take19 - TAKEN!!!

On March 8, Sue boasted via a press release, that a piece of her legislation finally passed, albeit as an attachment to "a larger financial services regulatory bill."

The release and a subsequent PoJo article concerning the passage described a tool with which to "crack down on foreign countries that fail to stop terrorist financing networks."

Well, ya gotta love that action language..."crack down." However, as often is the case with Sue Kelly's homespun spin, there's no teeth in her legislative bite.

A closer look at what this attachment shows that there is no there there. This bill simply requires that the Treasury Dept. report to Congress annually "which foreign countries are not enforcing laws against money laundering and terror finance."

Couple of questions here. The most immediate would be:

"If Congress and the administration were doing their jobs concerning oversight, would this toothless legislation be necessary?" In the post 9/11 world, stronger legislation than this should have been a top priority beginning on 9/12...and here it is, four and a half years later, and Sockpuppet Sue gets an attachment to a large bill that finally acknowledges this as a potential problem? Good morning, Sue and Congress. Nice of you to finally WAKE UP!

Another question jumps out:

"What are the penalties for non-compliance of these undescribed laws?" The attachment stops way short of punishment. As a matter of fact, it stops short of minimally requiring Treasury to report directly to the public. It only requires them to report to Congress, and judging how effective the House and Senate have been with oversight duties in the past five years, we can guess where the information will end up, especially if the information isn't PAC donation friendly.

So, what we have here is...Sue and the far right majority in Congress waited four and a half years to pass a toothless attachment to a finanical services bill concerning an issue that should have been dealt with BEFORE two planes flew into the WTC and another into the pentagon on September 11, 2001.

And she is bragging about it?

Once again, Sue is 1,645 days late and millions of dollars short when it comes to National Security.

UPDATE: by NYBri:

As myh has pointed out in the comments that there may be a "punishment" hiden in this attachment. Let's have a look:

"If this proposal were made law and a report is, for some reason, filed by Treasury, there is, theoretically, a monetary sanction if this is a unilateral loan by the US, and provision for objecting to the loan if it is multilateral.

But wait! - all that can be overruled if the Executive branch says the country is “trying” to comply with the treaty, and also if the President says “Gee, we know this government is financing terrorism but we really like these folks and don’t want to mess with them, so, heh, heh, let's just not get crazy here an do anything bad to these nice people.” (No lie, the statute permits this - a country can be violating a multinational treaty by financing terrorism, and the President can say - don't apply the law to that country.)"

The President can be overruled by a Joint resolution of Congress (how many times is that going to happen with the President’s party controlling both houses) within 30 days (when has Congress ever acted that swiftly anyway). But even if Congress did overrule the President, the Secretary of Treasury could decide that, after all, the country is trying to comply, so let's not sanction them.

# posted by NYBri @ 10:22 AM