey to a predestined end.
 
In the meantime, we also live in today. So from one imponderable we lurch to what is happening this week.
 
Some of my pals are hearing that Congress – both the House and the Senate – will have to take up Appropriations in the next week.  They will not do so because it is their job- which is the only reason we elect them- but because of what is looming on the 18th of December.
 
Congress will have to increase the debt ceiling or else stop spending, which is to say, shut down the government. That will require passage of a budget resolution, and the thinking is that they will attach it to an appropriation bill, or a couple of them, that will fund government operations for which funds have not already been appropriated.  
 
The House has appended the large irrelevancy to the Veteran’s Affairs and Military Construction Bill, which will take care of the domestic agencies, and the smart money- if such a thing exists any more- says the debt ceiling extension will get attached to the DoD approps.  
 
No one in Congress is ready for the consequences of failing to raise the debt ceiling, which means they must find a piece of legislation to attach it to that will give most of them cover.  
 
It is about cover, after all. No one is going to want to take the responsibility for this mess when it is done.

Copyright 2009 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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