Tag Archives: Congress

national news

Congressman goes from nobody to somebody . . . rapidly!

Matt Gaetz used to be a back-bench member of Congress from the Florida Panhandle. Few folks outside of his congressional district knew his name.

Then he does what a lot of back-benchers do: He says something quite outrageous and in a forum that is bound to gather maximum attention.

He tweeted a message that warns former Donald Trump friend/fixer/lawyer/confidant Michael Cohen about allegations of “girlfriends” that Cohen allegedly has on the side. Why this Twitter message now? Because Cohen is slated to talk publicly Wednesday before the House Government Operations Committee about what he knows regarding Donald Trump’s conduct as a businessman, politician and president.

Gaetz employed a time-honored scare tactic. Watch what you say or I’ll expose dirt on your background. President Clinton’s brother, Roger Clinton, did something similar two decades ago, threatening to expose naughty behavior among congressional Republicans if they proceeded with impeachment against the president.

Cohen is going to take center stage Wednesday in a drama that has been playing out for as long as Donald Trump has been president. Yes, Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress; thus, his credibility is being called into question. He’s not a good guy. He is facing a three-year prison term for lying to Congress.

However, for this congressional tinhorn — Gaetz — to toss out a horrendous accusation on the eve of Cohen’s testimony smacks of witness intimidation. If this were a legal proceeding, Gaetz would be indicted for committing a criminal act.

I do know this much: I intend to listen carefully Wednesday to what Michael Cohen has to say. The notion that he faces hard time in the slammer, it seems to me, might have this way of unleashing the truth-telling even in the most committed liars.

As for Gaetz, he ought to return to the end of the bench in the back of the room and keep his trap shut.

International news

‘Unhappy’ Trump should sign off . . . then move on

Donald Trump is far from the first governing executive to be “unhappy” with legislation that comes to his desk.

The president says he is displeased with the bipartisan deal that came out of Congress to enhance border security, keep the government running and allow all sides to get the heck off each other’s backs.

The deal provides about $1.4 billion to build portions of The Wall that Trump wants to erect along our southern border. It is far less than the $5.7 billion that Trump insisted on spending for The Wall.

Let’s get real here.

It’s all about ‘border security’

The president wants ostensibly to tighten border security. His insistence on The Wall is what has stymied progress in unifying the White House with congressional Democrats on the issue. The president keeps insisting that Democrats actually favor “open borders” and by association embrace increases in crime committed by criminals who come into this country illegally.

That is pure nonsense. Demagoguery at among its worst. It is phony, bogus and ridiculous.

Trump has been contending in recent hours that we’re already building The Wall along our border. He even urged rally crowds to change their chants from “Build the wall!” to “Finish the wall!” Clever, yes?

Whatever. Trump’s unhappiness with the deal appears to rest solely on the money it doesn’t contain. Does it boost border security? I believe it does. It allocates money to erect more barriers, but also enables the deployment of more technology, more border personnel.

Isn’t that all aimed at the same thing, to make our country more secure? What in the name of national security is wrong with that?

I’ll say again, Mr. President: Sign off on the deal! Let’s move on to all those other issues that need our government’s attention.

Hey, I’ve got an idea: How about climate change? Or gun violence? Or our electoral integrity? How about all of them . . . and more?

Donald Trump

It’s all about ‘compromise,’ Mr. President; sign the deal

I could swear on a stack of Bibles I heard Donald Trump say the word “compromise” during his State of the Union speech the other evening.

He mentioned it as one of the benchmarks he said he seeks to set as he and Congress look for ways to govern the United States of America.

So, we have a deal to avert a partial government shutdown. The deal contains some money for The Wall, but not the $5.7 billion Trump wanted. It contains some other perks and expenditures to stiffen security along our border.

Trump returned from his campaign rally in El Paso and said he is unhappy with what a bipartisan group of senators and House members cobbled together. He said he needed time to — cough, cough! — “study” the deal that has found its way to the White House.

Effective legislating almost always requires compromise, which means no one gets what they want fully. You have to give a little here and little there and then you come up with something that is mutually acceptable.

I believe that’s what we have in this deal. I wouldn’t consider it perfect, either.

However, it moves us along and gives everyone ample breathing room to consider longer-term repairs to whatever the hell it is that troubles them.

Sign the damn deal, Mr. President! You pledged to work toward a system of government that includes “compromise.” Here’s your chance to prove — for once! — that you’re a man of your word.

International news

No back-slapping, high-fiving on this deal, Congress

Wait for it. Members of Congress are likely to pat themselves on the back, toast each other with adult beverages over an agreement “in principle” they have reached that aims to avoid another partial government shutdown.

A bipartisan negotiating group has come up with a border security plan that provides some money for The Wall, but which falls a good bit short of the amount of money that Donald Trump insisted should be spent.

They announced the agreement tonight. They’ll draft the legislation Tuesday.

The president could torpedo this deal. He should think long and hard before he considers it.

Congress should avoid the back-slapping just because it came up with a deal that keeps the government up and running. This incredible sequence of events has been a terrible demonstration of how not to govern this great nation of ours.

The idea that we have a president who doesn’t know what the hell he is doing is bad enough. That we have a Congress that cannot craft a long-term budget that spares us this political melodrama only worsens Americans’ view of their government.

Yes, the president deserves the bulk of the blame for what we have witnessed, given his insistence on building The Wall. However, Congress isn’t full of political statesmen and women, either.

national news

John Dingell: RIP, dean of the House

I predict that after a certain amount of time has passed that some congressional critics are going to suggest that the late John Dingell was the embodiment of the need to impose limits on the terms of members of Congress.

I would argue that John Dingell embodied instead the best argument against such a restriction.

Dingell, a Democrat, served his Michigan congressional district for 59 years, the longest continual service in the history of the House of Representatives. He succeeded his father, who died in office. When he left office, Dingell turned it over to his wife, Debbie, who’s in the office at this moment.

Dingell served alongside every president from Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama.

What is most remarkable about Dingell is that he accomplished so much while serving in the House. He was far from just a placeholder, a backbench bomb-thrower.

He was a former board member of the National Rifle Association, he helped champion environmental legislation, he was a friend of labor, he sought to elevate government oversight in Congress, he supported civil rights legislation and turned against the Vietnam War in 1971.

What we need to understand about Dingell’s nearly six decades in the House is that the voters who kept re-electing him were satisfied with the representation he gave them. Had he run off the rails at any time during his lengthy time in the House voters would have taken matters into their own hands. They would have booted him out. They chose instead to keep John Dingell on the job.

Therefore, I stand by the assertion that Rep. Dingell is a testament against a foolish and unnecessary restriction on members of Congress.

national news

‘Checks and balances’ principle gets new life

I do not believe it is an overstatement to presume that those of us who watched acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s skewering on Capitol Hill has provides us with a harbinger of what Donald Trump can expect for the next two years.

Whitaker spent most of the day today in front of the House Judiciary Committee, which was conducting an “oversight hearing” on the Department of Justice. He got pounded. He stonewalled the committee in return. It was an angry day of recrimination.

Whitaker is leaving the Justice Department soon. William Barr will be confirmed soon as the next attorney general. Whitaker was hardly an inspired choice to fill in for Jeff Sessions, who Trump fired a few weeks ago because the former AG recused himself from anything to do with “The Russia Thing.”

Now that Democrats control the House of Representatives, their caucus has assumed committee chairmanships. I believe that Democrats, who became fed up with Republican resistance to asking difficult questions of the Trump administration, are seeking to release some of that pent-up anger. We saw it on full display today as Whitaker appeared before the Judiciary Committee.

I also want to propose that this is not a bad thing. The U.S. Constitution grants Congress a measure of power that is equal to the presidency; throw in the federal courts and you have three equally powerful government branches.

Democrats challenged Whitaker; Republicans on the Judiciary panel challenged Democrats, who pushed back hard on the “points of order” that their GOP “friends” were asserting.

It wasn’t a pretty thing to watch today as Whitaker and Judiciary panel Democrats clashed openly. We might as well get used to it, though, ladies and gentlemen. Indeed, once the special counsel finishes his probe of alleged collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and the Russian government, there likely is going to be even more rhetorical grenades being tossed.

It won’t be pretty. Then again, representative democracy is a damn ugly form of government. However, as the great Winston Churchill noted, it’s far better than any other governmental system devised.

Donald Trump, national news

If only he had pledged an end to insults and innuendo

Donald Trump sought to strike some sweet notes during his State of the Union speech, asking for an end to politics of revenge, seeking more cooperation and compromise and less confrontation.

If only the president had made one more pledge, one that I wish would come from his mouth. I wish he would pledge an end to insult and innuendo.

To my ears, those have been the hallmarks of Trump’s time as president. He continues to hurl insults at his foes. He denigrates opponents’ patriotism, their intellect, their motives.

He just recently said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a “danger” to the country. Why? Because she resists spending billions of dollars to build The Wall along our southern border; she pushes back on the president’s effort to ascribe certain motives behind why she believes what she believes.

Trump’s call for compromise and his plea to reject revenge is fine as far as it goes.

The coarseness of the current political debate is attributable directly to the president’s continuing use of insults and innuendo. I won’t suggest that he has caused the coarseness solely, but he at the very minimum helps perpetuate it by the manner in which he hits back at critics.

Trump’s friends keep justifying his crude language by citing his obvious lack of fluency in politic-speak. He doesn’t utter politically correct sentences, they say; the president speaks from his gut while “telling it like it is.”

Well, that’s their view. It ain’t mine. Donald Trump cannot respond without hurling a verbal brickbat.

That doesn’t make America great . . . again.

Donald Trump

There’s still that ‘elephant in the room,’ Mr. President

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Donald Trump’s second State of the Union speech reportedly went over well with most Americans, who told pollsters overnight they approved of what he had to say.

I was one of those Americans. The pollsters didn’t call me, but I’ll offer this unsolicited view: The president did hit a few good notes and I applaud him for hitting them.

  • Criminal justice reform is a big deal and I am glad to hear him insist on reforming federal laws that punish non-violent criminals too harshly. I was delighted that Gladys Johnson, whose life sentence in prison for a first-time drug conviction that Trump commuted, was there to receive bipartisan applause.
  • Infrastructure repair also is a big deal. We need to fix our crumbling roads, bridges and airports. How we pay for it is another matter, given that it’s going to cost well north of $1 trillion.

That’s about it in terms of supporting the president’s policies.

Trump called for an end to “partisan investigations.” Well, actually, I don’t consider special counsel Robert Mueller’s search for the truth behind allegations of “collusion” with Russians who attacked our electoral system to be a partisan exercise.

It’s an important one. Yes, the president is right to assert that we need unity at home if we’re going to assume our role as world leader. I’ll just offer this notion: Let the special counsel finish his work, allow him to reveal to the public what he found, let us discuss the findings openly and then we can decide what steps — if any — to take before we move on.

Some takeaways from SOTU speech

I won’t get into the body language chatter that has erupted on social media, such as the strange hand-clap given by Speaker Nancy Pelosi or the sitting on hands by congressional Democrats who now comprise a majority of the House membership.

I simply find the president’s pleas to be utterly lacking in sincerity. He says the right words, but I cannot get past the belief that he doesn’t actually believe what he says. Therefore, how can he expect the rest of us to buy into whatever message he seeks to deliver.

national news

They call it ‘executive time’?

Axios is reporting that Donald Trump spends a lot of what is being called “executive time,” meaning time off the clock, in the White House residence, doing something I presume other than reading briefing papers and intelligence reports.

This really isn’t a huge deal to me. I’ve noted already many times that I don’t even mind the president playing a lot of golf. What irks me about all that golf time is that this president promised he wouldn’t do it . . . and then he reneged on that promise!

Presidents are never off the clock. They’re only a radio message or phone call away from being summoned to respond to a national emergency; by that I mean a real emergency, not a phony one such as what Trump says is occurring on our southern border.

As for the executive time business, I  wish Trump would spend more time studying how to be president. He ought to learn about what the U.S. Constitution lays out in terms of executive power, and how the framers established Congress and the courts as co-equal branches of government. He doesn’t seem to know any of that.

Then again, maybe he is spending his executive time actually reading. Do you think? Nahhh! If he was doing it we certainly would know about it. He’d be firing off Twitter messages informing us of all the brainy work he is doing behind the scenes.

See the Axios story here.

Axios suggests he spends a lot of time each day reading newspapers and watching TV before he heads to the Oval Office, or the Cabinet Room, or the Situation Room to do the things that presidents do.

Still, the Axios story does reaffirm what many of us have noted all along, that we have elected a bizarre, unconventional and, um, “unpresidented” fellow as head of state, commander in chief and chief executive.

It’s all kinda weird.

national news

So, just how is the ‘state of our Union’?

Donald J. Trump is going to stand in the U.S. House of Representatives next week to deliver his State of the Union speech.

I really am wondering how he’s going to characterize the state of our Union. Will he declare it strong? Is it vibrant? Does our Union reflect his aim to “make America great again”?

Were the president to ask me about how I view the state of our Union, I would have tell him the harsh truth as I see it. The Union is broken. It is damaged badly. It needs repair.

I get that the economy is rocking along. We’re adding tens of thousands of jobs each month. Unemployment is at near-historic lows. The economic improvement has accelerated during the first two years of the president’s term. For that I give him due credit.

However, there is so much more that is fractured.

The president cannot possibly declare, given the state of our federal functionality, declare the Union to be strong. Oh, but he’ll likely seek to do exactly that. He might draw laughter from the Democratic side of the House chamber along with the cheers that will come from the Republicans.

Our federal government is on life support. Congress and the president cannot pay for it to run for longer than weeks at a time. They are haggling over The Wall. Trump is trying to keep a profoundly stupid campaign promise to build the thing; he is trying to foist the cost on you and me while ignoring the pledge he made dozens of times that Mexico would pay for The Wall.

He will declare that there’s a “crisis” on the southern border. There is no crisis. Indeed, the only crisis I can find is within the United States, where gunmen keep killing fellow Americans. Do you remember the president’s pledge that “this American carnage” was going to stop? It hasn’t ended. He will ignore that, too.

Well, I look forward to hearing from the president. I cannot support him or his agenda. I cannot condone the way he berates his national security team, or how he insults his foes and denigrates the media.

How will he frame the state of our Union, which in reality is as divided as it has been for the past two decades? It likely will bear no resemblance to what many millions of Americans perceive.