| 09 December 2006 Leaving Town The lame ducks are dead ducks this morning, the magic gavel crashing down at 3:17 AM to put them out of their misery. The second session of the 109th Congress has passed into history. Everyone is eager to get home for the holidays. It is not surprising that there is a lot of wreckage in the House of Representatives, since no one seemed able to focus. The departing Congress left nine of the eleven major appropriations bills on the table as they left, and that will be one of the issues that confront the brand new 110th Congress that will take office in the New Year. Defense and Homeland Security are the only budgets that were passed, so we can party secure in the knowledge that we are safe and secure, although everything else is in limbo. Speaker Presumptive Nancy Pelosi took a few minutes to be gracious to the outgoing Republican leadership, praising their service, even as the ugly bubbling about who-knew-what-when about former Congressman Mark Foley was resolved. The outcome was quite remarkable, even if not surprising: ethics were breached, but no one was responsible. The first hundred hours of the new Congress will be something to behold, since the stated agenda of the new majority includes smashing the K Street lobbying project, fully implementing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, raising the minimum wage and expanding stem cell research I don't find a lot to disagree with in the list, so there may be some success as the new Congress flexes its muscles. The new Majority Leader in the House is Steny Hoyer, and he has announced that he is going to extend the legislative working week to include Mondays and Fridays. It is important to note that Steny's district in Maryland is an easy commute to the Capitol, and not in California, but he apparently thinks where the Members live is not his problem. The Government has been limping along under a continuing resolution, which means that the various agencies and departments are permitted to obligate funds up to the amount of the previous fiscal year. The President's Budget for Fiscal 2008 is normally rolled-out for consideration in February, and the Committees are supposed to start the mark-up process. It is going to be confusing, what with the new members and a continuing resolution in place through mid-February, it thus appears that we could have two budget years on the table simultaneously, one for a year that will already be deep in the second quarter of execution. There is some talk that the new leadership will simply elect to skip a year, since they have a lot to accomplish. It is a novel approach, and suggests that perhaps we only need a periodic Congress, but I have learned to stifle those thoughts. You would have been proud of the waning moments of the old order. There was a lot of discussion about pool and spa safety, and authorization to continue the series of commemorative series of 25-cent coins to include the District of Columbia and the Territories. I am personally writing my Congressman to lobby for a bill to include all the Sovereign Native American Tribes and Bands in the series. You must stand up for something in the process. What I can't find is the text of the omnibus bill that jammed all manner of strange things together. There was nuclear cooperation with India, trade with Vietnam, extension of tax provisions and gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico all wrapped into one astonishing package. It is quite impossible to make sense of it, but no matter. They will be sorting that out on K Street next week as the firms decide whether to renew their leases for another year. Ms Pelosi indicates there are no plans to impeach the President, and I think that is a perfectly reasonable position, since a national referendum on that matter is scheduled already for November of 2008. Some people are thinking about that now, and they never leave town, even over the Holidays. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |