Greg Amendment. It transfers the power of the purse from the Congress to the President.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

Did you happen to catch last night's Daily Show? (2-6-07)

Jon did a video-bit on the Senate debating whether or not there should be a debate about the surge.

Harry Reid wanted an up and down vote on two different surge amendments.

Republican Whip Mitch McConnell, (I’m paraphrasing here) said, he would consider it IF we threw in a vote on the “Greg Amendment”.

I didn’t know what the Greg amendment was so I looked it up. It transfers the power of the purse from the Congress to the President. ...I shouldn’t be shocked...but I am shocked.

How much power are the republicans in congress willing to hand over to the president?

[wildbilln864]

1. Thank you!

I hadn't hear this either.
HELL NO to the Greg amendement!

[MadMaddie]

2. The Gregg amendment better be put in a 6 foot hole and buried

That is not democracy...the * cabal has already destroyed any semblance of fiscal responsibility...why would they give him this kind of power. The Repuglican that put this forward should be recalled from his state.

[The Magistrate]

3. Absolutely Right, Ma'am

It is a disgraceful abdication of institutional authority. Put bluntly, no Senator or Representative, of either Party, ought even to consider voting for it.

[The Backlash Cometh]

27. I'd rather see it slain and put on a pike so the public can see how

George is gaining more power than is wise for an American president, and doing it with the help of Republicans. Let's start now to educate the public so we can get rid of more Republicans in 2008.

[FrenchieCat]

4. Yes...it is a disgusting piece of work.....

and hope it never makes it out of anywhere alive!

[Redbear]

5. I thought the Greg Amendment

changed the constitution so that only people named Greg could be president.

I could support that one.

[babylonsister]

6. I didn't know it transferred the power of the pursed to the prez; I thought

it 'just' disallowed Congress from voting on any spending caps where the military was concerned.
Can I read your link? This isn't right; thanks for the info.

[The Magistrate]

10. The One Amounts To The Other, Ma'am

If the Congress signs away its right to with-hold military funds, it is turning over the control of the military purse to the Executive. The men who wrote the Conmstitution would turn over in their graves of this passed: they designed a system that depended on the Congress being jealous of its authority as an institution, and the first among the equal branches.

[babylonsister]

22. When you put it that way, The Magistrate, it sounds forboding. I really

wish some Senator would have come right out and spelled out what Gregg is asking for. Why didn't they, I wonder.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

14. I googled "Greg admendment"

I took my info straight from a heading, it seemed detailed enough...

Google Groups: soc.retirement
Senator Byrd of West Virginia just roasted the Greg Amendment. It transfers the power of the purse from the Congress to the President and allows the ...
groups.google.ch/group/soc.retirement?lnk=rgr&hl=de - 60k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages

When you questioned, I went back and clicked on the topic and the site's not in English.


Then I found this...

http://www.examiner.com/blogs/tapscotts_copy_desk/2007/1/18/Reid-Opposing-Another-Earmark-Reform

Reid Opposing Another Earmark Reform
January 18, 6:06 PM
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, is speaking on the Senate floor as this is written in opposition to allowing the Senate to vote on an amendment by Sen. Judd Gregg, R-NH, to the Senate ethics reform bill.

Gregg's amendment uses the president's existing recission authority as a mild version of a line-item veto and is designed to give the President a tool for highlighting wasteful spending and forcing Congress to take a second look at such proposals. The proposal would clearly make it more difficult for Members of Congress to slip wasteful spending like earmarks into legislation.

According to Gregg, the amendment provides that the president can send up to 4 rescission packages per year. Congress would be required to fast track the President’s recommendation within 8 days.

Also, unlike a line-item veto proposal that was defeated in Congress in 1996, Gregg's amendment today requires congressional affirmation of the President’s rescission package.

Savings from rescissions passed by Congress must be used for deficit reduction. The authority sunsets after 4 years – giving Congress the ability to evaluate merits of rescission authority after President Bush and his successor have had the opportunity to use.

Reid doesn't want the Senate to vote on the Gregg amendment, which has 30 co-sponsors, including senators from both sides of the aisle.

Incredibly, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL, Reid's majority whip, is claiming Gregg's amendment is actually a parliamentary trick by the GOP to "bring this ethics bill down."

In other words, Durbin is saying voting to amendment the ethics reform bill to make it stronger is a vote to kill the ethics reform bill????

You can read more about the Gregg amendment and the earmark reform debate in this news article in The Hill.

And you can watch the Senate debate live on the C-SPAN's web site.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

15. The more I'm looking into it tonight, it sounds like a tool that would

give the President the power to cut out pork...line item vetos sounds like a good thing. Am I wrong?

I know we're dealing with Bush, so who knows where this would go.

[babylonsister]

20. No, line item vetos would be a very bad thing. nt

[MiniMe]

16. I think the second is a different Gregg amendment

The line item veto one was the one that the repukes tried to tie to ethics reform.

[babylonsister]

21. Thanks for the sources, Kathy. I googled around a bit, too, last night.

I think it depends on who you read and how they interpret it. All I came up with quick were Faux sources, Brit Hume's guests, so thought I'd wait until I could get better ones.

[cui bono]

7. I don't think that's correct. Where did you get that info? Link?

Not to mention the fact that it's a non-binding resolution, so I don't think it could do that.

And it's Gregg btw.

Here's what Bob Shrum said:

MATTHEWS: Is that a fair description of what happened yesterday? That the Republicans don‘t want to vote on the war?

BOB SHRUM, HARDBALL POLITICAL ANALYST: It‘s absolutely fair. No. 1, it is time for the Congress, the Senate and the House to make an up or down vote on the surge. That‘s an easy vote to take. Maybe hard to cast it, but it‘s an easy issue to put in front of the Congress.

No. 2, the Gregg Resolution, which is what the Republicans are fighting about, this whole notion that somehow or another people are in favor of cutting off funds for troops in combat, is to the end of the war what weapons of mass destruction were to the beginning of the war, a big lie. No one is talking about cutting off funds to the troops while they are in combat.

MATTHEWS: Then why not just have the—OK, why not bring it up and let the Democrats vote against it, if that‘s the case?

SHRUM: Because the way it‘s written, its a phony. What happens if you cut off funding, is you don‘t cut it off tomorrow; you don‘t cut it off in two weeks. You say in six months or a year, the funding is over. The president begins the orderly withdrawal or redeployment of the troops.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17025658 /

[Just-plain-Kathy]

17. Hi, I looked up Greg amendment because that's the term Mitch McConnell used.

I looked up Gregg resolution and found this...

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/012302.php


snip>>>

There were three resolutions in play today. The Warner-Levin anti-surge resolution. The McCain-Graham-Lieberman pro-surge resolution. Then there was a third resolution offered by Sen. Judd Gregg. The key is the Gregg resolution. All the Gregg resolution really said was that it's the Commander-in-Chief's duty to assign military missions and the Congress's duty to fund them. (Constitutionally, it's a ridiculous claim. But let's set that aside for the moment.)

Now, here's the rub. The Democrats wanted them all to go to a simple majority vote. The Republicans wanted each to go to a 60+ filibuster-breaking vote.
How do the two thresholds shape the debate?

If each goes to a simple majority vote, the anti-surge resolution wins, the pro-surge resolution loses and the Gregg amendment probably wins too. But the headline is the repudiation of the president. The Gregg amendment is an afterthought.

However, if each resolution goes to a 60 vote test, the thinking was that both surge resolutions (pro and con) would fail. And only the Gregg amendment would win.

So opposition to the president would lose and the only winning amendment would be one that gets the senate on the record saying that Congress is obligated to fund whatever missions the president chooses.

snip<<<

[cui bono]

18. That still doesn't sound good. Good for Reid for not letting it get on the floor.

I love how the RW pundits are complaining about it now when the Publicans wouldn't ever let anything go to the floor unless they knew it would pass. Didn't hear too much about that.

I hope this gets explained more fully and the public grasps that this was just a gimmick, a ploy to shoot down the anti-escalation resolutions. I can't believe they want to pass a resolution allowing this and saying congress has to fund it when they KNOW it's the opposite of what the people want. And when the polls show that the people want Congress to handle the war, they meant the new majority, not the stale old idiots that got us into this mess. Sheesh!

[HereSince1628]

8. Is Bush the anointed Dictator and Protector of the Republic yet?

This is the sort of usurpation and concentration of power that REAL conservatives go NUTS about.

All I can say is dictators are not well tolerated in people committed to a republican form of government.

We know what happened to Cromwell he chose to rule as dictator.
We know what happened to Napoleon Bonaparte after years acting as dictator.
We know what happened to Hitler after a decade acting as a dictator.
We know what Mitch McConnell would like to do to Chavez...

The Republic of the United States deserves protection from all who would rule it as dictator, and those truly committed to representative government will secure that protection sooner or later.

It's just a matter of time until the people reassert our Declaration of Independence and reject the tyranny of George the pretender.

[cui bono]

9. self delete

[IndianaGreen]

11. I guess the Constitution is no longer in effect, in toto

Why bother with having a Congress at all? Let Bush rule by decree, and let the rest of us fight him as one would any tyrant.

[gratefultobelib]

12. Senator Levin was on NPR today (Talk of the Nation) and he said

the Gregg resolution is an attempt by the repubs to change the issue. The repubs want to debate over constitutional powers, as in the prez vs Congress, rather than go on record for or against the surge. He said neither resolution (Warner's or Gregg's) state the war will be defunded. (I hope I've got this right!)

[cui bono]

19. And I thought Warner's resolution was against the escalation but

today what I've seen seems to indicate that it wasn't. I have yet to see one article that fully explains the whole scenario.

[pnorman]

13. "Gregg Amendment"

This is what I was able to dig up on it: http://thinkprogress.org/text-of-gregg-amendment/

pnorman

[babylonsister]

29. That's old; ends 9/30/06. nt

[RoyGBiv]

23. As an aside ...

An important one I think, but an aside nonetheless ...

Why are so many people perfectly content using their rhetoric? An "up and down vote"? What the hell does that even mean. (Yes, I know what we're told it means.)

[Pab Sungenis]

24. The Senate can't turn over the power of the purse

because it doesn't have it itself. The House has to make and fund all appropriations.

[Vinca]

25. Gregg is such an embarrassment to our state. nt

[The Backlash Cometh]

26. Just when you think it can't possibly get worse.

How incredibly stupid. Why isn't the mainstream media on this one? Why don't they show how readily the Republicans in Congress are willing to make George our first American king?

[Justice]

28. NH resident's comment about Gregg Amendment

Someone from NH said this to me today:

I decided after listening to Gregg talk about his amendment that he has been designated as the guy to bring up the worst stuff - he is the one that that is carrying that ball.

Completely disgusted with Gregg.

[mopinko]

30. answer-

all of it.

[undergroundpanther]

31. All of it

Because the republicans are authoritarians and want a fascist state where they can control how people live totally. What part of full spectrum domination shares power with the other? The republicans are oligarchs,racists,fascists toned down covering it up with word spin from think tanks they bought but really the people who bought the white house ARE psychopaths and fascists and HATE everyone else's freedom.So they make up laws,push signing statements and ram legislation through at 3 am ,and tuck it in legit bills as 'christmas trees or 'deals' or bury it in thousands of pages of dry unreadable gibberish,because to get what these thugs want by the usual way, which is by debate in the houses and public discourse , done by the light of day ,transparently in plain language un-spun would mean someone would see through the scam and would deny them what they want.

[Hosnon]

32. Well, it's probably unconstitutional for any branch to delegate its exclusive authority. nt.