On May 6, by a vote of 246-161, the House passed a severely diluted “Cash for Caulkers” bill engineered by the House Republican minority using sexual perversion as a hook to force votes and continue our dependence on oil. The Home Star program will provide rebates to homeowners who retrofit their homes with energy efficient equipment and materials. The proposed legislation creates two rebate programs, one for specified energy-saving improvements and one for whole-home energy use reductions.
However, Republicans succeeded in making the program much less user-friendly. The Republican motion includes a package of amendments that cut funding and make the program bureaucratically cumbersome. Such amendments would easily have failed, but the Republicans packaged their changes with an amendment requiring contractors to certify that their employees are not sexual predators, forcing Democrats to support it. Rather than be caught, and later portrayed in smear campaigns, as supporting sexual predators in federal legislation, Democrats voted for the weakened bill.
The next week Republicans tried it again even more successfully to weaken non-controversial legislation. This time they went after pornography instead of sexual predators.
On May 14, the House considered the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (H.R.5116), which would have authorized energy research and development through programs such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency- Energy, a relatively new part of DOE, and bolstered manufacturing through both research and loan guarantee programs.
On this motion to recommit, a parliamentary maneuver that only allows an up or down vote, the Republican alternative included major cuts to the program and added two irrelevant amendments again forcing many Democrats to support it; one would theoretically crack down on federal employees who view pornography on the job, while the other would deny funding to colleges that ban military recruiters from campus. Democrats were afraid of television ads accusing them of being for pornography and against the military, and voted for the motion to recommit. In response, the Democrats pulled the bill from the floor.
What will they try this week, bestiality?