congress – Page 2

Democrats now facing a lame-duck session crunch time ENTIRELY OF THEIR OWN MAKING.

Lotta good bits in this:

[Aside from confirming nominees, Harry] Reid also wants to move a package of expiring tax provisions, the annual Defense Department authorization bill and an extension of a tax moratorium on Internet purchases in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

That will be a challenge not only because of the tight schedule, but because of expected clashes between Democrats over what should be prioritized before Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) takes over the Senate’s agenda in January.

For example, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who is about to lose his chairmanship, is pushing for consideration of a bill reforming the National Security Agency despite opposition from other Democrats.

Continue reading Democrats now facing a lame-duck session crunch time ENTIRELY OF THEIR OWN MAKING.

Dear Democratic operatives: You. Are. Dead. And. This. Is. HELL*.

And you will never, ever escape.

The last Democrat to challenge Nancy Pelosi for the party’s top House leadership spot—after a devastating loss of majority control in the tea-party wave of 2010—finds himself now completely out of Congress.

Former Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina can be seen on TV today as a side character in a Dish Network commercial featuring fellow former collegiate football greats. Gone from Congress, too, are many of Shuler’s former moderate “Blue Dog” colleagues in the House.

Now, four years later, Pelosi is not even waiting a few days to mull whether she should stay on as her party’s leader after yet another drubbing Tuesday at the polls. Rather, she sent out a “Dear colleague” letter on Wednesday to returning and newly elected House Democrats declaring that she is running again to be their caucus leader.

Continue reading Dear Democratic operatives: You. Are. Dead. And. This. Is. HELL*.

Why it doesn’t matter, electorally speaking, that the public hates Congress more than Barack Obama.

Writing stuff like this actually does no favors for Democrats…

President Obama has hit another low in another poll, but so have many of his critics in Congress.

The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll gives the president an approval rating of 40%, a record low; Congress has a rating of only 14%, also a low.

…and this is why: it produces a false equivalence. Democratic incumbents in trouble aren’t going to be happy to see Barack Obama showing up… but Republican incumbents in trouble – yes, there are some – weren’t going to get ‘Congress’ to come out to campaign for them. They’d get specific (and popular) Republican politicians to do that. I understand that you can’t really compare Barack Obama’s popularity against every member of Congress and not have the result be utterly cumbersome, but I think framing the discussion this way doesn’t really lead to correct conclusions.

Continue reading Why it doesn’t matter, electorally speaking, that the public hates Congress more than Barack Obama.

Wikipedia bans Capitol Hill from making Wikipedia edits.

Of course.

Wikipedia administrators have imposed a ban on page edits from computers at the US House of Representatives, following “persistent disruptive editing”.

The 10-day block comes after anonymous changes were made to entries on politicians and businesses, as well as events like the Kennedy assassination.

The biography of former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld was edited to say that he was an “alien lizard”.

Although that one arguably pales in comparison to the nameless Congressional staffer who needed the world to know that Mediate is “sexist transphobic*.” Or perhaps not; but I’m noting it largely because I’d like the record to show that this is all at best (or worst) a bipartisan exercise in wearing-your-posterior-as-a-head-covering. And, of course, to make it clear that, to the best of my knowledge, Donald Rumsfeld is NOT an alien lizard. I mean, sheesh: everybody knows that he’s from a cadet branch of the Merovingian dynasty. Where do you think he got the money to fund Fang Island in the first place? Continue reading Wikipedia bans Capitol Hill from making Wikipedia edits.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Democrats will exceed expectations. …Heh. Maybe they will.

Shot:

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the strength of individual candidates will help her party outperform expectations in the upcoming midterms.

“Pundits are wildly misinterpreting or over interpreting,” the Florida Democrat said, specifically responding to a projection published by the Washington Post that gives Republicans an 86 percent chance of taking control of the Senate.

“Models don’t elect candidates. Voters do,” she said, speaking at a Thursday morning event organized by centrist Democratic think tank Third Way.

Continue reading Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Democrats will exceed expectations. …Heh. Maybe they will.

I encourage Senate Democrats to go to the wall to bring back IRS bonuses.

I absolutely encourage them:

The House on Wednesday approved legislation that would prohibit performance bonuses for senior executives at the Internal Revenue Service.

Rep. Paul Gosar’s (R-Ariz.) amendment to the fiscal 2015 Financial Services appropriations bill was approved on a 282-138 vote, with one member voting present.

Continue reading I encourage Senate Democrats to go to the wall to bring back IRS bonuses.

Struggle over whether to kill Export-Import Bank picking up steam.

You know, when I first saw this…

…well, the first thing that I thought was Actually, I wouldn’t mind Ariel Stryker going to fetch Edward Snowden and getting him in front of an American grand jury. But you have to expect a certain amount of that sort of thing from hard-shell libertarians; live and let live, says I. So I guess that the second thing that I thought was Killing the Export-Import Bank is probably not gonna happen. Continue reading Struggle over whether to kill Export-Import Bank picking up steam.

New House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy… wants to kill the Export-Import Bank.

Come, I will conceal nothing from you: the Export-Import Bank is squarely in the middle of things that I typically go rah-rah over out of a sense of solidarity with the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. I can’t keep track of everything, after all*. But apparently this is making people sit up and blink:

House Majority Leader-elect Kevin McCarthy says Congress should let the Export-Import Bank expire, the biggest blow yet to the imperiled subsidy agency whose charter expires this fall.

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked McCarthy if he agrees with “conservatives who say that the Export-Import Bank is a form of crony capitalism and it should be put out of business — allowed to expire.”

I forget who said this first**, but fear really is a wonderful motivator. Continue reading New House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy… wants to kill the Export-Import Bank.

National Seersucker Day comes back to Congress, thank God.

No, I am not joking about either half of that title.

Today, Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) announced that National Seersucker Day has been formally reinstated. A bipartisan Capitol Hill tradition, Members of the House of Representatives typically wear Seersucker on Wednesdays and Senators wear it on Thursdays.

The tradition started in 1996 by Trent Lott, and continued until 2012. That year ninnyhammers in the Senate decided that it was, astoundingly, bad PR to have Hill staffers and legislators be doing anything except engage in hyper-partisan Stab Time. Dana Milbank at the time got it right:

I agree that seersucker is not weighty. When I wear my seersucker suit and powdered white bucks (only between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and typically with a bow tie), perfect strangers have at times greeted me as “Professor” or “Poindexter.”

But those who canceled Seersucker Thursday have got it exactly backward: Our leaders can’t agree on important things because they’re missing this kind of social lubricant. “Some say you don’t want to make it look like the Senate’s being jovial with all these serious things going on,” Lott told me. “My view is you can’t get serious things done because you don’t have events where you can enjoy each other’s company.”

Continue reading National Seersucker Day comes back to Congress, thank God.

Select #Benghazi Congressional investigating committee announced.

And hey!

Elections have consequences: “House Republicans have decided the select committee to investigate the Benghazi terror attack will include seven Republicans and five Democrats, according to two senior House GOP leadership aides.” This is in stark contrast to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s eyebrow-raising demand that Democrats be given equal membership on said committee: it’s an open question whether Pelosi will appoint anybody at all at this point. Given her generally poor decision-making since 2009, I’m going to guess that she’ll boycott the entire thing out of pique until it becomes clear that playing even a bad hand on this still beats playing no hand at all.

And when I say that elections have consequences, I am not snarking – well, I’m not just snarking. I’m also quoting select committee chair Trey Gowdy (via Hot Air): Continue reading Select #Benghazi Congressional investigating committee announced.