Tag Archives: Congress

national news

Democrats plan to provide Trump with an immediate test

Suppose this government shutdown lasts until the new Congress takes office in early January. Republicans will maintain control of the Senate, but Democrats take over in the House of Representatives.

The new House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is going to do the following: She is going to urge the House to approve a budget deal that doesn’t pay for The Wall that Donald Trump wants to erect along our southern border. The House will send it to the Senate. She will dare the GOP Senate majority to kill the bill the House will enact.

If the Senate discovers its spine, it well could send the bill to the president’s desk for his signature. Or, it might approve a different bill and the legislation could be hammered out in a conference to reconcile the differences.

Either way, Donald Trump is going to face a serious challenge when January rolls around. It’s only a few days away, folks.

Pelosi is no one’s fool. She is fully capable of engineering this House deal, of getting Democrats to hold the line and shoving this government shutdown issue squarely onto the GOP’s lap.

As the saying goes: Elections have consequences.

Put another way: Karma’s a bitch, man.

national news

A Christmas wish for our politicians

I am in the spirit of bestowing Christmas wishes. I won’t bore you with what I wish for members of my family . . . besides, it’s personal.

I’ll bore you instead with what I wish for those politicians who work for us, you and me. We are the bosses, folks, not the party leaders, or those who call the shots in Congress or the White House. Every member of Congress — as well as the president — answers to us. We call the shots.

My overarching wish is for our politicians to stop this idiotic game of shutting down the government every few months. They need to approve long-term federal budgets that include money for vital programs upon which we all depend.

This “continuing resolution” nonsense has to end. Now would be a good time to end it.

The federal government is shut down for some undetermined length of time. Some of it is still operating. However, the halls of Capitol Hill are silent. The national parks are quiet.

Sure, members of Congress are surrendering their paychecks while the government is shuttered. Not all of them have signed on to that pledge. The president doesn’t take a paycheck for whatever it is he does in the White House, so he’s already clear of that particular shame.

I realize this Christmas wish of mine is a pipe dream. It won’t happen, more than likely, while all sides seek a way out of the mess they’re in.

However, in the Christmas spirit, I offer this request with the hope that somehow, somewhere, in some fashion our employees — the men and women who do our bidding (supposedly) — can find a way toward a permanent solution to this idiocy.

So, I’m on the record. You work for me, folks. Get the job done!

national news

Yes, we’re in trouble, but it’s not a mortal danger

Count me as one of millions of Americans who is concerned about the state of politics, policy and public discourse in this great country of ours.

Do not count me as one who fears for its survival. We’re going to survive and perhaps even prosper once we get past what is happening at this moment.

The president of the United States appears to be in trouble. Investigators appear to be closing in on some serious misdeeds; they might include criminal charges leveled against Donald Trump and his immediate family.

The president is lashing out, blasting and smashing at his foes. He disparages our intelligence community, our laws enforcers, our duly elected representatives who happen to disagree with the manner in which he governs.

There might be an impeachment on our horizon. Or not.

The United States has endured many more difficult circumstances than what we’re enduring now. We’ve been through two world wars, a Great Depression, the Civil War, political corruption of all stripes and types. We have impeached two presidents already and damn near impeached a third, who then quit the presidency just as the impeachment was about to occur.

I remain an eternal optimist in the beauty of the government our founders created in the late 18th century. It contains some marvelous self-correcting mechanisms. We have elections every couple of years. We get to vote on House membership every other year; we vote on a third of the Senate at that time. We vote for president every four years and we limit a single president to two elected terms.

Congress can block a president’s impulses. The federal court system is empowered to rule on the constitutionality of congressional or presidential actions.

The system works.

Are we in dire peril over what may transpire in the coming year, or perhaps in the coming weeks? I don’t believe we are. I believe instead that the system will hold up. It will rattle and clank at times. Ultimately it will protect all Americans.

I am keeping the faith in the wisdom of those founders. They knew what they were doing.

political news

Elections always have consequences

I have long understood and appreciated the consequences that elections bring to those in public service.

It’s an accepted part of the electoral process. If the individual you want doesn’t get elected to any office, you then must face the prospect of the other individual doing something with which you likely will disagree.

It happened certainly in 2016 with the election as president of Donald J. Trump. He won the Electoral College as prescribed by the Constitution, but more of us cast ballots for his major foe than for the winner. Still, we are paying the consequences of the previous presidential election.

Well, here we are. Two years later and the president finds himself facing his own consequential electoral result in the wake of the congressional midterm election. The House of Representatives, half of the legislative branch of government, is about to flip from Republican to Democratic control; the gavel-passing occurs on Jan. 3 when Nancy Pelosi ascends to the speakership. Committee chairs will get their respective gavels, too.

Get ready, therefore, for hearings. Get ready for lots of questions that House Republicans so far have been  unwilling to ask of the president of their own political party.

The president appears to be in trouble. His GOP “allies,” and I use that term guardedly, have been reticent in seeking the truth behind the many questions that swirl around the president. They aren’t “friends” with Trump as much as they are frightened by him. He has bullied them into remaining silent.

The president won’t be able to play that hand with Democrats who are in charge of the lower chamber of Congress. Thus, it remains increasingly problematic for the president to do something foolhardy, such as fire the special counsel who is examining those questions concerning the alleged “collusion” between the president’s campaign and Russian government agents who interfered in our electoral process.

Yes, indeed. Elections have serious consequences. We are likely to witness them play out in real time . . . very soon.

national news

Democracy at its messiest best

The great British statesman Winston Churchill had it right when he described representative democracy as an inefficient, clumsy and messy form government, but better than any other form that had devised.

We’re witnessing it in its messiest form right now.

Congress and the president are locking horns over spending for a wall along our southern border. Donald Trump wants money to pay for the wall, although he initially promised he would make Mexico pay for it. That won’t happen.

Failure to pay for the wall would result in a partial shutdown of the government at midnight Friday. Merry Christmas, to thousands of federal employees who will not be paid for the time they are being forced to take away from work.

I am just one of those Americans who doesn’t quite understand why we reach this precipice every few months. Why in the world must we subject ourselves to this kind of melodrama? Why do Congress and the White House fail continually to provide long-term budgets that allow them to avoid this kind of brinksmanship?

The president has his constituency. Each member of Congress — 435 House members and 100 senators — answers to his or her own constituencies. They fight. They wrangle. They haggle. They argue. They threaten each other. They toss insults. And all the while the government that is supposed to serve all Americans is being kicked around like some kind of cow chip.

We don’t need to build a wall to secure our southern border. The president doesn’t seem to get that. He wants the wall because he made some idiotic campaign promise. Congressional Democrats want to secure the border through other means.

At last report, the White House indicates that Trump is backing away from the wall. The impasse remains.

Churchill was right about representative democracy. So help me, though, it doesn’t need to be this messy.

International news

Trump on the wall, who’ll pay for it and that shutdown . . .

Donald Trump is sending a dizzying array of mixed messages — on a single issue all by itself.

  • The president wants to build a “big, beautiful wall” along our southern border.
  • He insisted again today that Mexico is going to pay for the wall; Mexico’s government has said it won’t do as the president insists.
  • Democrats in Congress say that Trump’s insistence that Mexico pay for the wall takes Congress off the hook; there’s no need for Congress to worry about the money.
  • Thus, we need not worry about a government shutdown, which Trump insists will happen if Congress doesn’t cough up $5 billion to pay for the wall that he insists Mexico will finance.

Are you as confused as I am? If so, then I don’t feel so badly.

I cannot keep up with Donald Trump’s messy mix of messages.

national news

You go, Mme. Speaker . . . to-be

Nancy Pelosi has delivered a message to Donald Trump.

It is that the president of the United States is going to face a formidable adversary when the next Congress convenes in January 2019. The presumptive speaker of the House delivered that message in a face-to-face smackdown with the president in an Oval Office meeting the two of them had with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Oh, Vice President Mike Pence was in the room, too, but he had a “non-speaking” role in this idiotic and awkward exchange.

Pelosi, a California Democrat, informed Trump he doesn’t have the votes in the House to finance the “big beautiful wall” along our southern border. Trump sought to tell her that he does; she responded — immediately — no, Mr. President . . . you do not!

Pelosi is an expert at vote-counting, which was one of the hallmarks of her first stint as speaker from 2009 to 2011.

Trump, meanwhile, doesn’t know how the legislative process works. He has no background in congressional relationships. He doesn’t understand the importance of seeking to cooperate with the legislative branch of government.

The president’s modus operandi is to dictate his desires and then expect everyone to follow him over the cliff.

The new speaker isn’t wired that way. She’s tough and she is asserting herself as she should.

Let us remember something else: The U.S. Constitution stipulates that the speaker of the House is No. 3 in succession to the presidency. It’s good to remember that as we enter the new year — and a new era — in Washington, D.C.

national news

Schumer lures Trump into a shutdown trap

Donald Trump sought to negotiate a deal today with Congress two top Democrats: House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

What the president managed to do, though, is box himself into a corner. He did so all by himself. With just a little prompting from Schumer.

To which I say: Wow, man!

Schumer kept resisting any notion that the Senate would vote to give Trump approval for $5 billion to build a wall along our southern border. That prompted Trump to do an amazing thing.

He took ownership of a potential government shutdown if he doesn’t get his way on wall financing. Yep. That’s right. The president of the United States has seized the issue all for himself. He would be glad to shut down the government if Congress refuses to spend the money he wants to build the wall.

Oh, is Mexico going to pay for it? For any portion of the wall. Hah!

Congress and the president have a few days to work out something to keep the government functioning in its entirety.

The meeting at the White House didn’t go well. Trump stormed out, tossing papers. Pelosi and Schumer, meanwhile, have sent a signal that the president is going have to deal with an entirely different Congress — specifically the House — than the government branch that served as his lapdog for the first two years of Trump’s term.

Do you get the feeling that we’re heading for some wild water? We had all better hold on with both hands.

national news

Let the socialist congresswoman learn her way

I am amused and slightly baffled at all the attention a rookie member of the next Congress getting.

Ocasio-Cortez is the talk of D.C. Democrats love her; Republicans ridicule her. She’s a Democrat, having knocked off a well-known member of her own party’s congressional leadership in the New York state primary, then cruising to election this past month.

Ocasio-Cortez is 29 years of age. She’s a socialist, at least that’s what she calls herself. GOP foes are equating that to her being the daughter of Satan.

Her entry onto the national stage hasn’t gone all that well. She has made a gaffe or two along the way. Democrats are giving her a pass; Republicans are, um, ridiculing her. Oh, I already said that last part.

Ocasio-Cortez is a freshman lawmaker. She hasn’t developed any kind of congressional record on which to pass judgment. I intend to wait to see how she matures on the job. Maybe she’ll learn the difference between the various branches of the federal government.

As for this fascination with her, Democrats need to cool their jets; Republicans, meanwhile, need to quit piling on. They have enough troubles within their own party to make them squirm.

national news

Deal or no deal with Russians?

Michael Cohen, the one-time fixer for Donald Trump, has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a whole host of issues relating to whether his former friend had dealings with Russians.

He took an oath to tell the truth. He lied. He has admitted to doing it.

As nearly as I can tell from a distance, I perceive that members of Congress take truth-telling to them quite seriously, especially when it involves witnesses they summon to speak to them.

Thus, Cohen’s admission of lying to Congress opens up the question of impeachment. I am not exactly pushing for an impeachment of the president of the United States.

However, the possibility now seems a bit more likely in light of what the one-time Trump pal has admitted to doing. Cohen now has revealed that he lied to Congress, he contradicts the very point that Trump has made to Congress, that he had “no deals” in Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.

All of this opens up the gigantic door for House members — led by the new Democratic majority — to start asking some probing questions. Oh, yes . . . it also sends some clear signals to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is piecing all of this together while developing his final report on his probe into “The Russia Thing.”

One lies to Congress at his or her own peril. Even if you’re a member of the same party of those who run the show on Capitol Hill.