Legislative Update XIX

The House of Representatives passed bills to boost funding for food stamps, veterans programs, and foreign aid, particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, director Leon Panetta confirmed that the CIA did lie to Congress, vindicating Speaker Pelosi's previous statements.

The Senate approved a homeland security funding bill that boosts efforts against illegal immigration and to improve cybersecurity. The Senate also voted again to block detainee abuse photos.

Legislative Update XIV

Congress sent President Obama two bills this week aimed preventing foreclosures and regulating the credit card industry, though with the price of allowing guns in national parks.

Both chambers of Congress also quickly and unanimously passed and President Obama signed into law a bill aimed at saving billions of dollars in wasteful spending on weapons systems often delivered late and hit by ballooning cost overruns. The armed forces have also submitted to Congress their "wish lists" of spending priorities that did not make the president's Defense budget request, and the items on the list are about one-tenth as expensive as last year's.

The Senate passed $91 billion in war funding, including financing for the International Monetary Fund that may be a sticking point for the House. The Senate also voted 90-6 to strip funding to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay from a supplemental spending bill and bar funding for the transfer of prisoners to the United States. However, many Democrats said they were just waiting on a more specific plan from the Obama administration that the president began to lay out on Thursday.

The Senate confirmed President Obama's nominees for the FDA and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, while his pick to run the census moved toward confirmation as well. But Republicans, who used to believe in "up or down" votes for judicial nominees, blocked action on President Obama's first judicial appointment.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee voted in favor of the climate change bill currently under consideration by a 33-25 vote.

Finally, the full House rejected a GOP resolution that called for investigations into Speaker Pelosi's accusations against the CIA. Perhaps to mend fences, Pelosi is considering appointing a Republican on an economic crises panel. The Speaker will also be visiting China next week.

"An Aggressive Agenda"

Democrats in Congress are looking to get important problems solved quickly:

Flush with victory built on incursions in the South and West, Congressional Democratic leaders promised to use their new power to join President-elect Barack Obama in pursuing an aggressive agenda that puts top priority on the economy, health care, energy and ending the Iraq war.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who spoke with Mr. Obama by phone on Wednesday morning, said that they had made plans to discuss coordinated efforts for the transition and the new Congress, but that a more ambitious agenda would unfold next year.

“Our priorities have tracked the Obama campaign priorities for a very long time,” Ms. Pelosi said at a news conference where she cited the economy, health care, energy and the Iraq war as topping the agenda.

She said Democrats were talking with the Bush White House about a potential $61 billion economic stimulus that could be approved in a lame-duck session.

But Ms. Pelosi said Democrats could open the 111th Congress in January with efforts to adopt measures blocked by President Bush, including ones to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and embryonic stem cell research. She said Democrats had no choice but to chart a centrist course. “The country must be governed from the middle,” she said. But Democrats on both sides of the Capitol were just beginning to digest the new faces in their expanded caucuses.

As Nat-Wu bluntly asked in an email "What's the bullshit talk about governing from the center?" I happen to think Pelosi is trying to game expectations more than anything (which are very, very high after the Obama win) but without a doubt there's still a class of pundits on both the left and the right who think that Democrats can only get done and maintain their political power by emulating Republicans to a large degree and governing as if America were still in it's heart of hearts a nation that leans to the right despite a wholesale rejection of the GOP.  And yet strangely, polls support Democrats on any number of issues, including the war, health care, labor policies, the environment, and so on. Without a doubt, Democrats are hampered in tackling some of these issues by the sheer scale of the economic downturn, but no Democrat in his or her right mind should think that they should be beholden to outdated notions held by some pundits about what Americans do and do not want. As Paul Waldman notes in the Think Progress post I like to above, "success builds upon success." Democrats will not advance their own interests or win further elections by governing in fearful anticipation of a phantom negative reaction by the public. They will win by demonstrating they can solve the most pressing problems faced by our nation, and by showing initiative, bold thinking and political courage. 

No Action on Contempt

Time for new Democratic leadership?

More Republican Hypocrisy

It would be next to impossible to not have heard anything about the right-wing furor over Speaker Pelosi's recent visit to Syria in an effort to begin a dialogue with President Assad, as recommended by the Iraq Study Group and, well, every other thinking foreign policy analyst. The Bush administration and its conservative base contend that even simply talking to Syria (or Iran) undermines U.S. foreign policy, and going so far as to suggest that Pelosi is attempting to circumvent the President's constitutional role as being chiefly responsible for it.

Well, maybe that would be true if Pelosi had expressed different sentiments to Damascus over its policies, but this is not the case. The Speaker condemned Syria's support for terrorists in Iraq and throughout the region, its association with Iran, its destabilization of Lebanon, and its efforts to obstruct the investigation into the Hariri assassination.

But unlike the Bush administration, she understands that constructive dialogue is a critical means of addressing our concerns with Damascus. Dialogue is in no way concession. And it's not as if the Bush policy of non-communication has produced any positive results on the part of Syria or Iran, far from it. The idea that simply talking to them would some how strengthen then more than they have been strengthened by the Iraq war is patently ridiculous. It is also encouraging that Democrats are showing a broader foreign policy vision than just extrication from an unpopular war.

Furthermore, this is fairly trypical of Congressional trips and is in now way some agrandizement of foreign policy power for the Congress. In fact, five Republican lawmakers visited Assad this week, also convinced that the Bush administration's static policy towards them isn't helpful. Where are the conservative attacks on them? More importantly, it is entirely hypocritical for conservatives to attack Pelosi over her trip when, as Think Progress has pointed out, Rep. Dennis Hastert led a delegation to Colombia in 1997, at a time when U.S. officials were trying to attach human rights conditions to U.S. security assistance programs:

…a congressional delegation led by Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) which met with Colombian military officials, promising to “remove conditions on assistance” and complaining about “leftist-dominated” U.S. congresses of years past that “used human rights as an excuse to aid the left in other countries.” Hastert said he would to correct this situation and expedite aid to countries allied in the war on drugs and also encouraged Colombian military officials to “bypass the U.S. executive branch and communicate directly with Congress.”

That sounds much more like an attempt at usurpation than what Pelosi is doing. Indeed, if any Democrat attempted to do this in say, Iran, they'd be flayed alive by right-wing bloggers and the mainstream media alike. This was a despicable action by Hastert, and it would be wrong for Democrats to do anything like that. But again, right-wing hypocrites ignore these facts in their attempt to attack the Speaker in any way they can.