You could argue that Congress has a responsibility to deal with impending issues — unemployment benefits extensions or tax hikes, for instance. But should “repudiated” officials be involved in making long-lasting decisions for all of us?
Remember that the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002 when a lame-duck Congress relied on post- 9/11 jitters to create the largest government bureaucracy in American history. A lame-duck Congress impeached the president in 1998.
This year, the lame-duck session will likely take up the DREAM Act, which would institute a major change in immigration policy, and a new nuclear arms treaty with an erstwhile democracy in Russia. The Senate already passed the so-called “Food Safety Modernization Act.”
Pollsters tell us that an increasingly cynical electorate, which viewed government as overreaching, was responsible for the dramatic political reversal in November.
So does it make any sense to allow rejected senators like Robert Bennett, Blanche Lincoln or Arlen Specter to help kill earmark reform in the Senate this week, though none of them will experience the consequences of voting to preserve a corrupted process?
Congress has the choice to convene or not — the latter being a true victory for progress.
But if Washington is “broken,” it is by those who abuse power in the name of moving forward. And the lame-duck Congress is just another example.
What should be abundantly clear by now is that the Obama Administration has no plans to triangulate or “move to the center” so long as they have enough power to pass the kind of legislation that, over the long term, will assure the movement of the country toward a permanent democratic socialist state. The DREAM Act — tell me, Democrats, how does trying to push this through address the problem of unemployment or a debt spiral? — is being championed as a payoff from Harry Reid and the Democrats to the Hispanic advocacy groups who are taking credit for swinging the Nevada, California, and Colorado elections. In the short-term, it is a quid pro quo; long-term, however, it is the importation, Democrats feel, of over 2 million liberal democrat / democratic socialist voters — new clients for the socialist client state “progressives” are laboring to set up.
And the GOP — many of them of the feckless, club Repub variety — doesn’t so far appear particularly keen to stop Obama’s leftist agenda, so long as they can “compromise” in order to keep the current tax rates where they are. How else to explain votes for the expansion of FDA power, coming on the heels of an election that spoke in no uncertain terms about the desire to shrink the size and scope of government?
ObamaCo is a cabal of true believers. Fighting them with careerist Republicans is a losing battle.
And I fear by the time the new Congress is seated, the country will already have taken several new permanent steps to the left — content once again with losing more slowly…
The leaders’ letter to Harry Reid would seem to proscribe any advance on issues other than 1) funding the current operations of government through a continuing resolution and 2) addressing the soon to expire marginal tax rate schedule by renewal, whether temporarily or no. Everything else, the Senate Republicans say, will be filibustered. So don’t bother to waste any more time Harry, they imply.
Few, if any, of our current crop of congresscritters has any interest in anything beyond their own welfare. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and you, Mr. Taxpayer, are wearing Milk Bone underwear.
And yet the FDA expansion got through, sdferr…
Yes, it did, though it may be in trouble for reasons not attached to the fecklessness of the Republican toadies (as per Morrissey here), so in that sense alone the leaders’ letter is a day late and many wasted dollars short. Still, better late than never.
It appears that this letter was only signed today.
ohnoes. Kraft Foods NEEDS that FDA bill so it doesn’t poison our children with syphilis-infested lunchables.
It has to pass!
– It’s way past lame duck. It’s stalemate, and will continue to be so until 2012.
– The Reps have no reason to do anything, other than set up political gallows for the Dems to hang themselves on.
– Over the next two years, as the Dems continue to chew their own feet, the economy will act in inverse proportion to the loss of power by the Left, and that economic truthiness will be obvious to everyone.
– Get ready for Tea party II.
Apparently the FDA bill was part of the catalyst for the letter….
What we don’t know is whether, should the FDA bill have to be brought back to the Senate floor for vital repair, will the Republican filibuster stick together to reject the Bill on a second attempt at passage? Or will the sell-outs pretend they’re relieved of any obligation to vote it down since they’ve voted for the thing on the first go-round? That sort of behavior too will tell us who they are and what they stand for.
– The Reps probably were waiting to see if the Dems were really that stupid to press on with their Socialist agenda in the face of an angry Electorate.
– If they would have just asked I’d have been happy to inform them of same *-:0)