The *wrong* Big Question.

(Via Instapundit) The Hill’s Congress Blog asks a question which has a very obvious answer:

Should Obama get tough with Congress?

or

Should President Barack Obama be more assertive in pushing the rest of his legislative agenda?

…and the answer is, of course, “Yes.” Presidents always need to get tough with Congress.  They particularly need to get tough with Congress when both the legislative and executive branches are held by the same party; when that happens, the former is prone to using the golden opportunity to do something extravagant and stupid… like, say, trying to pass two insanely expensive, ill-thought, transformational pieces of unpopular legislation right after passing a recklessly high, pork-laden spending bill on a party-line vote.  First-term Presidents doubly particularly need to get tough with Congress, assuming of course that they want to also be second-term Presidents.  So, it’s the wrong question.

The right question is:

Can Obama get tough with Congress?

The President obviously can be more assertive – that’s not particularly hard – but whether he’s actually able to make Congress do things has yet to be determined.  There’s been no indication that he even knows how.  And the primary carrot/stick that the administration was going to use for compliance (“I will campaign for Democrats who follow my lead.”) looked a lot more credible as a promise/threat in January 2009 than it does today.  Just ask Governors Deeds & Corzine, not to mention Senator Coakley.

All in all, at this point it may simply be too late for President to acquire any control over the 111st Congress.  And the future leaders of the 112th Congress have been busily taking notes.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Maybe – *maybe* – teaching Obama?

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Let me add a thought to this observation by Jazz Shaw:

It seems to me that Obama is a good enough politician that he can read the writing on the wall. He’s going to have to start dealing with a significantly more powerful Republican force in Congress next year and seems to be laying the groundwork to get something done. Smart for the Republicans. Smart for Obama. The problem is, a lot of the President’s most liberal supporters are clearly having a hard time coping with the idea of both parties having some input to the governmental process. They’ll come along kicking and screaming sooner or later, but for now it’s going to remain The Audacity of Cope.

…which is this: the President does not need a Beijing Consensus in order to look good.  In fact, a drubbing of his party in November would probably be excuse enough for him to abandon what are a whole raft of unpopular policy positions, appear ‘bipartisan,’ and run on that in 2012.  It would require a certain willingness for the President to throw his legislative colleagues under the bus en masse, though: and, really, how likely is that?

Moe Lane

PS: Primary challenge?  Bless your heart, but the President’s already having the rules changed so that others cannot not do unto him as he did unto Clinton.  Gotta love those top-down political organizations, yes?

Crossposted to RedState.

Beck explains the Grandma’s kitchen sink situation to POTUS. #rsrh

Via @tommyxtopher, who isn’t happy that he has to agree with this:

I don’t watch Beck, myself – I got nothing against him, particularly, but I don’t need him as an information source – but the above is an excellent point. It’s not particularly the GOP’s problem that the Democrats disliked actually having a super-majority, particularly since it meant that fourteen years’ worth of wild-eyed promises to the Left suddenly came due. It’s also not particularly our problem that the progressives are increasingly unable to pretend that their party top leadership cares for them for longer than it takes the check to clear. We will, however, be happy to solve their problems for them, in our own little way.

Because that’s just how we roll.

Moe Lane

I think that Congress *should* take that extra November recess.

(Via @MelissaTweets) I have no problem with it: in fact, I think that they should take off the rest of the year, starting right now.  With one condition: everyone who does has to have at least one town hall a week – a real one, Democrats! – that’s at least four hours long.

Yes, it’ll be wearying for certain members of Congress to do that.  Wearying, alarming, frustrating, humiliating, and possibly even tedious.

(pause)

And?

Crossposted to RedState.

Obama’s Organizing for America targets… Evan Bayh.

No, you’re not misremembering. Bayh’s a Democrat.

Fresh from their general campaign last Saturday of utterly failing to convincing Congress to do anything, Organizing for America is now engaged in regional spamming of their email lists to go after of individual legislators considered either hostile or insufficiently favorable to the President’s plan to saddle the next three generations with even more crushing, unnecessary debt. This is primarily targeting Republicans: in fact, based on admittedly extremely limited communications with other people who might get spammed, I’m concluding OFA is not generically targeting Democrats. But they did go after Evan Bayh:

OFA sent an email to Indiana residents on Wednesday asking them to phone Republican Rep. Steve Buyer, Republican Sen. Richard Lugar and Democratic Sen. Bayh to let them “know where you stand on President Obama’s budget.”

Bayh has been one of the Democratic party’s most outspoken members against President Obama’s spending, penning recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to outline his opposition to the $410 billion omnibus bill the Obama signed. He also announced he leading a 15-member working group of moderate Senate Democrats last week. Bayh said the group was informally called “the practical caucus.”

Bayh, of course, is hated by progressives – it’s one of his more endearing traits, really – and he’s certainly been on the administration’s radar since he announced his so-called “Gang of Fifteen.” While supposedly there were no public problems between the White House and the centrist Democrats over this unwillingness of the latter to blindly follow the former over the cliff*, it’s not really a secret that President Obama likes to have deniable proxies do his dirty work for him**. Which is probably why Bayh is scheduled to be personally targeted by Moveon.org, Campaign for America’s Future, USAction, and the rest of the usual suspects: apostasy is always the worst of sins to the True Believer.

Speaking as a Republican, I wholeheartedly support this activity, and think that it should be encouraged. Although I think that there are limits.

Moe Lane

*Note that they might still do it anyway.

**Eric Flint, in writing of Henry Clay in 1824: The Arkansas War:

Granted, Clay had always been a rough political fighter, even if he wore gloves. Porter had admired that trait in times past, and he wouldn’t have objected if the gloves came off. The problem was that Henry was doing the opposite as time went on. He was adding more gloves at the same time his blows were getting lower.

Crossposted to RedState.

Regarding prohibited activities under HR 1388 (The GIVE Act)

While I understand the concerns of both Gateway Pundit and Dan Collins of Protein Wisdom Pub about restrictions made on individuals affected by HR 1388 – I don’t particularly trust the government, either – this particular situation is both more and less worrisome than you might think. Which is an impressive trick, really.

Continue reading Regarding prohibited activities under HR 1388 (The GIVE Act)

Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) breaks with House Democrats on reconciliation.

While in the process of idly mentioning that the deficit’s going to be worse than originally indicated, Senator Conrad (D-Countrywide) says something very, very interesting:

Conrad also said he did not plan to include any instructions in the budget plan he is crafting for health care or the greenhouse gas initiatives. Such instructions written into the budget would give it a privileged status and make it easier to become law, but likely spark a nasty fight with minority Republicans.

This is in reference to “reconciliation,” which is a process by which the Democrats would be able to put specific legislation into bills that could be passed by a simple majority in the Senate, instead of the 60 vote system that we’ve effectively evolved over the years. The House is currently threatening to impose it over health care, if those awful Republicans don’t ‘see reason’ (translation: ‘do what the Democrats say’): we have a deadline until September. Continue reading Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) breaks with House Democrats on reconciliation.

Senator Menendez (D, NJ) being recalcitrant over spending bill.

He doesn’t approve of the spending bill’s change in Cuba policy (Via Dan Riehl):

:The Menendez rebellion was a jolt of political reality for Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Obama, signaling that the solidarity of the stimulus debate is fading as Democratic lawmakers are starting to read the fine print of the bills they will wrestle with in the coming weeks and months, and not always liking what they see.

[snip]

Menendez knew that his hard-line approach to Cuba was a minority view within his party, and that it was at odds with Obama’s approach. But he did not expect to discover a significant policy change embedded in the text on an appropriations bill. His policy aides came across the language when the legislation was posted on a congressional Web site.

“The process by which these changes have been forced upon this body is so deeply offensive to me, and so deeply undemocratic, that it puts the omnibus appropriations package in jeopardy, in spite of all the other tremendously important funding that this bill would provide,” the enraged son of Cuban immigrants said last week on the Senate floor. Menendez even slapped a hold on a pair of Obama nominees to draw attention to the issue.

If you’re wondering why a spending bill has in it a provision that would quietly change our Cuba policy, it’s really very simple: the Democrats want to change our Cuba policy, they control Congress, and they can thus put anything in the appropriations bill that they blessed well feel like putting in. “Appropriate” or “inappropriate” doesn’t really enter into it; what’s important is that they can do something, they desire to do something, and so they will do something.

The article also mentions Democratic efforts to keep subsidizing private student loan companies and farmers (at least, the ones in Nebraska and North Dakota). But that’s just ordinary pork from Ben Nelson and Kent Conrad; what makes the Menendez balk interesting is because it’s supposedly based on a moral objection. Continue reading Senator Menendez (D, NJ) being recalcitrant over spending bill.

Senate Budget Bill held up in Congress, delayed until Monday.

We may be at wafer-thin mint time.

Repeat: “may.” Congress has an impressive talent at somehow managing to find new and exciting ways to spend your money.

Senate bogs down over $410 billion spending bill

WASHINGTON – The Senate, tied up in a fight over a huge omnibus appropriations bill, will have to pass a stopgap spending measure Friday in order to avoid a partial government shutdown.

[snip]

The huge, 1,132-page spending bill awards big increases to domestic programs and is stuffed with pet projects sought by lawmakers in both parties. The measure has an extraordinary reach, wrapping together nine spending bills to fund the annual operating budgets of every Cabinet department except for Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.

The measure was written mostly over the course of last year, before projected deficits quadrupled and Obama’s economic recovery bill left many of the same spending accounts swimming in cash.

And, to the embarrassment of Obama — who promised during last year’s campaign to force Congress to curb its pork-barrel ways — the bill contains 7,991 pet projects totaling $5.5 billion, according to calculations by the GOP staff of the House Appropriations Committee.

Continue reading Senate Budget Bill held up in Congress, delayed until Monday.