Goodbye 111th Congress and with that, I will close down this blog. Even with all the frustration and filibusters, the Democratic Congress and the President managed a legislative output we haven’t seen since the LBJ days. I’m sure there are other sites out there that catalog all the remarkable legislation passed and the session even ended with a bang with a lame duck session that was just amazing.
With Republican control of the House in the next session, that will make progressive legislation harder to pass but that doesn’t mean all progress has to stop. There are opportunities for bipartisan compromise as well as the President’s executive authority and the judicial appointments that can make the judiciary a fairer body that upholds the law while also accepting a compassionate view – that one strike doesn’t mean you’re out, it just means a chance for redemption.
The Senate is still discussing the debt limit although they may get that done early this week. We will also have the State of the Union this Wednesday, and the main theme of the President’s address will be job creation.
On health care, the House and Senate are still working out a plan that can clear both chambers without having to go through the filibuster. What they may do is for the House to pass the Senate bill while the Senate will pass a reconciliation bill with the negotiated fixes in tandem. The situation is in flux and may collapse but I think they’ll come up with a plan similar to what’s been proposed. They could also pass the bill in chunks but it’ll take forever for the individual parts to clear the Senate where members already want to focus on jobs. Unless they want the bill to collapse, the first scenario is the best way forward for health care and finish this agenda item for the time being.
Oh and budget reconciliation bills only allows for 20 hours of debate by statute so if they do the House + Senate reconciliation strategy, the Senate won’t take too much time on it. Go for it Congresscritters!
The Senate is back in session and they will discuss raising the US debt limit. There’s also nominations to discuss this week. Most attention will be placed on the MA special election happening tommorrow.
The Coakley campaign is running an ad right now spotlighting President Obama’s support for her candidacy.
Last week until the Senate comes back from recess. In the meantime, the political world is looking at Massachusetts where the race for Sen. Kennedy’s Senate seat is tighter than expected. Public Policy Poll (PPP) remarkably found the Republican Scott Brown up by 1 in their latest poll … A Republican up by 1 … in Massachusetts, hmmm. In another poll though, a Boston Globe/University of New Hampshire (UNH) poll found the Democrat, Martha Coakley, up by 17.
Like Douglas Adams once wrote, Don’t Panic! I expect this race to be like the Kennedy vs.Romney race in 1994 where it looked to be a tight race but the Democrat won handily. However, the one thing that should never happen is for the Democrats to be complacent in this race, and also, Martha Coakley should go after Scott Brown’s reactionary record. Once that’s done, the teabaggers can go back to blaming ACORN for another loss.
They’re still in recess. The Senate will be back in session on Jan. 19th with a pro forma session on Jan. 5th. But Jan. 19th is basically when things will get moving again. When they do get back, they plan to discuss an increase to the public debt limit, which shouldn’t take long.
The Senate will not be in session since they are in their holiday recess. Once the Senate does go back in session, it’ll be the second session of the 111th Congress. For now, I don’t know if there’s going to be a lot of Senate news this week, but all this week I’ll look at the next items on the agenda and see what their current state is. Stay Tuned!
We are in the fourth week of health care reform this week, but the end is in sight. Sen. Reid plans to pass the bill by Christmas in order to get the entire health care reform legislation signed by President Obama by his first State of the Union. Those already looking forward to the next items on the agenda (especially since they’ve been doing health care since June) should look forward to a jobs bill and probably financial regulatory reform as the next bills up for debate.
You know what else is happening this week – Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Really though, all I want for Christmas is filibuster reform.
The political scientist Barbara Sinclair has done the math. In the 1960s, she finds, “extended-debate-related problems” — threatened or actual filibusters — affected only 8 percent of major legislation. By the 1980s, that had risen to 27 percent. But after Democrats retook control of Congress in 2006 and Republicans found themselves in the minority, it soared to 70 percent.
Ridiculous (and filibuster reform is actually doable through two procedural maneuvers with 51 votes – the nuclear option or a change of procedural rules at the beginning of a legislative session – so long as there’s political will to do it). The Senate is dysfunctional and it’s time to bring back majority rule with minority input.
Health Care is going into it’s third week and there’s now a stand off with Sen. Lieberman. The Senator from Connecticut is threatening to vote for a filibuster if the triggered public option and the Medicare Buy in for uninsured 55-64 year olds are not eliminated from the bill. While the triggered public option will be no great loss due to the likelihood that it will never trigger, the Medicare Buy in should be saved. It’s a good provision and many uninsured and unemployed older people have a harder time finding work and thus health insurance. I’m very disappointed in Mr. Lieberman.
We are also awaiting the CBO score this week and many Senators will use the score as a factor or major factor in their vote.
In other news, the omnibus spending bill passed the Senate yesterday. It contains all the remaining appropriations except for the Defense Appropriations bill. My favorite part in the omnibus is the 2.5 billion dollars appropriated to high speed rail, which brings the total expenditure for high speed rail initiatives in the US to 10.5 billion dollars for Obama’s first year. The only relatively high speed line in the US is the Acela and even then it needs major work for it to be truly high speed. The stimulus, the new appropriations, and more money in the future will expand the rail network to other parts of America and encourage sustainable growth and increased jobs due to all the new construction and the people who will build and operate this new industry. Here’s California’s high speed rail plans:
More health care reform this week. Speaking of which, Liberal and moderate to conservative members of the Democratic caucus are huddling to try to find a way to a compromise that is acceptable to everyone and let the bill out of the Senate. An idea seeming to gain traction is a modified SHOP Act idea that lets the Office of Personnel Management, the same entity that administers the health plan of federal employees including members of Congress, to negotiate on behalf of the unemployed and small businesses. The plans offered would be private options as is currently offered to federal employees. I could live with it but that means more work will have to be done in the future for more health care reform because this is not a public option. The Senate wants the bill done by Christmas according to current estimates.
Also, it’s looking increasingly likely the jobs bill will become the next major debate after health care reform. The Obama Administration looks to be using TARP bailout money to bailout Main Street by using that money for the new jobs bill. Most of the TARP Money lended to bailed out banks is coming back resulting in a slight loss rather than a total loss as was feared.
The Treasury Department expects to recover all but $42 billion of the $370 billion it has lent to ailing companies since the financial crisis began last year, with the portion lent to banks actually showing a slight profit, according to a new Treasury report.
The new assessment of the $700 billion bailout program, provided by two Treasury officials on Sunday ahead of a report to Congress on Monday, is vastly improved from the Obama administration’s estimates last summer of $341 billion in potential losses from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. That figure anticipated more financial troubles requiring intervention.
The officials said the government could ultimately lose $100 billion more from the bailout program in new loans to banks, aid to troubled homeowners and credit to small businesses.
Get that jobs bill passed. Reducing the unemployment rate and getting Americans back to work should be priority number 1 along with health care reform. But the jobs bill should have a vision especially when it comes to infrastructure and that means the US must move to a multi-modal infrastructure of roads, pedestrian friendly infrastructure, and transit to move away from reliance on fossil fuels, mitigate air pollution, and stop global warming.
This week will be the start of the debate on the Health Care Reform bill of course. How quick the debate lasts depends on how fast they can come up with a compromise on the public option, but this needs reminding, it should be a true compromise and not just Sen. Snowe and the conservaDems dictating policy.
Sen. Reid and the Senate Democratic Leadership expects multiple Saturday sessions to finish the bill in time for Christmas and the Holiday recess especially if Republicans pull obstructionist tactics, which they probably will. You can watch the debate live on CSPAN 2 or online.
