Tag Archives: Capitol Hill

national news, political news

Congress makes sausage-making look appealing

Watching the U.S. Congress stumble and bumble its way through legislating a budget makes the act of sausage-making look downright attractive.

The old saying about how legislating resembles sausage-making seems somehow kind of quaint. Turning a poor little piggy into something edible now doesn’t seem so grotesque.

Congress avoided yet another government shutdown on Friday. The House of Representatives approved a $1.1 trillion spending package over the objections of the TEA party wing of the Republicans and the leftist/progressive wing of the Democrats.

As President Obama noted, the legislation represents a classic “compromise.” You remember that, right? That’s when both sides give up something for the greater good. In this case the greater good amounted to keeping the government functioning.

Now the Senate is going to convene a weekend session and will begin to resolve its own differences. Meanwhile, senators are supposed to start processing some of the dozens of presidential appointments that have been languishing since the Beginning of Time.

That won’t come easily, though. The TEA party senators want to punish the president for that immigration executive action and want to defund it legislatively. Democrats, who for now still own the majority, won’t have any of that.

I totally understand that a representative democracy by definition is supposed to be messy and inefficient.

But this is taking messiness and inefficiency to new levels.

Isn’t there a better, less-heartburn-producing method of doing something so essential as approving a budget that keeps the government working for those who are paying for it?

 

 

national news, political news

Playing chicken once again with budget

Once more our distinguished Congress is playing chicken with citizens’ interests in the federal government.

They’ve cobbled together an “omnibus spending bill” that contains a lot of items tucked deeply inside.

Progressives are asking for a “no” vote on the $1 trillion budget because it has guts campaign finance reform efforts. Conservatives don’t like certain environmental protection elements of the budget.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/2015-gop-budget-back-up-plan-113498.html?hp=t1_r

But it’s all rolled into one big ol’ item everyone must accept as a whole — or nothing at all.

Rejecting the budget means the government shuts down — more or less — at midnight. Then members of Congress will spend the next few hours blaming each other for the mess.

Congressional leaders from both parties reportedly worked out the deal to prevent the shutdown. No leader on either side of the aisle wants the government to cease operating at full capacity. The only folks willing to take that leap appear to be liberals and those TEA party zealots on the other extreme end of the spectrum.

To be honest, I don’t know how much more of this gamesmanship I can take. For the life of me I cannot understand how we keep sending this clowns back into office even after they have taken us to the brink so many times in the recent past.

Pass the damn spending bill!

 

national news, political news, State news

Cruz becomes movement leader

It used to be said in Washington that the “most dangerous place in the world” was the space between U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm and a television camera.

Gramm has left public life and the owner of that title now happens to be another fiery Texas Republican, freshman Sen. Ted Cruz.

According to the San Antonio Express-News headline atop a blog post, the young senator has a movement that carries his name. Call it “Cruz conservatives.”

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/12/cruz-conservatives-abandon-gop-leaders-on-anti-obama-vote/

His ability to muscle his way past more senior Senate Republicans to the center of the political stage in less than two years is utterly astounding. The Cruz Missile exploded on the scene with his GOP primary upset in 2012 of Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, after which it became a foregone conclusion he’d be elected to the Senate from such a heavily Republican state.

These days, if you want some “good copy,” turn to Ted; the glib gab machine is loaded with it. If you want to know what the TEA party wing of the GOP is thinking, ask the junior senator from Texas.

Whatever became of the GOP’s senior pols, such as Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa? Sure, the party has its share of media hounds, such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Marco Rubio of Florida (I’ll throw Rubio into that mix, even though he’s been in the Senate only two years longer than Cruz).

To be fair, the Senate Democrats have their share of TV hogs. Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Claire McCaskill of Missouri come immediately to mind.

No one else — in either party — can match Ted the Canadian’s panache.

It used to be said that it took at least half of their first six-year term for senators to figure out the ropes, to earn their spurs and to find their way to the men’s room.

Not so with Ted. The young man is a force of nature — which makes me, at least, want to head to the storm shelter.

 

national news, political news

Two sides 'laying down arms'

The current Congress hasn’t distinguished itself in many positive aspects.

It has a chance in its waning days, though, to recover at least a smidgen of the esteem it has squandered with the American public. It can avoid a government shutdown.

http://thehill.com/news/225805-reid-backs-boehner-on-deal-to-avoid-shutdown

It appears that the Senate Democratic leader and the House Republican leader have struck an agreement to prevent the government from closing its doors.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker John Boehner are on the same page. Neither of them wants the government to close in retaliation for President Obama’s executive order on immigration.

They are working to craft a budget agreement that keeps the government funded past the Dec. 11 deadline. It’s all tied up in some spending resolutions linked together in that crazy tangle of continuing resolutions.

Both leaders are fighting insurgents within their respective bodies. TEA party Republicans at both ends of the Capitol Building are willing to punish the president by taking it out on all the rest of us who depend on government for various services.

Perhaps cooler — and wiser — heads will win the day as Congress gets ready to button up and spend the holiday back home with friends and family.

If only the coolness and wisdom returns to Washington after the first of the new year when Republicans are in charge of all of Capitol Hill. Let there be hope.

 

 

national news

Good riddance, Ms. Lauten

In the grand scheme of all the important issues of the day, a crappy Facebook post by a now-former aide to a Republican member of Congress doesn’t add up to much.

It’s still worth one more quick comment.

Elizabeth Lauten quit her job as communications director for Rep. Stephen Fincher of Tennessee. She had posted that snide and snarky Facebook commentary criticizing the two teenage daughters of the president and first lady because they made faces at a turkey-pardoning ceremony at the White House. They also, in Lauten’s mind, not dressed appropriately for the occasion.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/elizabeth-lauten-resigns-criticizes-obama-daughters-113228.html?hp=lc1_4

Well, she’s gone now. Hopefully she won’t find another job as a communications flack for anyone soon — if ever.

This story by itself isn’t all that important. It does, though, seem to illustrate the coarseness of the debate that’s poisoned our nation’s capital. Lauten used the criticism of Sasha and Malia Obama to stick the blade into their parents, who she said aren’t proper role models for their girls.

It was a preposterous assertion to make on its face. It also was ignorant, in that such messages can go “viral” in a heartbeat and Lauten, a young 21st-century woman, should have anticipated the consequences of putting something so cheap and petulant out there for all the world to see.

The debate in Washington often has devolved into this kind of cheap criticism.

And that’s the only way I can describe it.

Hit the road, Ms. Lauten.

 

 

 

national news, political news

That's the liberal caucus we have known

Well now. It appears that Democratic liberals in Congress are rising up to give their leaders as much grief as the tea party Republicans are set to do to their leaders.

Excellent! That’s the Democratic Party with which I came of age back in the 1960s.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/keystone-xl-senate-liberals-113009.html?hp=r1_3

The defeat of the Keystone XL pipeline in the Senate seems to have juiced up the lefty caucus on Capitol Hill. They’re set to do battle with the more, um, “establishment” members of the Democratic minority in both congressional houses.

It’s looking like we might have two intraparty squabbles erupting in Congress when the next body convenes in January.

The president is stuck having to deal now with two warring factions within each party. He’s bound to anger the extremists on the left, too.

As Politico reported:

“I will use whatever tools I have as a senator to protect the environment,” said Sen. (Jeff) Merkley, a liberal from Oregon. Asked if he could ever envision himself performing a Rand Paul-style talking filibuster in the Republican Senate, (Sheldon)

Whitehouse of Rhode Island replied: “Oh, of course. We will have more tools in the minority than we had in the majority.”

The liberals don’t like President Obama any more than the conservatives do, or so one might be led to think.

Which begs the question: If Obama is ticking off conservatives so much, how is it he can do the same thing to liberals?

A truism in journalism is that if you’re angering both sides of an argument, then you’re doing a good job.

Not so in politics.

Obviously.

 

 

national news

Government shutdown? That's the ticket!

1 Comment

The old saw about defining “insanity” seems appropriate.

It’s when you keep doing the same thing and hoping for a different result.

I believe some members of the congressional Republican caucus are certifiably nuts if they think shutting down the government is going to produce a positive result — for them!

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/the-anxieties-of-the-gop-majority-113113.html?hp=b3_r2

That’s the dilemma facing some GOP leaders as they ponder how to respond to President Obama’s executive order this past week on immigration.

Some of them believe shutting down the government, which could happen when the money runs out on Dec. 11, is going to produce sufficient payback for the “imperial” and “monarchial” actions of “Emperor Obama.”

Memo to the GOP: You have tried this before — and it blew up in your face!

There’s nothing to suggest that this time will produce a different result for the Republican majority that’s about to take over the Senate and will control the House of Representatives with an even stronger hold than it had prior to the Nov. 4 mid-term election.

House Speaker John Boehner doesn’t want a shutdown. Neither does incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. At least that’s what they’re saying. I believe them. They’ve both endured the agony of prior shutdowns before and they know how much Americans rely on government services to work for them. When they don’t work, then all hell breaks loose.

I’m wondering if Republicans, so split among themselves about how to govern, are wondering if this majority they’ve achieved on Capitol Hill will be worth it if they cannot figure out how to find unity among themselves.

Flash back a couple of generations to when the Democratic Party was split over how — or whether — to fight the Vietnam War. Their division cost them dearly through two presidential election cycles and gave rise to five Republican presidencies from 1969 to 1993.

There’s another axiom worth repeating.

It’s the one that warns that those who don’t learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

 

national news, political news

Thanks, Sen. Sessions, for taking impeachment away

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., says the Senate won’t impeach President Obama over his use of executive authority.

That’s awfully big of the senator.

Except for one thing: Impeachment doesn’t originate in the Senate.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/gop-senator-doesnt-plan-to-impeach-obama/ar-BBf7jQk

Impeachment begins in the House of Representatives. If the loons in the House have their way, the Senate gets to put the president on trial for whatever charges the House decides to bring against the president.

The Huffington Post reported Sessions’s remarks this way: “No, we’re not going to impeach President Obama. Or have a move to impeach,’ Sessions said at a Heritage Foundation event and then added, ‘The president has certain powers and we truly believe — and I think it’s accurate to say that he abused those powers.'”

Clear as mud, yes?

Actually, the president didn’t “abuse” his power as chief executive of the federal government. He acted within his constitutional authority. He merely riled his Republican “friends” to the point of apoplexy — which isn’t all that surprising, given the political climate that hovers over the nation’s capital.

I hope the idiotic fringe element of the House of Reps — along with their allies in the conservative mainstream media — takes Sessions’s declaration seriously and ends this nonsensical talk about impeachment. The new majority in both houses of Congress needs to demonstrate an ability to govern.

Remember?

 

national news, political news

So long, D.C. bipartisanship

Perhaps you’ve noticed during the time I’ve been writing this blog that I’ve called for more bipartisanship in Washington, D.C., and in Austin.

Well, my desire to see both parties working together for a change hasn’t changed, other than it might have been intensified. I was hopeful for a more bipartisan atmosphere in Washington after the mid-term election. The president said he wanted it. The new Republican majority leader said the same thing.

We can kiss it goodbye.

President Obama is going to issue an executive order today that will enrage his Republican “friends.” It will tinker a bit with immigration policy, deferring deportation for millions of illegal immigrants, as well as strengthen border security.

I think it’s a good plan, but the incorrect strategy. I wish he would wait. And no, the president is not plowing new ground with this action. He’s doing the same kind of thing on immigration that Republican presidents dating back to Gerald Ford have done.

Still, Obama is going to stick it right back in the eyes of Republican leaders in Congress. He said he’s “waited long enough” for Congress to act. Some in D.C. are talking about impeachment, which is a ridiculous notion on its face.

But the era of even pretending to want bipartisanship in Washington appears to be over.

It’s unclear what the outcome will be for the remainder of Barack Obama’s term as president. A friend of mine, an Australian journalist with a keen interest in American politics, mentioned to me in a recent email that he predicts a miserable and torturous slog toward the end of the Obama presidency. He believes — as I do — that Republicans are feeling emboldened now that they’ve taken control of the Senate and strengthened their grip on the House.

And the president’s response to that bold new opposition? Why, he’s digging in his heels and daring them to fight.

It need not end this way — but it surely will.

 

national news, political news

Yes, Mme. Leader, it was a 'wave'

Nancy Pelosi needs a reality check.

The House of Representatives Democratic leader says the Republican sweep in the midterm election didn’t constitute a “wave.” She said voters weren’t endorsing GOP policies and its agenda.

“There was no wave of approval for the Republicans. I wish them congratulations, they won the election, but there was no wave of approval for anybody. There was an ebbing, an ebb tide, for us,” she said.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/nancy-pelosi-112799.html?hp=b3_r2

As much as I hate to disagree with the minority leader, she’s wrong, mistaken, misguided, or just plain ignorant. OK, I doubt the “ignorant” part.

What happened Nov. 4 was a wave.

The GOP needed to flip six seats to gain control of the Senate; it got eight and is poised to win a ninth seat if the Louisiana runoff in December ends up in Republicans’ favor. Republicans also won 12 additional House seats, cementing their control of the lower chamber. The GOP also gained governorships across the nation.

That’s a wave, Mme. Leader.

All is not lost for Democrats. They have a decent chance in 2016 of getting the Senate back — but only if a couple of things happen.

First, the turnout has to improve dramatically from the dismal midterm turnout, which figured to work in Republicans’ favor. We’ll be electing a new president in two years and the turnout for these elections always dwarfs the previous election. That means more of the Democratic base — namely minorities and lower-income Americans — will be motivated to vote.

What’s more, a large number of Republican Senate seats will be on the line, giving Democrats a legitimate chance of picking off a few incumbents, or capturing seats that Republican incumbents will surrender through retirement.

Second, the Republican majority in both congressional chambers stands a fair chance of bungling this opportunity to actually govern. If they shut down the government later this month, or if they actually launch impeachment proceedings against the president over his use of executive authority, well, the blowback could be fearsome.

However, that does not diminish the importance of what happened just a few days ago.

Democrats got swept out of power in a political wave.