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Eager to get home to campaigning, Congress completed a pre-election session with few pieces of legislation and big questions on topics like the Bush tax cuts. Let’s take a look at what happened on the final day:
• The intelligence authorization bill passed the House, and now goes to the President for the first time since 2004. The President’s advisers have indicated he’ll sign it. The compromise measure affords Congress and the GAO some more oversight over intelligence agencies. Marcy has her assessment here.
• The continuing resolution to fund the government through December 3 passed both chambers late last night. The bill keeps the lights on at government agencies and includes very little new spending other than a $624 million bit of nuclear pork for Jon Kyl meant to grease the skids for the new START treaty, which will apparently get a vote in the lame duck session. The Interior Department also got a bit more money for inspectors of oil rigs, in the wake of the BP disaster. But other add-ons, like money for Pell Grants, the TANF Emergency Fund, and the Cobell-Pigford II black farmers settlement, were kept out of the bill.
• A bill that would force high duties on any imports from countries that manipulate their currency, targeted specifically at China, passed the House 348-79, with more Republicans in favor than opposed. Whether the Senate will take up a version of this, or whether the President supports it, is unclear, but the bill certainly gives leverage to the White House, if they choose to use it, in negotiations with China over allowing the renminbi to appreciate.
• In addition to delaying action on the Bush tax cuts, the House declined to move a child nutrition bill promoted by First Lady Michelle Obama. House liberals, led by Jim McGovern (D-MA), could not see their way clear to using food stamp cuts to pay for more generous school lunches. “The way you are going to pay for a child nutrition bill is by dipping into people’s food stamps? Give me a break,” McGovern said.
• NASA Authorization wrapped up, which extended the life of the space shuttle program by a year. The President will sign the measure. Also, Congress will rename a mountain in Alaska after Ted Stevens.
• The 9/11 health workers bill, providing health care and compensation to those sickened while helping to clean up Ground Zero, finally passed the House, but its future in the Senate is uncertain.
• Janet Yellen and Sarah Bloom Raskin finally got confirmed by the Senate as members of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors. Peter Diamond, another nominee, will have to wait until the lame duck session. The confirmations were part of a large deal, where some nominees got to move through the Senate in exchange for Democrats holding pro forma sessions so President Obama could not make any recess appointments. The 54 nominees confirmed included 12 ambassadors, 11 U.S. Marshals, 6 U.S. attorneys and one district court judge. Basically, Mitch McConnell threatened to send everyone back to the White House:
Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had threatened to send Obama’s most controversial nominees back to the president if Democrats did not agree to schedule pro-forma sessions, according to a senior GOP aide.
Senate rules give McConnell this power.
That would have forced the president to resubmit the nominees to the Senate and Democrats to start their confirmation processes (including hearings) all over again.
That’s about it.
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How did we get to the point where the Senate Rules give one Senator, the Minority Leader, the unilateral power to reject and return to the President any nomination he pleases? And then unilaterally threaten to do that as a means to make the President’s Constitutional power to make recess appointments inoperative?
Bulldoze the Senate.
This also happened yesterday:
You can see the taped hearing here.
Actually, recess appointments are bullshit. They were designed to give the President the ability to appoint during an emergency, because 18th-century transportation didn’t allow members of Congress to get back to Washington quickly. Permanent pro forma sessions wouldn’t really make me cry.
What needs to change is three things – first, the Senate shouldn’t have advise and consent on so many jobs. The assistant deputy assistant secretary for Eastern European irrigation affairs at the Agriculture Department really doesn’t need confirmation. About half the appointments are this way. Second, all executive appointments should be hotlined and not subject to filibuster. Third, the stupid rule that emboldened McConnell in this case, the power to return nominations during a recess, should be killed, as you say.
Why not get an extra paid day off? It’s just little people like me who will pay the price. I got up and put on my suit and even shaved my legs for an interview this morning and when I got there, I found out that the pay was so low and the hours so few that I would have netted less than $5,000 annually. My last PAY RAISE was almost 25% more than that. Heckuva job Dems…
How do we get to the point where a minority in the Senate, can hold a nation hostage?
We elected Scyphozoa
Agree recess appointments are an open invitation for abuse, but an even bigger threat was the loophole in the Patriot Act giving the President the ability to appoint U.S. Attornies General without Senate approval.
Has that loophole been closed yet? And why hasn’t Obama replaced all those who were dubiously appointed by means of that loophole?
Wow, a country that is soooo bankrupt it can’t help middle class Americans, extend unemployement benefits to those currently on and those that have already exhausted can spend on some space shuttle trips?
Oh yeah, I remember reading last week that the Bush family is working on some NASA Mars flights and this morning scientists have discovered that one of moons surround Mars looks promising for life.
Sheesh. They really know how to rub elbows up there when it comes to getting stuff done.
You mean, how did we get to the point where a single Senator can hold the nation hostage?
Good Catch!
I don’t understand this from a political perspective. The Republicans have been holding up nominations for two years, who is the genius who believes that they’ll have better luck after the elections? What happens when the new session starts next year? Don’t they all get returned anyway?
Even if they don’t get returned, they’ll have fewer Democrats and more reactionary Republicans in the Senate. Am I missing something?
Wouldn’t be bipartisan. Or pragmatic. Or respectful of the Senate. Or…
I cannot believe the recess appointment thing. Obama BARELY used that power, and in return rethugs prevent him from using it at all. After Shelby put his blanket hold, Obama should have recessed every single goddamn position. Does this guy suck at negotiating or what.
Who is keeping a list of all the ways the minority party has thwarted legislation for the past year and 3/4? I don’t recall any such successes by the minority party during the Bush debacle. Why? Was it all a show for voter sympathy? Were they all too ignorant to do what these 80 IQ geniuses accomplish on a daily basis?
Jim DeMint has a standing hold on ALL legislation. Mitch McConnell is essentially demanding appointments be approved by him. The minority Republicans stand together to block legislation.
Meanwhile, the Democrat in the White House berates his base before an election, seeking scapegoats for voter disapproval of his tepid policies. He promised change. This wasn’t quite the change I was expecting.
The
WORST
ever,
bar
none!!!!
Not only would he have given Hitler Poland, he’d have thrown in France if Hitler would have promised not to invade Germany.
I think the White House got that agreement when McConnell dropped the demand that the President go over there and kiss his butt every afternoon.
I see this as a disaster for the upcoming election. Promising to continue the current tax rates for the middle class after the elections is like Lucy and the football. How are they going to do that? Who will change their vote between now and 11/2? Why will the senate be less prone to a block? Three of this years senate seats will be seated immediately after the election as they are completions of existing terms – and all of those are on our side. Two of them look like potential losses. And that gives us less ability to pass the President’s tax plan.
And no budget? WTF
We look like the gang that can’t shoot straight.
Sorry if it was your “Last” job you can blame it on Bush! I am tired of getting blamed for Bush’s massive creation of 3 million jobs in 8 years, while Obama, according to the CBO, has already created 3.3 million.
Obama didn’t double the National debt by starting 2 wars and giving $2 TRILLION in tax-cuts to the rich while sluffing off 3/4 million jobs a month when he left.
Go knock on the Koch brothers doors, they gained plenty of money.
Jobs and money are created on Main Street. Even David Stockman doesn’t believe you get trickled on anymore by stealing from the poor to give to the rich. It was his theory and George HW Bush called it “Voodoo Economics”! Didn’t stop his idiot son from doing the same thing though.
The Dem “leadership” (Obama included) has now proven their cowardice beyond a shadow of a doubt by allowing this. I am done with the Democratic party to the point of considering voting Rethug. Not that I agree with the Rethugs, but partisan gridlock sounds mighty good right now. At least no more harm will be done…
Oh, Margaret, I am so there with you.
Didn’t somebody have a song called “I Shaved my Legs for This?” Probably not about a job interview, but still…
I had an interview yesterday, too, the first one in a long time. And ordinarily, I wouldn’t have even accepted it (it came through one of my temp agencies, temp-to-hire); it pays $10/hr and it’s for a small business of a type I wouldn’t specially want to work for. That comes to $21k a year, $6000 less than my less job, on which I was just paying my bills.
I was a nervous wreck, for various reasons including outside reasons, so I doubt I did great and will get it.
And in a sign thata even here where unemploymenet is lower than nationally, they are interviewing 8 to 10 people.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure I got the interview because I dumbed down my resume; dropped off the advanced degree and all the related jobs – they were more than ten years ago now, so agency suggested it.
Ain’t we doing grand?
Thought you were referring to this single senator holding up the OMB appointment.
This must be a mistake. When the Democrats were the minority during part of the Bush II regime they didn’t have any power. They wanted so badly to do anything to stop the assault on the judiciary and our rights, to stop torture, the corporate raping of the environment, the politicizing of every department of government, and the funneling of tax dollars to private republican right wing companies. They were completely unable to prevent any of the horrible things that the Republicans did because they were powerless. Is powerless the same as spineless?
When referring to the current crop of Democrats in Congress, yes.
Another in a series of simple answers to simple questions. h/t Atrios
“Congress wraps up a day early.”
But will anyone notice they’re gone? Since January of 2007 we’ve had an allegedly Dem majority House and Senate, coming to power on the wings of the slogan “Vote for us and we’ll end the war in Iraq” and we see how that turned out. Since January 2009 we’ve had an allegedly Dem president to go along with an allegedly Dem Congress so what do we have to show for it? If one didn’t know any better one would have to assume that this time since Jan. 2009 until the present would have been the ideal time for this country to finally get single payer health care, to end the wars for energy resource dominance, er, sorry, “War on Terror”, and to get some meaningful financial reform enacted to prevent the kind of credit default swaps and exotic derivatives and in general the casino-like behavior of Wall Street that helped lead the country into economic disaster.
Instead what have we gotten?
*a continuation of the Bush plan for Iraq
*an escalation of the war in Afghanistan
*a health care “reform” bill that should be called the Health Insurance Company Profit Protection Act of 2010 that enshrines for-profit health care and mandates that the tens of millions of Americans who can’t afford health insurance have to buy junk plans that they don’t want from private insurance companies and still can’t legally import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada because that would cut into Big Pharma’s profits
*a financial “reform” bill that is nothing more than a wet noodle
That’s why it’s worse than a waste of time to vote in America, it’s actually reinforcing the problem by saying that the false choice that we’re given at the voting booth, between open conservatives (Republicans) and barely closeted conservatives (Democrats) is fine with us, that we are OK with the “choices” we are given. Americans need to wise up and realize that the trappings of democracy and going through the motions and rituals of democracy don’t amount to a hill of beans if all the choices are controlled by the wealthy ruling elite that understood a long time ago that rigging elections at the ballot box is sooooo third world and that it’s much easier to simply buy out all the plastic marionette candidates from both hardly-dissimilar parties and let them fight it out to see which will be the best, most loyal puppet of the elite. At that point it doesn’t matter who wins because the rich know that it will be someone guaranteed to already be in their pocket. Doesn’t sound like a genuine democracy? That’s because it isn’t.
Phobos and Deimos are barren rocks as far as I know . . . not hospitable.