Lame duck bills
Tax cuts for wealthy prime legislative pumps
Political scientists say the just-concluded 111th Congress was one of the most productive ever – if not actually on a par with the congresses of the New Deal and Great Society, at least inviting that comparison.
Among the key items on President Obama’s agenda, this Congress approved an $814 billion stimulus bill to jumpstart a flatlining economy and massive overhauls of the nation’s health-care and financial regulatory systems.
The voters rewarded lawmakers for what would seem to be signal accomplishments by administering what Obama called a “shellacking” in the November mid-term elections that cost his party the House and gave it a greatly reduced majority in the Senate.
The lawmakers also left behind a massive pile of unfinished business that would have to be dealt with in a post-election session. These “lame duck” sessions are known for lethargy and partisanship, not productivity.
But in a remarkable six weeks, a badly divided Congress produced an impressive record of legislative accomplishments, whether one agreed with the individual bills or not: the New START nuclear treaty; extension of the Bush-era tax cuts; repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy; a major strengthening of food safety regulation; extension of health benefits for 9/11 rescue workers; and the first expansion of the school lunch program in 40 years.
It is a sign of Obama’s suddenly recovering political fortunes that the bad bargain he was forced to accept on tax cuts – generous tax cuts for the wealthiest in exchange for making them temporary and an extension of unemployment benefits – was hailed as a victory for the president.
There were setbacks. The DREAM Act, a path to citizenship for young illegal immigrants in the military or in college, did not pass. And consideration of $1.2 trillion to run the government was delayed until next March.
The optimists in Washington, including the president himself, saw this sudden burst of progress as perhaps ushering in a new era of comity and partisanship, as Obama put it, that “it’s time to find common ground on challenges facing our country.”
Rather, it may reflect a dawning awareness by the Republicans that the Democrats are now in a position to do the same thing to them that they did to the Democrats. Their impatient supporters are going to expect that the 63 new Republicans they elected to the House to begin racking up some accomplishments.
With their reduced majority the Senate Democrats may not be able to advance their own agenda, but they are in a position to easily block the Republicans’.
Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell remains committed to his overriding objective of making Obama a one-term president. As for his hardball tactics, resented by the Democrats, he tells Politico, “If they think it’s bad now, wait until next year.”
Scripps Howard News Service