“Your Lazy Leaders”: Our Do-Almost-Nothing Congress
If you were to stroll by the House chamber today — or tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that — you would arrive at the ideal time to see what the lawmakers do best: absolutely nothing.
It’s another recess week for our lazy leaders. Oh, sorry: “Constituent Work Week” is what they’re calling it these days, as if lawmakers were filling potholes and making calls to Social Security rather than raising campaign cash.
By the time the Republican-led House returns next week, members will have been working in Washington on just 41 of the first 127 days of 2012 — and that was the busy part of the year. They are planning to be on vacation — er, doing “constituent work” — 17 of the year’s remaining 34 weeks, and even when they are in town the typical workweek is three days.
Good work if you can get it — but the behavior is doing quite a job on the rest of us. On those infrequent occasions the House is in session, the Senate, also enamored of recess, often isn’t, which helps explain why the two chambers can’t agree on much of anything.
To call this 112th Congress a do-nothing Congress would be an insult — to the real Do-Nothing Congress of 1947-48. That Congress passed 908 laws. To date, this one has passed 106 public laws. Even if they triple that output in the rest of 2012 — not a terribly likely proposition — they will still be in last place going back at least 40 years.
Doing nothing would arguably be preferable to what the House is actually doing. Lawmakers have staged 195 roll-call votes so far this year, which sounds like a lot until you realize that boils down to only about 60 pieces of legislation, including post-office namings. Among the 60:
-The Mark Twain Commemorative Coin Act.
-The Sportsmen’s Heritage Act of 2012.
-Legislation requiring the Treasury to mint coins commemorating the 225th anniversary of the U.S. Marshals Service.
-The World War II Memorial Prayer Act.
-The Permanent Electronic Duck Stamp Act.
The few pieces of important legislation of this Congress, such as the payroll-tax break and the debt-limit increase, have been passed by the Republican majority under pressure and duress. Republican leaders claim that a heavy schedule means bigger government, but the lax schedule has been challenged by no less a conservative than firebrand freshman Allen West.
This is not to suggest that the Democratic-controlled Senate is blameless. The Post’s Paul Kane went through Senate roll-call votes from this year and found that, of the 87 votes, the majority were on just three bills: 25 on the highway bill, 16 on the postal bill and 13 on an insider-trading bill. Sixteen others were on confirmations.
But there is a crucial difference: While a simple majority in the House can pass pretty much anything without agreement of the minority, the Senate is traditionally where bills go to die. Because the Democrats lack a filibuster-proof majority, they can bring virtually nothing to a vote without the blessing of the Republicans. Even with that high hurdle, the Senate has been able to slog through a number of bills in recent weeks: a long-term renewal of the surface transportation bill, renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, postal reform and a bill making it easier for companies to go public.
The last of those passed the House, too, but the other three are awaiting action. Of those, the failure to pass a long-term highway bill is particularly glaring. House Speaker John Boehner announced in November that he was proceeding with the bill, but so far he has been able to pass only a short-term extension. The House also has yet to act on the China currency bill the Senate passed last fall. Instead, House Republicans have voted repeatedly on budgets that will never be followed and similarly doomed attempts at repealing Obama priorities.
With such a lean agenda, filling even 41 days has been a challenge. House Republicans are now devoting full floor debates to bills such as H.R. 2087, “To remove restrictions from a parcel of land situated in the Atlantic District, Accomack County, Virginia.” That issue — allowing development on a 32-acre property — was so crucial to the Republic that lawmakers had five roll-call votes on the topic.
They dressed it up and called it a “jobs bill” — but really it was another bill showing that House Republicans aren’t doing theirs.
By: Dana Milbank, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, May 1, 2012
“The Definition Of Hypocrite”: Scott Brown Needs A Dictionary
Earlier this year, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) began criticizing his main Democratic rival, Elizabeth Warren, for being a “hypocrite.” The argument went like this: Warren makes a fair amount of money, but she’s an advocate for struggling, working families. Ergo, she’s guilty of “hypocrisy.”
The problem, of course, is that this line of attack is dumb, and reflects ignorance about the meaning of the word “hypocrite.” Warren has acquired a fair amount of wealth, after having been raised by a family of modest means and putting herself through law school, but she’s now one of the nation’s leading voices in representing the interests of the middle class.
Brown can agree or disagree on the merits of her beliefs, and he and his fellow Republicans are free to argue that fighting for the middle class is a bad idea, but when those with considerable personal resources look at the status quo — a growing class gap, wealth concentrated at the top, rising poverty — and want a more progressive approach, that’s admirable, not hypocritical.
And yet, Brown and his team are still confused.
Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown’s campaign accused Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren of “hypocrisy” after she admitted to not paying higher taxes than the state requires. […]
“The problem with running a campaign based on self-righteousness and moral superiority is that you had better live up to the same standard you would impose on everyone else,” [Brown campaign managed Jim Barnett] said. … “This is the sort of hypocrisy and double-speak voters are sick and tired of hearing from politicians, especially those who can’t keep their hands out of others’ pocketbooks.”
Let’s explain this in basic terms.
1. Elizabeth Warren makes a good living and pays her taxes.
2. Warren believes she and others in her income bracket should pay higher taxes.
3. Warren would gladly pay higher taxes, but she hasn’t made charitable contributions to the government treasury, and she hasn’t urged anyone else to make charitable contributions to the government treasury, either.
If Brown and his team think this is “hypocrisy,” perhaps Warren could use some of her money to send a dictionary to the Republican campaign headquarters.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 23, 2012
“The Minority Defeats The Majority”, Again: The Media Needs To Tell Readers The Truth About GOP Filibustering
The death-by-filibuster of the Buffett Rule in the Senate yesterday revealed, among other things, that the news media still has a ways to go in learning how to report on the era of the 60-vote Senate.
Most Americans, not surprisingly, do not realize that majorities can no longer get their way in the Senate. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that most key votes in the Senate were based on simple majority voting. Only since 1993 has constant filibustering been common, and only in 2009 did Republicans create a situation in which virtually everything requires a supermajority. Reporting in these circumstances is a bit tricky, but if you are going to tell the full story of a bill killed by filibuster, you need to report not just the outcome — a bill lost — but that majority sentiment was thwarted by a minority.
So, how did the major papers do yesterday? Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post had the word “filibuster” in their on-line front page headlines or teasers. The Post story does get the “F” word into her second paragraph, which is good. The Times story merely refers to the 60 votes the Democrats “needed” to pass the bill, without mentioning that the 60 votes were “needed” to break a GOP filibuster until way down in the eighth paragraph. Politico called it a “filibuster” in the second graf. But none of the three stories said explicitly that a minority of Senators defeated a majority.
CNN’s web story was particularly awful, reporting simply that “the Democrats fell nine votes short.” There was no mention of a filibuster, or that the “nine votes short” added up a 51 vote majority — so no one reading the story could deduce that a majority of the Senate favored the policy. The Los Angeles Times, in a broader story, also claimed that the Buffett Rule was blocked by “Republican-led opposition,” whatever that means. Again, no mention at all of a filibuster, or which way the majority voted.
None of this is good enough. Whether one supports the filibuster, opposes it, or (as I do) hopes for a middle course, it’s simply not informative enough to just say that something was “blocked” without explaining that it was blocked by a minority of Senators who deployed a filibuster.
The decision of the Republican minority to create the 60 vote Senate — and the willingness of the Democratic majority to go along with it — remains perhaps the most important single structural fact of Congressional procedure. It has been at least as important as any other factor in shaping Obama’s legislative agenda. And news organizations still aren’t telling readers and viewers the full truth about what’s happening.
By: Jonathan Bernstein, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, April 17, 2012
“GOP Tax Jihad Continues”: The Enemy Within Shoots Down The Buffett Rule
To nobody’s surprise, the Senate has blocked the Buffett Rule that would have required those earning more than $1 million a year to pay a minimum tax of 30 percent.
The 51-46 vote—short of the 60 votes in support needed to bring the measure to the floor—went along party lines with only GOP Senator Susan Collins crossing the aisle to vote with the Democrats while Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas sided with the Republicans.
While passage of the measure is estimated to bring in only $47 billion in additional revenue, the proposed law, which has been actively pushed by the Obama Administration, is viewed by supporters as fairness issue while opponents claim that the rich already pay a disproportionate share of the nation’s tax revenue.
Failure of the bill to advance is also likely to give the President a popular issue for his re-election campaign, given the strong support for the law among the general public. According to a CNN/ORC poll out today, 72 percent of the nation’s registered voters support the measure.
Expressing disappointment with the vote, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said,
The wealthiest one percent takes home the highest share of the nation’s income since the early ’20s, the roaring ’20s. Times are tough for many middle class American families. Millionaires and billionaires aren’t sharing the pain or the sacrifice, not one bit. Last year there were 7,000 millionaires who didn’t pay a single penny in federal income taxes.
But Republicans aren’t buying it, arguing that the proposal is nothing more than a ‘political gimmick’—or so says GOP Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell:
The problem is, we’ve got a president who seems more interested in pitting people against each other than he is in actually doing what it takes to face these challenges head on. By wasting so much time on this political gimmick that even Democrats admit won’t solve our larger problems, it’s shown the president is more interested in misleading people than he is in leading.
Last week, ThinkProgress posted a video of President Ronald Reagan giving a speech indicating that he too objected to the notion of a secretary paying a higher rate of tax than her employer, the circumstance that gave rise to Warren Buffett’s proposal that resulted in his name going on this piece of legislation.
By: Rick Ungar, Contributor, The Policy Page, Forbes, April 16, 2012
“Openly And Repeatedly Mocked”: What The Supreme Court Thinks Of Congress
The Supreme Court spent the first part of the morning debating the “severability” question, and as Lyle Denniston reported, we learned a bit from the proceedings — most notably what the justices think of Congress.
The Supreme Court spent 91 minutes Wednesday operating on the assumption that it would strike down the key feature of the new health care law, but may have convinced itself in the end not to do that because of just how hard it would be to decide what to do after that.
A common reaction, across the bench, was that the Justices themselves did not want the onerous task of going through the remainder of the entire 2,700 pages of the law and deciding what to keep and what to throw out, and most seemed to think that should be left to Congress. They could not come together, however, on just what task they would send across the street for the lawmakers to perform. The net effect may well have shored up support for the individual insurance mandate itself.
Of particular interest was the justices’ opinions of Congress — it turns out, American voters aren’t the only ones who hold lawmakers in low regard — which was characterized as an institution incapable of creating a new health care law. Denniston added, “Scalia noted the problems in the filibuster-prone Senate. Kennedy wondered whether expecting Congress to perform was a reference to “the real Congress or the hypothetical Congress.”
I’d also note that Kagan complained at one point about “the complex parliamentary shenanigans that go on across the street.”
How dysfunctional is Congress? The legislative branch is now being openly and repeatedly mocked by Supreme Court justices during oral arguments — eliciting laughter from those in attendance.
Congress, they were laughing at you, not with you.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 28, 2012
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