Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Sen. Charles Grassley was asked by a reporter about his amendment that would prohibit a proposed commission to recommend ways to reform the criminal justice system from even discussing the possibility of decriminalizing any drugs currently considered illegal. He proceeded to defend his amendment. Kinda. In fact, he babbled incoherently. The only barely discernible argument among this word salad is "because we can." Here's his nonsensical answer:
QUESTION: I hear there was an amendment to a bill tomorrow that would legally prevent some of the government's top advisers from -- according to some of the memos we've seen -- even discussing the idea of legalizing or decriminalizing drugs.Can you talk a little bit about that? I understand that you pulled that amendment, but, nonetheless, I wanted to ask you what your intent is with that.
GRASSLEY: Well, my intent on that amendment isn't any different than any other amendments that are coming up. The Congress is setting up a commission to study certain things. And the commission is a -- is an arm of Congress, because Congress doesn't have time to review some of these laws.
And -- and -- and the point is, for them to do what we tell them to do. And one of the things that I was anticipating telling them not to do is to -- to recommend or study the legalization of drugs.
Their -- their program would be what we tell it it is. And one of the reasons that maybe there's -- there are several amendments that I floated around. And I probably only anticipated offering two or three of them anyway. You always circulate more amendments than you want to offer because you want everything on the table because once the agenda goes out, then it's too late to put something on the table without unanimous consent.
So -- and this isn't one of them.
But, getting back to what I started to say -- I got -- digressed there a little bit on explaining how the system works -- and that is that one of the things I think is going to come up is whether or not this commission on making recommendations has to have a simple majority or a super majority or maybe even by consensus. And the extent to which you get a larger percentage, particularly if it's consensus recommendations, you're probably going to get more reasonable and -- recommendations, and probably a narrower set of recommendations.
Actually, this is similar to, for instance, you probably don't remember this, but I was involved in rewriting the bankruptcy laws. Well, we set up a commission in the early 1990s, or maybe it was mid 1990s. They studied for two or three years and made recommendations. And -- and that was the basis for our legislation.
And so, this commission that Webb is suggesting would be a -- a basis for possible legislation in the future.
QUESTION: Would your amendment have even stopped the discussion of legalized marijuana for medical purposes?
GRASSLEY: I think that would not -- let's see. Yes, the extent to which it would be decriminalization, the answer is yes.
QUESTION: OK. OK.
GRASSLEY: Yeah.
QUESTION: OK. Thank you. Thank you, Senator.
GRASSLEY: Yes, you bet.
You betcha.
Politics
Comments
If there's a film of this exchange, I can see a viral video with 'you betcha Paloon' swapped in to help accentuate Grassley's weak-ass, rambling argument. Nobody looks better defending stupid than Palin. Grassley is trying though.
Posted by: MikeMa | November 6, 2009 9:35 AM
Create an advisory commission, and then hand them orders as to what they're allowed to advise you to do. Yeah, that makes sense.
Posted by: Spidergrackle | November 6, 2009 9:37 AM
Actually, I think there's a germ of a better argument for Grassley in there - in the "Getting back to what I started to say" paragraph, I think he's trying to argue that a bill that makes recommendations to legalize anything would not pass the full House or Senate, so why even waste the time?
I don't think it's a good argument, but I think it's slightly better than "because we can". Especially because then Grassley can dodge what his personal opinion is and just start saying "We know a legalization bill can't pass, so we've elected to skip it" and shift the blame to the wider Congress.
(All the while, he can still thunder against the eeeevillls of drugs to his conservative constituents, and have plausible deniability for his pro-legalization ones.)
Again, what I'm suggesting is a better argument for Grassley. As it is, I'm glad he's kind of twisting in the wind about this, and that he didn't have the sense to retreat to a safer position for himself.
Posted by: chancelikely | November 6, 2009 9:44 AM
Chuck travels around Iowa presenting a kind father figure image but his work on derailing health care reform and now an effort to limit the issues a criminal justice commission can even STUDY shows him to be just another Republican thug.
Posted by: Rex | November 6, 2009 10:15 AM
President George W. Bush set-up a task force of economic experts who were supposedly bipartisan to propose an optimal tax collection scheme (around 2005). The President purposefully designed the parameters of the study in order that only one result was possible - a flatter tax favoring the very richest, though still posing as a progressive tax scheme. This scheme also provided plutocrats with continued access to the federal government to continue policies that created both barriers to entry by their competitors or maintainted artifically low supplies and therefore high prices.
Mr. Bush also created a boundary to what the study group was allowed to consider, all schemes must be progressive. That boundary purposefully disallowed the panel to seriously study, consider, or propose a consumption-like tax (VAT and/or sales tax) in spite of the fact that there is compelling empirical evidence that such schemes create sufficient political consensus to increase tax revenues to fund citizens' objectives for government programs and the empirical evidence argues such a scheme may be optimal in promoting economic growth.
The quality of the study was so embarrassingly bad it was archived. Here's a link to the study. Note that the study does provide a section in the back where they build a strawman of the VAT that no interest group is proposing and then light it on fire. An adequate though non-thorough rebuttal of how this panel misrepresented economic findings on consumption taxes can be found in the Appendix of Rep. Linder and Mr. Boortz' FairTax: The Truth: Answering the Critics (At least the paperback version, not sure about the hard cover.)
Consideration of an optimal tax scheme was a primary reason I voted for President Bush in 2000. I think how we collect taxes is the primary reason we have huge debts and why 'the people' have lost power with the government to certain Corporate interests. At that time I knew liberals were so zealously ideological in their positions on taxes they could never logically do such a study - a position where my observations have only increased over time. Obviously I both regret my 2000 vote and woke-up to the fact that life-long talking points I'd heard from Republicans by at least 2000 was not only hot air, but they opposed since it potentially lessened the power of their financial constituency over our government and would remove their ability to 'starve the beast' in terms of limiting adequate revenues to fund programs the majority of Americans want their government to provide.
I present this example to argue that what Mr. Grassley did is neither unique, or exclusive to the GOP given the Democrats also continue to rule out valid options to reform without fair consideration given their entire method to increase tax revenues is to merely soak the rich.
I concede that given our current tax scheme, there is convincing empirical evidence that there is sufficient room to tax the highest earners more than their current effective tax rates. However I would also argue we can't tax our way to revenues equal to current, let alone far higher federal services and unfunded liabilities. We can only grow our way out which is why I'm frustrated neither party will consider what might be the most effective tax revenue generator and economic growth engine yet designed - consumption taxes.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 6, 2009 10:21 AM
"Create an advisory commission, and then hand them orders as to what they're allowed to advise you to do. Yeah, that makes sense."
Well, it does. You don't want your committee to waste their time designing bills that are unable to pass the House and Senate (even if you, personally, are one of the major reasons bills like that would be unable to pass the Senate). It's sort of like not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Also,
"An adequate though non-thorough rebuttal of how this panel misrepresented economic findings on consumption taxes can be found in the Appendix of Rep. Linder and Mr. Boortz' FairTax: The Truth: Answering the Critics"
Bolded for lol wut
Posted by: mad the swine | November 6, 2009 10:58 AM
I can see the point of not wanting to make a boondoggle out of the commission's time but it might be possible for the commission to amass enough evidence to conclude that the war on drugs is a failure and that it's continuance is foolish, expensive and counterproductive. The suggestion that legalizing drugs is not a legislative possibility would depend strongly on the evidence gathered I hope. Grassley is preventing that evidence from being collected and by doing so he may be nobly trying to save time and money but more cynically, I believe he is protecting GOP W.O.D. advocates from having to face yet another shattered truth if the war on drugs can be shown to be such a failure.
Posted by: MikeMa | November 6, 2009 11:27 AM
mad the swine - Boortz is the sales-pitch, not the brains behind the initiative. I'd argue his leadership on the marketing end is the primary reason the FairTax intiative has failed to generate any momentum in spite of a number of respected economists increasingly coming out in favor of consumption taxes (including liberals). I am not a FairTax advocate though I was, having left the group because of Boortz's failure on marketing the initiative.
Ad hominems not backed up with an adequate rebuttal is a perfect example of my previous comment's year 2000 observation:
Thanks for acting as a foil by serving up a such a nice fatty which almost perfectly illuminates my point.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 6, 2009 11:42 AM
Some may have used more words to say nothing except "I don't like it and the people who vote for me don't like it and it doesn't matter otherwise" than this fool. But not many.
It's all so familiar . . . and lame.
Posted by: Crudely Wrott | November 6, 2009 7:41 PM
Spidergrackle:
That usually the way it works out, you didn't think politicians created advisory bodies because they were interested in what experts thought did you?
Though I have to say that Grassley is embarrassingly inept. You rig an advisory body by carefully wording their Terms of Reference, not by passing a law flatly banning them from discussing what you don't want them to discuss. That's like performing surgery with a chainsaw.
Posted by: James K | November 6, 2009 9:56 PM
Of course the war on drugs is doomed to failure. They can't even keep drugs out of prisons let alone suburbia. They pass a bill limiting access to pseudoephedrine and the tweekers come up with the shake n bake recipe that lets them make small batches. So all that law did is limit legitimate access to sinus meds.
Posted by: Cthulhu's minion | November 8, 2009 7:14 AM
This is probably off-topic, but @Michael Heath, the FairTax proposal is anything but "fair": Because it taxes consumption using a progressive sales tax, those that spend more are taxed more, and those that save more are taxed less. So, the effects of implementing such a system would be increased taxation on those that by the nature of their economic condition are forced to spend a larger percentage of their income and less taxation on those that can afford to invest or save money for a later date, as well as decreased consumption of expensive or luxury products/services. Thus, any FairTax sort of system would increase the gap between rich and poor, and decimate the jobs of those that depend on luxury spending.
Although it is obvious that our current tax system needs reform, and while I agree that most liberals/progressives are not open to many of the more viable/effective options, FairTax, despite sounding good in theory, is not suited to the real world and does not represent an improvement to the current tax system.
P.S. Yes, that was a complex-complex-compound sentence.
Posted by: ESC | November 8, 2009 8:35 PM
Just because I feel guilty for posting an off-topic comment, I'll add that this:
is probably the most meaningless and incoherent paragraph I have ever read in my life.
Posted by: ESC | November 8, 2009 8:38 PM
ESC stated:
Are you attempting to discredit consumption taxes prior to actually studying the economics and social implications of consumption taxes first? I ask because all your following points are the same old overly simplistic, often false talking points empirically discredited when other countries employed such taxes, like most European VAT taxes. What's especially tiresome if igorning the effects on wages and job growth. Most people would much prefer to making more after-tax money with a higher effective rate than less money with a lower rate. Liberals instead seem overly concerned about whether we're properly soaking the rich even if it harms the poor.
One secret - the rich will keep buying luxury goods regardless of whether you tax their income or consumption. That's because it doesn't matter whether you tax their income or their consumption, they're still going to end up with a signifcant chunk of savings after they're done spending their discretionary income. In addition, the rich won't have a reason to store their some of their savings off-shore either, which makes it "in-play" here in the states in terms of private investment or expenditures. Consumption is one of the primary advantages of being rich.
My apologies for not doing a point-by-point rebuttal. If you want one given I've heard all of this before and responded to it several times, here's a link to twenty-nine posts where I rebut your points and several more in detail, some with stats and economic citations: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=fairtax+dogmeatib+%22michael+heath%22+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fscienceblogs.com%2Fdispatches%2F&aq=f&aqi=&oq=&fp=b9f14b8456039e
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 9, 2009 12:12 AM