Still the "Do Nothing Congress"
If you are a current subscriber to the Evans-Novak Political Report, you've no doubt seen the latest article by Robert Novak. As Novak points out, the Democratic controlled US Congress has accomplished next to nothing during their initial time in charge.
Below is the article from the Evans-Novak Report published on May 30th:
Below is the article from the Evans-Novak Report published on May 30th:
After five months of Democratic control, Congress has enacted almost no major legislation and finished no regular appropriations bills.
Their first major accomplishment, as of this week, has been to reissue the "blank check" to President Bush on the Iraq War, which they had complained about so vociferously in the last election campaign. Democratic literature for the base has tried to sugar-coat this fact, but fact it is.
The new Congress has successfully renamed six post offices, four courthouses, a national park, and one of the buildings housing the Department of Education in Washington. They also extended the lives of two government commissions, reduced the membership of the Red Cross board of governors from 50 to 20, and authorized construction of 541 feet of road on a flood plain in St. Louis County, Missouri.
Congress also kept the government going with two temporary spending bills, redesignated five Eastern European countries (Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, Georgia and Ukraine) for security aid, and passed a bill on penalties for animal fighting that had passed in the Republican Congress last year.
Democrats can be proud of a change in House rules and an increase to the national minimum wage. But celebration has been minimal. For one thing, they have worked and even voted to undermine their own ethics rules, the latest example being the case of Rep. Jack Murtha, to say nothing of their continued (and mostly bipartisan) use of earmarks to distribute favors. Also, the minimum wage bill came attached to the bill in which they capitulated to President Bush on Iraq.
Democrats do not want to have their takeover Congress labeled as a "do-nothing" Congress, and for that reason, they are eager to enact more of their agenda. But they have been largely stymied, especially in the U.S. Senate, which always posed such a problem for Republicans before. Even in the House, Republicans have successfully used recommittal motions to divide the majority caucus
The perception of inaction can certainly be reversed by Democrats in the coming year, but it will still have repercussions on majority Democrats' work on appropriations bills this year. Congress now faces a heavy agenda to fit into a schedule interrupted by several recesses before the end of the year, and this means little time for a dragged-out appropriations process. Democrats will find themselves dealing from a weaker position if they try to strip certain provisions from the fiscal 2008 appropriations bills. Already, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has expressed public concern over the scheduling of too little floor time for the Labor and Health and Human Services (HHS) bill.
In early May, President Bush leveled a veto threat against bills that fail to contain the Hyde Amendment (forbidding U.S. government subsidies for abortion abroad) and other restrictions on the use of taxpayer dollars in the HHS and Foreign Operations appropriations bills. With a difficult timetable for legislative action, Democrats may find themselves unable to put their own ideological stamp on such bills without crippling delays by Senate Republicans and a justifiably intransigent President who does not face re-election and has little to lose by letting congressional Democrats shut down the government.
