Tag: congress

Congress backstabs POTUS on recess appointments.

It seems a bit odd that Senate Democrats have agreed to use a rules technicality to prohibit the President from making any recess appointments between now and the election – particularly since Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL) seemed to be suggesting earlier this week that a recess appointment for blocked OMB nominee Jacob Lew would be possible if the hold on his nomination was still active.  None the less, the prohibition is now in effect: and in exchange, the Republicans gave up…

…nothing.

No, really: as near as I can tell, we gave up nothing at all.  All the GOP had to do was threaten to throw some pending nominations back to the White House for resubmission, and the Democrats simply folded like a cheap suit; thus making it impossible for the President to do one of the few things that he can do to mollify his base right now.  This was pretty craven of Reid and his cadre; not that I’m objecting, but I was under the impression that the Democratic party controlled both the legislative and the executive branches of government these days. I mean, I’ll be expecting this gambit maybe next year (or maybe in 2013, or whenever is the next time where the GOP controls Congress but not the White House), but having it happen right now is a bit odd.  Very welcome, but odd.

Moe Lane (Crosspost)

PS: We would have traded something for this, probably.  Being able to stop recess appointments would have been an opportunity worth bargaining for.  So… thanks?

#rsrh The choice, summarized.

Republicans (H/T: Bearing Drift, The Other McCain):

ABC News has learned that the House Republican Leadership plans to unveil its legislative agenda Thursday morning in Sterling, Virginia. House GOP sources say members of GOP leadership, including Minority Leader John Boehner, will make the announcement after a small business roundtable at a local hardware store.

“[The agenda] will be the result of the months-long process we’ve been engaged in dubbed ‘America Speaking Out’ in which we asked Americans what their top priorities are,” a GOP leadership source tells ABC News. “What we heard from Americans are that their top priorities are jobs, spending, health care, national security, and changing how Congress works. This will be reflected in the agenda.”

Democrats (H/T: Hot Air):

House leaders are considering adjourning as early as the end of this week, which would give lawmakers five and a half weeks to campaign before the Nov. 2 election but could also leave them exposed to allegations that they didn’t finish their work in Washington.

The House hasn’t adjourned before Sept. 30 in an election year since 1960.

One comment: it’s not an allegation that the Democrats didn’t finish their work in Washington. It’s objective reality. WHERE IS THE BUDGET?

‘Revolution in the air,’ forsooth.

Today’s conservative pick-me-up of liberal gloom and despair comes from Brent Budowsky, whose I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-the-blackest-irony piece in the Hill (called “Revolution in the air:” again, forsooth) will provide you with a piquant, yet filling, compliment to your coffee-and-beverage. Budowsky has come to the realization that a: there is an epic-level anger out there with the people running things into the ground and b: everybody is extremely aware that the Democrats are the ones running things into the ground, and he’s almost as angry with the Democrats for putting him in this spot as he is with the Republicans for not having the common courtesy of killing our families, then ourselves, in a mass suicide cult. Budowsky has a solution, of course (these guys always have a ‘solution’): he thinks that the Democrats “should cancel the week of recess before Labor Day, go to the floor of Congress and fight for American jobs, rally the party base, and go to the country with a campaign worthy of the Democratic Party.”  And then they can ride their Magical Pretty Space Princess Unicorns across the land and transform all those naughty Unemployments into Goodjobs with their Rainbow Sunshine Keynesian Wands!

Oh, wait, this is Earth. So what the Democrats will do instead is hide from their constituents, blame everything on George W. Bush, and get shellacked in November by a voting public ready to have adults with a functioning spine back in charge of fiscal policy.

Well, that works too.

Moe Lane Continue reading ‘Revolution in the air,’ forsooth.

Perfect storm on killing tax cuts?

This is passing “institutional cowardice” and is rapidly approaching the status of “blackmail threat:”

Democratic leaders are likely to punt the task of renewing Bush-era tax cuts until after the election.

Voters in November’s midterms will thus be left without a clear idea of their future tax rates when they go to the polls.

I can just see the slogan, too.  “Vote Democratic, or we’ll burn the country down.  Giggling.” Continue reading Perfect storm on killing tax cuts?

DISCLOSE Act passes the House.

Elections have consequences – and here’s one, now.

Thursday, the House of Representatives approved the bill 219-206, with 36 Democrats and 170 Republicans in opposition to the measure, which was written by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this year, and New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who led the Senate Democrats’ campaign panel in 2008.

The bill is full of draconian restrictions on individual political speech expressed via corporations, but gives privileged status to the Democrats’ union masters. A provision pushed by Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. Bob Brady, for example, allows unions to transfer unlimited funds among affiliated groups to pay for political ads with no disclosure whatever. That makes campaign funding more transparent?

Continue reading DISCLOSE Act passes the House.

‘Mad Ducks’ should refill their Zoloft prescriptions.

Loathe as I am to link to Mickey Kaus* until after the California primary is over, the fact remains that I saw this Fred Barnes WSJ article via his site (H/T: Instapundit):

Washington has never been held in lower esteem by Americans than it is today. Yet those in control of Washington—President Obama and congressional Democrats—are bent on enacting a series of sweeping domestic policy changes this year that have one thing in common: They are unpopular, in whole or in part.

This is unprecedented and a bit weird too. A revival of civility and an end to the ugly political polarization in Washington—goals stressed by Mr. Obama in his presidential campaign and again last Saturday in a speech at the University of Michigan—won’t be furthered by passage of an unpopular agenda. A more likely result is years of partisan resentment and bitter fighting over efforts by Republicans to repeal the unwanted policies.

Mickey calls this a ‘mad duck’ kind of situation, and while I give him points for partisan consistency (Mickey’s solution is to limit Republican wins, in order to keep the Democrats from being too insecure) he is nonetheless displaying partisan thinking. To put it simply: any Democratic Member of Congress who signs off on this in 2010 after winning re-election will have a very miserable 112th Congress. Any Democratic Senator who signs off on this while being up for re-election in 2012 will have to explain that to the voters, more or less constantly.

Are you paying attention to that, Jeff Bingaman? Sherrod Brown? Bob Casey? Kent Conrad? Amy Klobuchar? Herb Kohl? Claire McCaskill? Ben Nelson? Bill Nelson? Debbie Stabenow? Jon Tester? Jim Webb?  – Because we are.

Moe Lane

Continue reading ‘Mad Ducks’ should refill their Zoloft prescriptions.

The end of the ‘Taranto Principle?’

Short answer: No.

Jim Tarnato, that is: it’s defined as “the press’s failure to hold left-wingers accountable for bad behavior merely encourages the left’s bad behavior to the point that its candidates are repellent to ordinary Americans.”

True.

Anyway, Jim notes this passage as a possible rebuttal to said principle:

“Democrats got a heads-up,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster with dozens of clients in the midterm election. “They can raise more money, do opposition research against opponents, do focus-group testing on how to beat these guys. … In 1994, they had very little notice a wave was coming.”

…it’s very interesting: every story I read about the looming disaster for Congressional Democrats takes the time and wordcount to make sure that the reader knows that, by gum, the Democrats have a head’s-up about the possibility of another 1994! – And then they never actually do anything to stave off that possibility.  There are somewhere around forty-five competitive, Democratic-held House seats where the Cook PVI is R+3 or better; and those seats are competitive because the Democrats jammed through unpopular stimulus and health care bills, not in spite of.  And they will become even more competitive if the Democrats try to jam through cap-and-trade and immigration reform, too.  Which they probably will.  In short, it’s like the Democrats’ response to looking up and seeing a sixteen-ton cartoon weight descending on their heads is to cower under an umbrella.

And everybody reading this knows how that cartoon ends.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Eric Massa and the mock-feudal Congress.

Heh.  I’ve been referring to Congress as being barons and petty-nobility – very, very, very petty nobility – for some time; but it’s nice that other people have noticed. Eleanor Clift (via Instapundit):

It took just three weeks for upstate New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa to resign his seat in Congress after accusations surfaced that he had sexually harassed members of his staff. The long trail of unwanted and often abusive advances that preceded his resignation—and why his alleged behavior went unreported for so long—highlights how much Capitol Hill is a feudal society, with each member the lord of his or her own territory.

The kicker is, it’s not even a proper feudal society.  A proper feudal society would have seen Speaker Pelosi’s office burned down by her own vassals for her willful sparking of a peasant revolt in said vassals’ fiefdoms.  Feudal societies were rambunctious affairs; the average French or English baron would have sneered at the milksops that blindly and meekly followed the Democratic party leadership’s charge over a cliff.

And let’s not get started on the Germans.

Moe Lane

PS: regarding the specifics, somebody should tell these people that the droit du seigneur – the sexual ‘rights’ of a feudal lord over his vassals – DIDN’T ACTUALLY EXIST.  Ah, the Democratic party: not only do they not learn from history, many of them didn’t actually take it in the first place…

Crossposted to RedState.

Congressional Democrats muck up Congressional insurance coverage.

Not. OUR. Fault.

Via Just One Minute (indeed…) comes your feel-good story of the day: Congressional Democrats have managed to thoroughly muck up Congress’ own health care coverage, particularly for new hires. Both staffers and legislators:

The law apparently bars members of Congress from the federal employees health program, on the assumption that lawmakers should join many of their constituents in getting coverage through new state-based markets known as insurance exchanges.

But the research service found that this provision was written in an imprecise, confusing way, so it is not clear when it takes effect.

The new exchanges do not have to be in operation until 2014. But because of a possible “drafting error,” the report says, Congress did not specify an effective date for the section excluding lawmakers from the existing program.

Under well-established canons of statutory interpretation, the report said, “a law takes effect on the date of its enactment” unless Congress clearly specifies otherwise. And Congress did not specify any other effective date for this part of the health care law. The law was enacted when President Obama signed it three weeks ago.

Continue reading Congressional Democrats muck up Congressional insurance coverage.

Bundling payoffs to pass health care: HOPE! CHANGE!

If this was happening in some other country, I would be laughing hysterically right now.

Taking a new position, Axelrod said the White House only objects to state-specific arrangements, such as an increase in Medicaid funding for Nebraska, ridiculed as the “Cornhusker Kickback.” That’s being cut, but provisions that could affect more than one state are OK, Axelrod said.

That means deals sought by senators from Montana and Connecticut would be fine — even though Gibbs last week singled them out as items Obama wanted removed. There was resistance, however, from two committee chairman, Democratic Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and Chris Dodd of Connecticut, and the White House has apparently backed down.

Since it’s happening in mine, I’ll merely note that there is no reason that anybody should be surprised by this (Hot Air certainly isn’t). The President does not have a name for keeping his promises. Also: if you gave money to the Democrats in the last decade because you wanted less corruption and favor-trading in Congress… well, let’s just say that all sales are final. And you aren’t getting any of that money back any time soon.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.