Steve Benen looks at what the left got, what it refused to take, and what it should feel pretty okay about.
I spoke with a Democratic source familiar with the bill last night, who noted some other “wins” from the omnibus spending bill. Republicans had included riders to prohibit funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the reinstatement of anti-family-planning Mexico City Policy, the termination of the Home Affordable Modification Program, a prohibition on the implementation of net neutrality, and the elimination of funding for Title X family planning programs.
How many of these riders survived in the final spending bill? None.
The package also advances several key Wall Street reform provisions, preserved AmeriCorps, and allows Race to the Top education standards to continue.
This isn’t to say the omnibus was ideal; it wasn’t. The overall spending has been reduced from the year prior — which isn’t a good idea in this economy — and there are some misguided ideas, including cuts to low-income heating assistance programs, fewer recipients of Pell Grants, and the District of Columbia can’t use its own money for abortions for poor women.
But given what far-right congressional Republicans wanted out of this agreement and didn’t get, it’s not a bad omnibus. It would have been infinitely better had Americans not elected the most right-wing House in modern history, but under the circumstances, there’s reason to feel satisfied. ...Steve Benen
Okay. That was the House. Let's take the Senate and the final version of the bill later...
___
Meanwhile, a lousy deal for unions, according to the Times.
Unless something changes in Washington, American workers will, on New Year’s Day, effectively lose their right to be represented by a union. Two of the five seats on the National Labor Relations Board, which protects collective bargaining, are vacant, and on Dec. 31, the term of Craig Becker, a labor lawyer whom President Obama named to the board last year through a recess appointment, will expire. Without a quorum, the Supreme Court ruled last year, the board cannot decide cases.
What would this mean?
Workers illegally fired for union organizing won’t be reinstated with back pay. Employers will be able to get away with interfering with union elections. Perhaps most important, employers won’t have to recognize unions despite a majority vote by workers. Without the board to enforce labor law, most companies will not voluntarily deal with unions.
If this nightmare comes to pass, it will represent the culmination of three decades of Republican resistance to the board — an unwillingness to recognize the fundamental right of workers to band together, if they wish, to seek better pay and working conditions. But Mr. Obama is also partly to blame; in trying to install partisan stalwarts on the board, as his predecessors did, he is all but guaranteeing that the impasse will continue. On Wednesday, he announced his intention to nominate two pro-union lawyers to the board, though there is no realistic chance that either can gain Senate confirmation anytime soon. ... William B. Gould, law professor at Stanford and former chair of the NLRB
Not sure what Obama could do under present circumstances. But I'm pretty sure I know what unions will do -- are already doing -- to open up the November 2012 elections for Democratic wins.
___
And House Republicans managed to get in a jab in the heart of the CFTC -- the Commodities Futures Trading Commission and its Wall Street reforms.
Under the new deal, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission will get $10 million more for staffing, thus making layoffs for the agency less likely in 2012. But that money won’t come through a funding increase: In the end, Republicans refused to budge on the overall funding level for the agency, which will stay at $205 million. Instead, $10 million for staffing will be shifted out of the agency’s budget for information technology. The overall level of funding falls significantly short of President Obama’s own request for the CFTC — $308 million, which would be an increase of almost 50 percent — as well as the Senate Democrats’ request for $240 million.
The CFTC may have avoided the worst-case scenario of having to lay off employees just as the agency ramps up to create and oversee a brand-new exchange for over-the-counter derivatives, the complex financial instruments that contributed to the 2009 financial crisis. In an e-mail to his staff, CFTC chair Gary Gensler called the funding agreements “positive developments” that would probably allow the agency to keep staffing at current levels. In a way, the MF Global meltdown may even have helped the CFTC’s case in recent days. Legislators from both parties made it clear that they expected the agency to investigate the bankrupt brokerage thoroughly and prevent such debacles from happening in the future. ...Suzy Khimm at Wonkblog
But Republicans are using and will doubtless continue to use cuts to cripple the agency.