The Recess Mess: Congress Leaves Pile of Unfinished Business
In the last legislative week before Congress leaves for its annual summer recess, there’s a certain finish-line anticipation in the air as lawmakers, staffers, and journalists alike crunch through a packed agenda to get out the door and back to home districts.
For the next five weeks, D.C. denizens will hold town-hall meetings, go on congressional trips, and take some vacation time. It’s the equivalent of the school bell ringing and students skipping outside with jump-rope to fight over the swing sets — suddenly, parking is easier to find in D.C. and traffic around the Hill is taken down a few road-rage notches.
But it’s the amount of unfinished work on Congress’ desks that makes this fun-in-the-sun period especially controversial this year.
In fact, it’s not even technically recess right now. The House is actually in pro forma session, having voted 150-265 against adjournment on Thursday evening. All Democrats voted to stay in session, while 78 Republicans joined them to vote against adjournment.
The Senate, however, passed the resolution to adjourn until Sept. 10. Because the House did not agree to Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) concurrent resolution to adjourn, the Senate will have pro forma sessions in the Hart office building — as recess repairs are being made to the upper chamber — with no business conducted over the recess period.
Lawmakers from both chambers split town late last week. And though Reid was the one who introduced the resolution to adjourn, Senate Democrats quickly lambasted the “do-nothing House” for “stranding” Senate bills including the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act and the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, which is going to conference committee.
“In the time since the Senate passed its bill, there have been over 1.2 million incidents of violence against women,” Democratic leadership hurled at the House.
But the accurate way to describe key bills gathering dust for the next five weeks would be a grand impasse that will only become more insurmountable as Election Day nears.
The Bush-era tax cuts will expire at the end of the year without action from Congress. President Obama seized on the looming tax-hike date to propose extension of the tax rates for lower and middle incomes only, with the disputed extension of upper income tax cuts to be fought at some undetermined time down the road. Before recess, the House rejected the Obama-dictated Senate version and passed their own extension of all the tax cuts.
“We have made clear our willingness to be here in Washington if the President and Harry Reid will finally decide to join us in a bipartisan solution to stop the massive tax hike,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Saturday in the weekly Republican address.
Last week, Republican leaders sent a letter to Reid vowing to return from recess if the Senate votes to stop all tax hikes and the brutal defense cuts on the horizon.
“The defense sequester is, as you know, the result of President Obama’s desire to avoid an additional vote on raising the nation’s debt limit before the presidential election,” wrote Cantor, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas). “We passed it reluctantly, at your urging, after receiving a commitment that the president and the Democratic leadership in the Senate would work with Republicans to avert the sequester by enacting a deficit reduction package built on pro-growth tax reform and much-needed changes to strengthen and stabilize our entitlement programs.”
On Cantor’s website, a countdown clock ticks off a little over eight days until the sequester takes effect, if the Senate does not act.
Congressmen in the affected states are fanning out to meet with worried constituents as the nearly $500 billion in additional required defense cuts could cost up to a million jobs, with 200,000 in Virginia alone, and shrink national defense to the smallest size since before World War II. One congressional aide told PJM that his boss has so many meetings scheduled over recess with soon-to-be-bludgeoned defense contractors and other military and support services that he can barely keep track of the schedule.
And perhaps they are beginning to realize how powerless they are given BHO’s executive overriding power.
Speaking of which, I wonder how many “recess” appointments 0 will make this time?
I’m sure that the recess appointment of Erica Groshen to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics will be high on the list. After all, we have to have someone to lie (even more) about the unemployment numbers before the election.
http://news.investors.com/article/618634/201207181837/obama-puts-far-left-erica-groshen-in-key-labor-post.htm?p=full
With a background of communist sympathies, I would hope that not even my 2 worthless RINOs would vote to confirm her, though I can’t seem to get either of them to make a statement on this matter.
2 worthless RINOs – you must be from Maine like me!!!
Well, there are still a few limits on what the executive branch can do.
If the congress-critters were to overwhelmingly vote for spending cuts (real cuts, significant cuts, not these nibbling delicately around the edges of the rate of increase in over-spending), it would lower the lid on what Obummer could get up to. And, of course, that would settle the “sequester” nonsense.
Before Nixon, when the leftists raised a howl that he MUST spend every dime appropriated and pushed through the unconstitutional anti-impoundment act, it was the practice for congress to set the maximum spending limits — the appropriations — and then for the executive branch to economize within that envelope. Some did so more than others, of course. Most spent right up to the max. But, since the early 1970s the congress-critters have demanded that the executive spend to the max.
Normally, I’d cheer any sign of grid-lock. “Grid-lock is good!”, we used to say… until the federal government got locked into automatically making everything worse and worse and worse. Now, grid-lock merely means it will keep on getting worse.
If Congress left NO unfinished business, the sky would fall. Western Civilization would collapse. The sun would rise in the west. And I would personally go to the Capitol and begin opening closets, expecting a pyramid of moldy paperwork to fall out.
THAT particular part of it is “situation normal”.
(On the other hand, these particular blankety-blank idiots are without a doubt, the worst I’ve seen.)
Don’t worry, Democrats. Anything you think is a must-have will get passed, through the Miracle of your Messiah and his Divine Executive Orders.
It’s the rest of us who will have to live with- and pay for- the consequences.
clear ether
eon
A part of me loves that this effing machine has ground to a halt. Quit passing laws – please!!
I get that there are some important tax cuts that need to be continued though isn’t that messed up? Are we going to have to keep re-affirming a tax cut every few years? Why does a cut have to be extended instead of an increase re-introduced?)
The exalted emperor obama will use his magic executive powers wand to pass whatever legislation, appoint whomever he wants, and grab more power as he sees fit. You’d better hunker down and wait for the onslaught of dictatorial proclamations that will further cripple our country and her income tax paying legal citizens.
We should be cheering.
If nothng else shows – proves?- the fewer bills passed by Congress the better Americans shall sleep at night. And the more “respect” America shall receive from legitimate/democratically assigned represenatatives of the “international community”. This Congress which has allowed the bills from its immediate predecessor the most disgraceful in living memory to stand, together exemplify Mark Twain’s “There is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress”.
Primary example in the bill rammed through Congress over vociferous protests of large numbers of responsible i.e. productive citizens. The principal perpertator the Speaker of the House, after passage into law of the bill, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue gavel raised high as if a Roman Triumph. Only AFTER egregious insults from her and her congressional allies of American citizens lawfully exercising their rights. Why not? Didn’t her “Messiah” tell Americans when campaigning for the job of chief executive of the nation that he was “ashamed of the country”? And still he got the job to rousing cheers. She knew the measure of the people – democrats – she represents.
The bill called Obamacare originally the baby of her sister progressive Hillary Clinton, rubberstamped by this Supreme Court’s playing with dotted i’s and crossed t’s, enlarges broadens and deepens federal government control over citizen’s lives. Having got away with this bill what else can we expect from Congress/Judiciary/Executive? All gentlemen together. And they tell us in their robes and gowns this bill is consistent with the Constitution of the USA. All lawyers. Do they not understand just what that word constitution means?
Does anybody actually believe a single congressman or judge who signed off on this bill actually read it in its entirety and its implications. Aren’t they constantly telling anyone who listens how little time they have to do their jobs. AND did not N. Pelosi respond to the question of what was in the bill, “We’ll have to pass it to know what’s in it”? What a sense of humour.
2700 pages and counting. More than twice the number of pages in Tolstoy’s War And Peace, more than twice the number of pages in the ~ABRIDGED from 12 volumes Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and more than 75 times as many pages as the documents, all put together, which created and defined, which CONSTITUTED this nation: this America until the “progressives” decided it was their toy.
Praise be to a Congress that knows the purpose of female interns, that parties, and talks, talks, talks. Hooray for their soundbites and photo-opportunies. The less time and energy they spend in passing bills which face it are often little more than payoff for the money men who got them the job the better for the citizens who pay whether they pass bills or not. It’s likely given the history of this past half century we pay less when Congress does less. For our benefit, ie the benefit of the nation – the customers – the song of every snake-oil salesman since time began.
Gee, it would be nice if they passed a budget or some appropriations bills. Come Sept 30th the gov’t stops without at least a CR. The Sequester is also having almost every contractor that does work for DOD is a total panic. Guess what is the easiest for the Gov’t to cut, personnel or contracts. I see that in my work, all of my DOD customers are just freezing up, not spending because there is no money come Oct 1 and possibly no program come Jan 1.
The real bottleneck is the Senate, which is run by good Ole’ Hairy.
When the Congress is away, the Executive will play. I used to look forward to the lawmakers being gone. Now, I’m afraid of all the damage the president can do while they’re all not looking.
Court Upholds Domestic Drone Use in Arrest of American Citizen A motion to dismiss charges based on the use of a Predator drone was denied Wednesday By JASON KOEBLER
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/08/02/court-upholds-domestic-drone-use-in-arrest-of-american-citizen
So I need to run out and buy firearms if I don’t currently own any, like right now right???! It’s sounding more and more like the evil liberals and Obama and Clinton are trying to do everything they can to turn us into Great Britain. Well, I’m not going to sit back and just become frigging England!
But I’m serious though, could someone please let me know, is it getting close to a time where I’ll no longer be able to buy a gun? If that ever happens, well it shakes me to my core to think we could lose a constitutional right, and be at the mercy of our government. I know this is going to sound insane, but I’m going to say it anyways. Doesn’t it seem odd and quite the coincidence, that there were two really bad shootings recently, happening at the same time that Clinton and Crapbama are trying their hardest to take away our right to bear arms? I’m not exactly saying they secretly orchestrated these shootings, but I’m also not saying they didn’t either. I know that makes me sound like a conspiracy nut, and normally I steer clear of anything resembling that. But I just can’t get it out of my head, how awesomely timed these shootings are in relation to the dirty scumbag liberal push to strip us of our right to defend ourselves and stand up against a possible corrupt government.