Tag Archives: US House

national news

Trump politicizes suffering of fed employees

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What in the name of human decency — which he doesn’t possess — is Donald J. Trump trying to assert with this latest idiotic declaration?

He said this week that “most federal employees are Democrats” and said they are those who are most concerned about the partial shutdown of the federal government. They have been furloughed, not getting paid, which I guess in Trump’s mind means that congressional Democrats are more liable to support those workers because of their party affiliation. Is that what he means?

The president’s idiocy prompts a couple of questions.

What difference does it make which party they identify with? Why does it matter whether they’re mostly Democrat, mostly Republican, mostly socialist, communist or Whig?

Is the president trying, therefore, to lay all the blame on Democrats as a way to deflect the criticism that is coming directly at him and those in his political party?

Let’s recall briefly an element that preceded this shutdown.

Senators voted 100 to zero to approve a spending bill that did not contain money for The Wall. They sent the bill to the House of Representatives, where House leaders agreed in principle to send the measure to the president’s desk. Then the president got a snootful from right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh and right-wing gadfly Ann Coulter. Then Trump changed his mind and told GOP lawmakers that he wouldn’t sign the bill after all.

Now this goofball is fabricating some phony scenario that suggests that “most federal employees are Democrats.”

I have to ask: To what end does he intend to take this ridiculous assertion?

national news

Government shutdown: it’s on Trump

Here is where we stand with this partial shutdown of the federal government.

Donald Trump and some right wingers in Congress want to erect a wall along our southern border. The rest of Congress won’t give them the money to build that wall, which Trump pledged would be paid by Mexico.

The government has shuttered some agencies. All’s quiet in many federal agencies, along with Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, Democrats and some reasonable Republicans are blaming Trump for this monumental government cluster-flip.

But as Politico reports, Trump is OK with that.

I want to stipulate something that I believe is the reason behind this shutdown: It’s all about whether to build the wall; it has nothing to do with the overall scheme of “border security.”

Democrats want to secure the border as much as those rigid Republicans. They just don’t to erect a wall. They keep saying they support border security in the form of implementing and augmenting existing technology. Thus, they are willing to appropriate a sum of money that pays for those techniques.

That’s not good enough to suit Trump, members of that far right coalition called the Freedom Caucus and a handful of Fox News commentators and right-wing radio talkers. Indeed, it was the radio blowhards who got to Trump and persuaded him to renege on the pledge he made to Senate Republicans to sign the bill they approved.

That, my friends, is the sign of a mealy-mouthed weak leader. Yet the president pretends to be a strongman when in reality he is a tool, a puppet being manipulated by the right-wing element of his political base.

This shutdown might last a while. Or, it might end if senators and House members can come up with a compromise that everyone — including Donald Trump — can endorse.

This is an unacceptable state of play in Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump pledged to take control of government, to “drain the swamp,” to “unite” a nation torn by political division, to make the “best deals ever seen.” He is an abject failure.

He told congressional leaders in the Oval Office he would be proud to take ownership of a government shutdown. He’s got one now. Trump seems proud, all right. He also is acting like an ignoramus.

Despicable.

national news, political news

Beto v. Bernie: Let the battle begin

A fascinating struggle is emerging within the Democratic Party between an old warhorse and a rising young political stallion.

It’s the Beto-Bernie brouhaha. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont — who’s actually an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats — is trying to fend off the surge of support being shown for Beto O’Rourke, the West Texas congressman who came within a whisker of knocking off Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2018 midterm election.

Let me be candid: I am not feeling the “Bern.” Sen. Sanders fought hard for the 2016 Democratic nomination, but fell short. He preached a one-page sermon: too few people have too much wealth and he wants to take some of that wealth away from the rich folks; he calls it “income inequality.”

O’Rourke’s message is good bit more comprehensive. He speaks to an array of progressive issues: immigration reform, education reform, environmental protection, and yes, income inequality.

I’m not convinced either man should run for president in 2020, but if given a choice, I’m going to roll with Beto.

Sanders is trying to undercut Beto’s surge.

As NBC News reports: The main line of attack against O’Rourke is that he isn’t progressive enough — that he’s been too close to Republicans in Congress, too close to corporate donors and not willing enough to use his star power to help fellow Democrats — and it is being pushed almost exclusively by Sanders supporters online and in print.

That is precisely another point that frustrates me about Sanders. He is unwilling to reach across the aisle. O’Rourke, who has served three terms in the House from El Paso, has shown an occasional willingness to work with Republicans rather than fight them every step of the way. We need more, not less, of that kind of governance in Washington.

Nevertheless, the intraparty struggle is likely to be just one of many to occur among Democrats as they struggle for position to battle the Republican Party’s nominee in 2020.

I was going to assert that Donald Trump would be that person. However, given all that has happened in the past two weeks or so . . . I am not quite as certain that the president be the one to take the GOP fight forward.

national news

Paul Ryan: big-time letdown

I had high hopes for Paul Ryan when he was dragged kicking and screaming into the speakership of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Wisconsin Republican reportedly didn’t want to become the Man of the House when John Boehner resigned his speakership and left public office in 2015. Ryan had to be talked into it.

He took the job. I was hopeful that this policy wonk, a serious young man who knows the ins and outs of public policy would be able to manage the House effectively and work to enact meaningful legislation. I had hoped he could work effectively with the Democratic minority in the House chamber.

Then I had hope that after Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 that he could resist some of the new president’s more bizarre impulses.

Well, he didn’t deliver the goods. He didn’t work well with the other party. He certainly didn’t resist the president. He became a Trump Man. Not a Republican Party Man. But a Trump Man. He became the president’s enabler.

Ryan ran on the 2012 GOP ticket for vice president. He and Mitt Romney lost that election to President Obama and Vice President Biden. He went back to the House, resumed his post as Budget Committee chairman. Then fate — and Speaker Boehner’s frustration with the TEA Party wing of his party — delivered him to the House’s highest post.

If only he could have shown a bit of spine as the Republican In Name Only president proceeded to hijack a great political party. There were faint signs of spine-stiffening, such as when he would offer mild criticism of some crazy Trump utterances.

But then he would roll over as Trump pushed through the House a tax cut that over time will benefit only the wealthiest of Americans.

Speaker Ryan gave a farewell speech today, bidding goodbye to the House where he served for two decades. He lamented the “broken politics” that afflicts the House. Uh, hello, Mr. Speaker? You helped break it.

I, of course, live far away from Janesville, Wis., from where Ryan hails. However, given that he managed the legislative body that approves legislation that affects all Americans, I have a significant stake in the job he did.

Thus, I shall declare that I won’t miss Paul Ryan.

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.

legal news

GOP facing a familiar set of impeachable standards

If it comes down to an impeachment of Donald J. Trump, many of the congressional Republicans who are defending him now will have to face down their former selves.

One of them is U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who in 1998 led the House impeachment team that brought charges against President Bill Clinton.

It was a time when then-Rep. Graham said that the House didn’t need to have a high crime and misdemeanor to determine whether a president had debased his high office. He made the case that President Clinton had debased and disgraced the office through his affair with a young White House intern.

It turned out that the GOP found a crime on which to impeach the president: perjury. Clinton spoke falsely to a grand jury about that relationship. House GOP members said that you just can’t allow a president to break the law.

If we now fast-forward to the present day we have another president who might have broken the law. He might have authorized illegal payments to two women to keep them quiet about sexual encounters he had with them.

Graham and other Republicans have reset the bar. It’s much higher now than it was when they had a Democratic president in their crosshairs.

However, even the president’s own lawyer — Rudolph Giuliani — says that Trump likely broke the law with the payments. Is that an impeachable offense? Will Republicans who once impeached a Democratic president for arguably an equal crime be able to do the same with a president from their own political party?

This is where we might be able to see what wires certain members of the House of Representatives.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need to see the final report from special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump keeps insisting that Mueller doesn’t have anything. We’ll just have to see about that.

national news

The Trump Story has turned into a stampede

I have sought to refrain myself from getting swept away by all the developments associated with the Donald Trump Story. It’s true but I won’t beg you to believe it.

The more I see and hear, the more I read and the more I try to understand it all, I am now of the opinion that this story has turned into a stampede that well could trample the president and those closest to him.

Three former top aides and friends — Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort — are facing prison time. They’re convicted felons. They are working, or have worked, in conjunction with the special counsel, Robert Mueller, who is investigating that Russian collusion matter.

Mueller is acquiring a mountain of evidence from all two of those men; the third, Manafort, has been caught lying to Mueller’s team.

Then we’re hearing reports of a leading tabloid newspaper burying stories about Trump’s relationships with at least two women to help him win the 2016 president election. We are hearing of allegedly illegal payments to those women. There might be campaign finance violations.

Meanwhile, the president cannot find a new White House chief of staff. He cannot fill key secondary positions within his staff. There are reports about his alleged “concern” about impeachment by the House of Representatives that in January flips from GOP to Democratic control.

I had hoped this story could wind down. That Mueller would finish his probe, tie a bow around it and present it to the public for our review, our analysis and our judgment.

Jiminy crickets, man. It’s getting more complicated, more complex, more controversial by the hour.

Donald John Trump is in trouble.

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

Impeachment: full of land mines, ready to explode

Our nation’s founders had plenty of flaws. They were damn smart, though, when crafting a governing document that sought to create a “more perfect Union.”

One of their nearly perfect notions was to set the bar for impeaching and removing a president quite high. It’s a two-step process.

The U.S. House of Representatives can impeach a president with a simple majority. Then it gets a lot harder.

The U.S. Senate would put the president on trial, but to convict a president the Senate needs 67 out of 100 votes.

That’s a high bar . . . by design.

Thus, I respect the presumed next House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to argue against impeachment. Why? Because the Senate seems to lack the votes to convict Donald Trump of anything the House would argue. Therefore, Pelosi — as shrewd a vote counter as anyone — isn’t going to put her reputation on the line by stampeding an impeachment proceeding through the House without some assurance that the Senate would follow up with a conviction.

Trump reportedly is telling aides he believes the next House — to be controlled by Democrats — will launch a bum’s rush toward impeachment in 2019. I am not so sure about that.

Pelosi is not going to follow the exhibit shown by another former speaker who whipsawed the House into impeaching a president. Newt Gingrich was speaker in 1998 when the House impeached President Clinton. The Senate acquitted Clinton on all the charges. Gingrich was left looking like a fool.

Nancy Pelosi does not want history to repeat itself.

national news

Welcome to the world of divided government

I didn’t realize the value of divided government until Americans had the bad sense to elect a patently unfit human being to be president of the United States.

Moreover, they elected a Congress dominated by politicians from the same party as the unfit president.

Two years on, the equation is about to change fundamentally in Washington, D.C. Republicans who controlled the House of Representatives are turning the gavel over to Democrats, who gained possibly 40 seats once all the ballots are counted from this year’s midterm election.

Republicans gained a couple of seats in the Senate, but their margin is still is pretty narrow.

Donald Trump’s GOP — which bears little resemblance to the party it used to be — now is facing a stern wall of resistance in the lower chamber of Congress. Democrats who’ve been insulted and denigrated for two years by the president now are going to control the congressional chamber where all tax and spending measures originate.

What’s more, they are now likely to start asking tough and probing questions about the Trump administration that their GOP colleagues were too chicken to ask when they controlled the House.

Do I want government to grind to a halt while Democrats exact their revenge on Donald Trump? Of course not. However, the president and his closest aides and advisers need to be held to account for the questionable actions that are being examined by, oh, special counsel Robert Mueller.

I don’t give a hoot about how all of this is going to affect Donald Trump’s agenda. For one thing, I don’t know what his agenda really is, nor where he intends to take the country.

I do care that Democrats are going to speak with a more significant voice on public policy and will be able to apply the needed checks on Donald Trump’s misplaced and misguided efforts to do whatever it is he intends to do.