A Senate Christmas tale
(UPDATES with new Reid comments).
Christmas bells are ringing. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn’t seem to be listening. Much to the chagrin of staffers and more than a few senators, Reid is threatening to keep the Senate in session until Christmas Eve and beyond to finish all the legislative work that Congress failed to complete before the November elections.
That amounts to just about a whole year’s worth of lawmaking. Congress never got around to passing any of the 12 spending bills that fund the government. So the Senate is expected to take up a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill after senators voted to extend Bush-era tax cuts by two years and extend jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed for a year.
Reid earlier this week said “…we are going to complete our work, no matter how long it takes, in this Congress.”
Republican Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to fight the spending bill and Senator Jon Kyl suggested a Christmas reality check.
“It is impossible to do all of the things that the majority leader laid out … frankly, without disrespecting the institution and without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians and the families of all of the Senate, not just the senators themselves but all of the staff,” Kyl said.
Reid was not about to take questioning of his Christmas spirit quietly.
Washington Extra – Time for a change, Take two
For the second time in two years, the American people have delivered a message of change, a message that they think Washington is broken. In 2008, Barack Obama took that message into the White House but has, at least according to these polls, failed to deliver change that most Americans readily believe in.
Now, the conservative Tea Party movement is riding what Kentucky’s new Senator-elect Rand Paul called a “tidal wave” right into the halls of power to “get our government back.”
The change the Tea Party is proposing is, of course, very different from the agenda that Obama pursued. The question is whether the new kids on the block will be any more successful in handling the power they have now been granted.
Paul said the message he would take to Washington from day one was a message of “fiscal sanity, constitutionally limited government and balanced budgets.” That will be music to many voters’ ears, especially to people who felt that Obama had dangerously expanded the role of the government and presided over an alarming rise in spending and borrowing without curing the nation’s economic ills.
But the other message many Americans would like politicians to hear is for an end to the partisan bickering that has disfigured political debate and divided the country — that political, as well as fiscal, sanity would be restored. There was not much sign on Tuesday night that they would get it.
John Boehner, the likely Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, said it now was up to Obama to “change course.” Obama later called Boehner to say he was looking forward to finding “common ground,” but not everyone is convinced it is there to be found.
“The big problem we have in Washington right now is the Democrats are so tied into union bosses and some special interests, they cannot move back to the center,” Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican senator and Tea Party champion, told CNN.”They can’t work with us. I mean, we can’t work together on ideas of how to cut the budget, how to cut spending.”
Washington Extra – Gridlock and the fiscal deficit
The term gridlock may have first entered the vocabulary during the 1980 New York transit strike, reportedly coined by “Gridlock Sam” Schwartz, chief traffic engineer in the city’s transport department. In those days it was definitely not something to aspire to. It is a different story in 2010.
“Gridlock’s not all bad,” Republican Senator Richard Shelby told the Reuters Washington Summit today, citing the need to “slow things down” politically. His fellow Senator and Tea Party champion Jim DeMint would probably go even further.
But is that really what lies in store after the midterm elections?
Republican and Democratic speakers on the first day of the summit agreed on one thing above all else: that the other party is to blame for the lack of bipartisanship in Washington.
But is there any room for common ground if Republicans gain more power after November? There was not much sign of it today, except on the need to get to grips with the country’s medium- to long-term fiscal problems.
The big question is how to go about it. Republicans, of course, would like to see a radical and immediate overhaul of government spending. Senator John McCain also returned to a favorite theme to argue that Republicans need to listen to the Tea Party and put an end to “corruption” in Washington, the system of earmarks and “pork” attached to almost every piece of legislation.
Tea Party Express names its election-year ‘heroes,’ ‘targets’
U.S. Representative Joe Wilson — the South Carolina Republican who last year screamed at President Barack Obama, “You lie!” — is on its list of “heroes.”
So is Republican Senator Jim DeMint, also of South Carolina, who’s leading a charge to repeal Obama’s landmark overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system.
The Tea Party Express, one of the most prominent groups in the conservative Tea Party movement, on Thursday wrapped up a 20-day nationwide tour with an event in Washington, D.C., where it formally announced its 14 “heroes” as well as 13 “targets.”
Amid homemade signs reading, “Hope doesn’t create jobs,” and “Congress, you’re fired!” — Tea Party activists vowed to help their “heroes” win in the November election and to work to defeat their “targets.”
The Tea Party Express is dedicated to opposing what it sees as the Democrats’ liberal tax-and-spend policies and to ridding the Republican Party of those it does not consider to be conservative enough.
A Tea Party Express spokesman, asked how Joe Wilson made the list of heroes, cited the congressman’s conservative voting record and made no mention of his yelling at Obama at a nationally televised address on healthcare last year.
While the Tea Party Express has made life difficult for lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle, all but one of its “heroes” — conservative, first-term Democratic Representative Walt Minnick of Idaho — is a Republican. And all of its “targets,” including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, are Democrat.
Hey, my Congressman does his job for me pretty well. It’s all you other schnooks electing Congressmen who don’t share our values that turn it into a laughingstock.
i.e. it’s always the other guys’ fault.
==Bob
Amidst the shivering in Washington, the case for global warming
OK, it’s cold in Washington. It’s really cold. And snowy. And blizzardy. It’s hard to recall that long-ago moment — what was it, six days ago? — when you could go for a walk without cross-country skis and a flask of brandy. But just because it’s winter doesn’t mean global warming is a myth.
But the storms gave conservatives fresh fodder for mocking former Vice President Al Gore and his efforts on global climate change. Senator Jim DeMint tweeted “It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries ‘uncle’,” Politico reported.
For decades, scientists have struggled to explain the difference between weather, which changes in the short term, and climate, which changes over the long term. There’s a good explanation at the new government Climate Service Web site called “Short term cooling on a warming planet.” The new site went up this week, between blizzards, and is supposed to guide consumers and businesses so they can adapt to climate change. The Climate Service itself is expected to be up and running by the start of the next U.S. fiscal year that begins on October 1.
The last decade was the warmest on record, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United Kingdom’s Met Office and the World Meteorological Organization. “The bottom line is that current temperatures are way above the long-term average,” NOAA’s David Easterling says.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is certainly not backing away from its 2007 report that global warming is occurring and human activity is causing it. But climate change skeptics have focused on what they see as problems with how some of the data that led to this conclusion were collected and reported. To most scientists, though, this is all beside the point.
One sign that the planet is getting warmer is what’s happening in the Arctic Sea. It’s not as icy as it used to be at this time of year, and that means there won’t be much thick, hardy sea ice at the beginning of the spring melt season — which in turn means there will be more open water exposed. Dark-colored water absorbs the sun’s rays, just as light-colored sea ice reflects them, so it’s likely to get even warmer up there. That’s important because the Arctic is one of the world’s biggest weather-makers.
But that still doesn’t explain the unusual weather patterns — putting it politely — that have hammered the U.S. East Coast this winter. However, part of the overall long-term forecast for a warmer world is for more severe weather events, and the current storms could qualify. So could the notable lack of snow at some venues of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Oddball weather can be a sign of climate change.
Pay tribute to Al Gore, the father of the global warming hoax, by sending “Fraudster the Snowman” (http://politickles.com/blog/?p=4008) to all your friends.
Bomb plot thrusts Obama into political storm
President Barack Obama is weathering a political storm over last month’s suspected al Qaeda plot to bomb a Detroit-bound plane, particularly from Republicans who say he dropped the ball on security while pursuing healthcare and climate reforms. But how much substance there is behind the allegations may depend on who’s talking.
Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina told NBC’s Today show that he believes Obama just woke up to the gravity of the al Qaeda threat.
“A lot of us have been concerned over the last year that the president did seem to downplay the threat of terror. He doesn’t use the word anymore. He hesitates to say that there is a war on terror,” DeMint said.
“But in the last few days, he seems to have come around to the idea that there are people in Yemen and other places who are intent on hurting Americans,” the lawmaker added.
A completely different picture comes from Bob Woodward, the Pulitzer-winning journalist who chronicled Republican George W. Bush’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks.
“The new administration is taking a very aggressive stance on these matters and perhaps even more than the Bush administration, doing more about the al Qaeda sanctuaries in places like Yemen,” Woodward told ABC’s Good Morning America. That view comes from reporting Woodward says he is doing for a new book on the Obama White House.
Meanwhile, DeMint says he wants to eliminate politics from the security debate. That means not blaming Obama or members of the president’s team for security lapses, at least not for now. It also means retaining his hold on the Senate confirmation of Erroll Southers, Obama’s nominee for the Transportation Security Administration. DeMint blocked that nomination out of concern that Southers would unionize the TSA.
“You can’t leave non performers in positions of power and you have to make changes when things happen.”
If that were the case then Bush would have lost his bid for reelection. We were attacked by Arabs lead by Bin-Laden who was hiding in Afghanistan. He used his Muslim faith to hide behind the Taliban by accepting their protection (hospitality). They would not give him up to the infidels.
Bush let Bin-Laden get away. No one was held accountable for lying to the public about our reasons for going to war with Iraq. Remember the ‘weapons of mass destruction”? People still try to justify that blatant lie by saying that the weapons must have been moved before our forces got there. Really?
We as citizens need to stop regurgitating the blame we hear across party lines and instead be vigilant and hold our leaders accountable by not voting for them again if they vote against our interests. If there is justice Lieberman will not have a seat come next election.
Republican senators call for ending era of ‘permanent politicians’
Don’t expect the U.S. Congress — packed with old men and women who have been in office for decades — to embrace a proposal to term limit themselves.
Republican senators Jim DeMint, Tom Coburn, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Sam Brownback offered such a measure on Tuesday, saying it would be good to get fresh blood on Capitol Hill.
“Americans know real change in Washington will never happen until we end the era of permanent politicians,” DeMint said.
“Over the last 20 years, Washington politicians have been re-elected about 90 percent of the time because the system is heavily tilted in favor of incumbents.”
Coburn says the best way to ensure a government of the people “is to replace the career politicians in Washington with citizen legislators who care more about the next generation than their next election.”
The four Republican senators proposed a constitutional amendment that would limit members of the House of Representatives to three, two-year terms — and members of the Senate to two, six-year terms. Easier said than done.
Previous efforts, dating back to the birth of the nation, have come up short and this one will likely fail as well.
Mufaso,
Brilliant, one sentence and you’re right on the money.
Robert Smith,
Our gov’t is very similar to Iran’s. Our country isn’t really democratic, it’s mostly run by corporate elites who are born into their position mostly and by the federal reserve which is elected by no one. In Iran they have elections but their country is mostly run by the shah and his inner circle.
Term limits would be a nice start in trying to find a way to limit the power of gov’t. I think this is just posturing though, these particular politicians know this has zero chance of passing so they make it sound like it’s what they really want.
I put my trust in a man who voluntarily returns a large chunk of his pay to the US treasury every year, and does so everytime without anyone needing to ask him, Dr. Ron Paul.
Republicans seek economic wisdom from Greenspan
Alan Greenspan may have retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve, but his insight is still in hot demand, so much so that Senate Republicans invited him to be their guest speaker at their weekly policy lunch.
Per his normal practice, Greenspan declined to tell reporters what he told the lawmakers behind closed doors, but that did not stop a few senators from spilling the beans.
New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg said the former Fed chief talked mostly about the need to address the long-term budget deficit, specifically the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly and those with disabilities. The U.S. deficit is expected to crest at more than $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2009 which ends Sept. 30.
On the economy, which has been in a recession since December 2007, Greenspan apparently offered a slightly brighter picture. That would match what more and more economists are saying — that the recession is in the process of bottoming out and look for a recovery to take root in the current quarter.
“I think he thinks things are improving,” Gregg told reporters.
Greenspan offered some “encouraging thoughts, banks are better off than they were six months ago,” said Nebraska Republican Mike Johanns. “On housing, if I remember correctly, (Greenspan offered) some indication that things were bottoming out, but again I think that’s reflective of what others are saying.”
One senator who has been pressing to boost transparency at the Fed, South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, said he was unable to corner Greenspan and ask him about efforts to give authority to the Government Accountability Office to audit the central bank’s operations.
With the previously unthinkable nationalization of corporate American icons now a reality, the role and relationship of our government and the Fed must be examined and redefined if this Republic we have taken for granted is to persevere.
To Quote Edmund Burke:
“It is to the property of the citizen, not to the demand of the creditor of the State, that the original faith of society is pledged. The claim of the citizen is prior in time, paramount in title, and superior in equality”
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Greenspit on Fed Autonomy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol3mEe8TH 7w
The Coming Battle 1899: http://www.inlibertyandfreedom.com/PDF/B ankingSystem.pdf
You can say what you want…and you can spin it, as usual, to your point of view…after all, you are paid for your diatribes…
As you know, this is the worst slaughter for the democrats since the 1930′s. No matter who you spin it, the American people do not want government to intrude in their lives…and they spoke loud and clear…
You have been wrong for over two years. You were so smug and confident for so long. I told you what the American people would do and they did it. They totally rejected this congress and this president. If the American people wanted this progressive agenda, they would have kept this bunch in power…they didn’t…
You are wrong..about everything you have written. I was right and I am right.
So long chump.