Tag Archives: Congress

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U.S.-Russia dispute gets even more tense

If you thought the U.S.-Russia tensions couldn’t worsen short of an actual shooting war between the nations, well, you thought wrong.

They just did on the basis of what appears to be the deliberate downing of a commercial airline carrying more than 300 passengers and crew, including one American.

http://news.msn.com/world/obama-condemns-russia-after-airliner-downed-in-ukraine

A Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 has been shot down in eastern Ukraine, allegedly by separatists allied with Russia, which seems to want to re-annex the former Soviet republic.

President Obama has condemned the Russians for supporting the separatists and it is now believed he is considering even more sanctions against Russia.

Of course, critics will contend the president should have prevented the shoot-down. For now, I’ll settle for encouraging the administration — and I would implore Congress to back Obama on this one — to tighten the screws even more against Russia.

The Russians are playing a dangerous game with their support of these separatists — who now have demonstrated that they will go to any lengths to make some political point.

Someone will have to explain to me, though, what on Earth was to be gained by shooting down a commercial jetliner with innocent and unsuspecting civilians aboard.

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Obama to GOP: Pass the supplemental

Here is where we stand on the border crisis erupting in Texas and elsewhere on the southern border.

President Barack Obama has met with Texas Gov. Rick Perry to discuss ways to solve the problem. Obama asked Congress for $3.7 billion in supplemental aid to provide greater border security and enhance detention and repatriation efforts. The president and the governor have reached broad agreement on what to do. The next move now belongs to Congress.

Will it approve the request or will it stall?

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/barack-obama-texas-immigration-108738.html?hp=t1_3

The president has called Congress out and asked lawmakers to do as he has asked and as they have insisted. Gov. Perry agrees with him — in what might one of the rarest political alignments in recent memory.

So get it done.

The president and the governor had what Obama called a “constructive” meeting. That’s a start. It’s good the men had a chance to talk things over and to settle on areas of agreement.

The border crisis didn’t just erupt overnight. It’s been years in the making. Obama now wants Congress to enact comprehensive immigration reform, which includes more border officers, greater enforcement tools, and streamlining of wait times for immigrants to have their cases resolved.

Politics, of course, gets in the way of everything.

First things first. The supplemental request needs to become law. Send it to the Oval Office and let the president sign it. Now.

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New majority leader sleeps on office couch

Recently, I read where the newly elected majority leader of the House of Representatives crashes on a couch in his Washington, D.C. office.

Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., does that — he says — so he can be available to fly home frequently to stay in touch with his constituents.

Just for the record, I’ve commented before on this practice. I long have considered it more of a stunt than anything else.

I still believe that’s the case.

Many members of Congress have professed to do such a thing as a way to be, oh, more “real” to the people they represent back home. My question always is this: Who among a member of Congress’s constituents does that kind of thing?

I keep trying to figure out how living out of a proverbial suitcase in Washington, D.C. makes one more in touch with the home folks than if he or she rents a cheap apartment, hangs his clothes up in a closet, pays some rent and then flies home when it’s convenient.

I wrote a column about that once long ago. I poked a little fun at U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C., for living like that. Of course, that was when he was married and was before he took off on that infamous and trumped-up “hike along the Appalachian Trail” when he in fact was in Argentina canoodling with his girlfriend.

A better example of living like your constituents is to move your family to D.C., enroll the kids in school, rent or buy a home and act like a regular family.

This business of sleeping on an office couch makes for snappy campaign-ad fodder that, I suppose, appeals to someone out there.

Me? I prefer my congressman to live like a normal human being.

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IRS controversy lives on … and on

The Internal Revenue Service controversy hasn’t yet blown up into a full-scale scandal, no matter how hard the right wing tries to make it so.

Now the talking heads and pols on the right are clamoring for a special counsel to investigate the matter. Recall, now, that it began with revelations that the IRS was vetting conservative political action groups’ requests for tax-exempt status. It does the same thing for liberal groups, too, but the conservative chattering class got all wound up over it and have raised a stink ever since.

Now there’s been further revelations about two years worth of emails that went missing from IRS honcho Lois Lerner’s computer. What the heck happened to them?

Republicans, not surprisingly, are trying to tie the IRS matter to the White House, even though no evidence has been uncovered that the IRS was doing anything under White House orders. They want to implicate the president — naturally! — for all this. So far they’ve come up empty.

A special prosecutor might be a good idea if Congress could limit the scope of his or her probe. The last notable special prosecutor hired was one Kenneth Starr, who was brought in to investigate the Whitewater real estate dealings involving President and Mrs. Clinton. Starr, though, went rogue and discovered the president had engaged in a tawdry relationship with a young White House intern.

The House of Reps impeached him because he lied to a federal grand jury about that relationship; the Senate acquitted the president at trial.

Is a special prosecutor needed in this case? I believe the GOP-led House of Representatives has looked thoroughly into this matter and has found zero evidence of White House complicity in anything involving the IRS.

That, of course, will not end the clamor.

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Good old days of 'pork' are gone

Remember when members of Congress used to actually boast about all the money they channeled to their states or their congressional districts?

Shoot, you had to be able to talk committee chairmen into approving money for your pet project. There always was something to give back in return, of course. A favor for the chairman’s district, or some help raising money for the other guy’s re-election campaign often was the kind of quid pro quo offered and delivered.

Those days are gone. That’s generally a good thing. I’m not fond of what’s been called “pork-barrel spending.”

A long-time U.S. senator, Republican Thad Cochran of Mississippi, is in trouble now partly because he used to funnel a lot of dough back to the Magnolia State.

It used to be a good thing. No more, folks.

Nope. The guy who’s favored to beat him Tuesday in the GOP runoff in Mississippi is Chris McDaniel, a tea party golden boy who stands poised to knock off another one-time “titan of the Senate.”

It’s not that Cochran is my favorite senator. Far from it. He tilts too far to the right for my taste. McDaniel, though, tilts even farther to the right, which makes the probable outcome in Mississippi a downer as far as I’m concerned. I’m figuring McDaniel would be one of those who’ll proclaim “my way or the highway” on anything that comes from the other side of the aisle.

A question looms in this race for Mississippi Republicans: Is it really and truly a bad thing to spend public money when it pays for public projects that are developed in your very own state? According to the New York Times, the answer for many Mississippians is “yes.”

It didn’t used to be this way.

Oh, the times they certainly are a-changin’.

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Ask first, strike later?

Very soon, perhaps, we just might be able to learn how sincere congressional critics of President Obama are in their stated effort to be accountable for key decisions.

The president is weighing whether to launch air strikes against the ISIS insurgents seeking to take control of Iraq. Obama’s critics in Congress, namely Republicans, want him to “make a decision,” lead, take charge. They also want to have a say in whatever military action occurs.

The president, meanwhile, is considering whether to ask Congress. Does he make the decision to strike, then ask, then proceed — hopefully with an affirmative vote?

Will Obama seek approval for Iraq strike?

Or does he just act as commander in chief of the armed forces and hit the Iraqi insurgents hard in an effort to stop their advances on our allies fighting on behalf of the Iraqi government?

If the president takes the initiative, he’ll be criticized for acting like a “Lone Ranger” and for ignoring Congress. If he decides to ask Congress for authorization, he’ll be criticized for being wishy-washy.

Which is it, ladies and gentlemen of Capitol Hill? Do you want the president to act, or don’t you?

If someone were to ask me, I’d say that if there’s a chance of crippling ISIS with air strikes, the president ought to order them — without asking Congress for its authorization. The way Congress has performed in recent years, House members and senators would take weeks just to get organized to debate and then vote.

In this armed conflict, time is not our friend.

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Take care of the home folks

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Memo to congressional incumbents all across this great land: You’d better pay careful attention to the people you represent in Washington, D.C.

That might be the most significant takeaway from U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning, Earth-shaking defeat this week in his race for Congress from Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/06/cantors-defeat-is-all-about-frustration-with-washingtons-old-ways.html/

I still haven’t grasped fully what happened back in Virginia this week, when political novice David Brat smoked Cantor by 11 percentage points in a low-turnout Republican primary election.

Still, I keep reading from those close to the situation that Cantor had become too much a Man of Washington and less of a Man of the People Back Home. Perhaps they grew tired of him standing in front of those banks of microphones among House GOP leaders. Maybe they didn’t think it mattered to them that their guy was part of the GOP caucus elite in the House and that he was in line to become the next speaker of the House when John Boehner decided he’d had enough fun.

OK, now pay attention here, House Armed Services Committee Chairman-to-be Mac Thornberry.

You’re going to win re-election this November from the 13th Congressional District of Texas. You’re also likely to become chairman of a powerful House committee when the next Congress convenes in January.

This is just me talking, Mac, but you’d better start scheduling a lot of town hall meetings and photo ops back home in your district well in advance of the next congressional election, which occurs in 2016.

If Eric Cantor — one of the House’s more conservative members — can get outflanked on the right by a novice, then it can happen to anyone, it seems to me.

It well might be that in this political climate, no member of Congress — no matter how powerful and media savvy they are — is immune from the kind of political earthquake that swallowed Eric Cantor whole.

Yep, that means you, too, Rep. Thornberry.

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Cantor loss deals blow to campaign reform

The thought occurred to me this morning after I awoke from a good night’s sleep.

U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning loss Tuesday to tea party candidate Dave Brat in the Virginia Republican Party primary Tuesday might have dealt a serious blow to the cause of campaign finance reform.

Why? Cantor outspent his Brat by something like 25 to 1 in a losing bid to keep his congressional seat.

Cantor was the well-funded superstar within the Republican Party. He had it all: looks, brains, the “right” ideology,” a gift of gab, ambition. You name it, he had it.

He also had money. Lots of it, which he spent lavishly to hold on to his House seat.

None of it worked. Brat is a college professor who’s never run for public office at any level.

Yet he beat Cantor by 11 percentage points in a shamefully low voter-turnout primary.

What happens, then, to effort to limit campaign spending? The argument always has been that money buys votes, that it buys people’s loyalty, and that it gives deep-pocketed donors more influence than Mr. and Mrs. Average Joe in setting public policy.

Dave Brat’s stunner in Virginia has just blown the daylights out of those arguments.

Let that discussion get fired up all over again.

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75 mph? Hey, no big deal

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My good friend Paige Carruth is going to flip when he gets wind of what I’m about to write next.

I’ve gotten used to driving 75 mph on our highways.

There. It’s off my chest. I feel cleansed already.

Why the change of heart?

Flash back to the mid-1990s. I was writing editorials for the Amarillo Globe-News. Congress had just been taken over by Republicans in that historic Contract With America election. The federal government had enacted since the 1970s a federally mandated 55 mph speed limit on interstate highways. We took the position then that lifting the limit was dangerous on a couple of levels.

The feds had enacted the speed limit to reduce fuel consumption; the Arab oil embargoes of 1973 and 1979 frightened us, remember? Reducing the speed in fact reduced our consumption of fossil fuels. What’s more, it reduced the number of traffic fatalities, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Congress didn’t listen to us. The 1995 Congress removed the federal mandate and gave states the authority to jack up the speed limits. Texas jumped all over it and the 1995 Legislature bumped the speeds up to 70 mph on interstate highways. I was mortified. I said so at the time publicly, in my column; the newspaper editorial policy suggested it was a mistake as well.

Paige — a retired West Texas State University administrator — has never let me forget that I am a slow-poke by nature.

Well, that was true then. It’s not so true now.

I’ve gotten used to the 75 mph speed limit. The state has since boosted its speed to 75 on many highways — interstate freeways and state-run highways.

Allow me this tiny boast: My wife and I today returned from a weekend in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, where we visited our granddaughter — and her parents. We left their home in Allen this afternoon at 1:40; we pulled into our driveway in Amarillo at 7:37 p.m. That’s less than six hours in what usually takes us a lot longer.

The 75 mph speed limit helped us set what we believe is a personal land-speed record.

It helps that one of our two vehicles is a Toyota Prius hybrid that gets stupendously good fuel mileage, which enables us to justify our willingness to press the pedal to the metal. It also helps that the little car — to borrow a phrase used by the late great Hall of Fame baseball pitcher-turned announcer Dizzy Dean — can really “pick ’em up and lay ’em down.”

I feel better already having acknowledged that driving a little faster doesn’t give me the nervous jerks the way it once did.

Let’s not talk about driving 80 mph, which is allowed on some sections of Interstate 10 downstate. And Texas 130, where they allow you to goose it to 85? I’ll leave that stretch of roadway to the fools.

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A 'higher standard,' indeed

The kissing congressman, Vance McAllister, R-La., needs to follow a “higher standard” than what he’s exhibited so far, says the chairman of the U.S. House Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.

Greg Walden, R-Ore., whose job is to ensure the election of Republicans to the House of Representatives, stopped short of saying McAllister should quit his House seat over the makeout video that was released showing him planting a wet kiss on a female staffer.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/04/walden-declines-to-say-whether-mcallister-should-resign-186791.html?hp=r15

I kind of believe McAllister also needs to answer another tough question: Is he — or is he not — the devoted Christian family man he portrayed in his campaign ads prior to winning election to the House seat in 2013?

There are several victims in this escapade. One is McAllister’s wife, the mother of the couple’s five children. Another is Heath Peacock, the husband of the staffer with whom McAllister was seen making out.

The husband said something quite interesting the other day in response to the blowback from the video. He said his marriage is essentially destroyed and then questioned whether McAllister actually was as devoted to faith as he presented himself in his campaign ads. Mr. Peacock said the McAllister he knew prior to the campaign was a “non-religious” individual and that McAllister told him he had found religion as a way to win votes.

So … which is it, congressman? Just what kind of individual did your constituents elect to represent their interests in Congress, to enact federal laws that apply to all Americans — even those of us far away from your congressional district?

Therein lies the reason the rest of the country should take an interest in what’s happening down on the bayou.