New Congress likely full of brimstone, talk, little change

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New Congress likely full of brimstone,
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McClatchy Newspapers
By David Lightman
and William Douglas
January 3, 2011


WASHINGTON — Get ready for some slam-bang action from the new Republican-led House of Representatives after the 112th Congress convenes Wednesday: It's going to read the entire Constitution aloud, try to repeal the new health care law and cut federal spending dramatically.

But despite what's likely to be a January full of big talk, big votes and big ideas, the most important policy decisions are unlikely for several weeks and months, and then only after some titanic power struggles.

While House Republicans will have a 242-to-193 majority, the biggest GOP margin since the first Truman administration, any legislation must be approved by the Democratic-dominated Senate and signed by President Barack Obama.

As a result, "what you're going to see at first is a lot of fire and brimstone, and votes on symbolically important legislation," veteran budget analyst Stan Collender said.

House Republicans are dominated by 85 freshmen, most loyal to the conservative grass-roots tea party movement. While loosely organized, movement backers want a more limited form of government.

"YOURS are the voices that will resonate through the 112th Congress in 2011," says an Internet message from the Tea Party Patriots group. "On January 5, the new Congress will be sworn in to uphold the Constitution. We must make sure they do it. We must keep a close and careful eye on everything they do, or don't do."

Michael Franc, the vice president for government relations at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research center, thinks that tea party strength in the House will be tested within the first 90 to 120 days, particularly on budget matters and on the health care law.

"The first 90-120 days you're going to have two potentially gigantic arguments on the size and scope of government," Franc said. "If you think about it chronologically — how the year will unfold — most of the action will be front-loaded. Among the freshmen, the tea party spirit will be fully imbued in January-February-March-April more than any other time in their congressional careers."

In the Senate, Democrats will have a 53-to-47 majority, down five seats from last month but still enough to give the party a huge say in legislation.

Ultimately, analysts and lawmakers expect some spring/summer compromise on the day's biggest issues. But as the new Congress begins, they're also watching five key developments to see how they play in America's heartland:

• Reading of the Constitution. A major tenet of tea party thought is that lawmakers have been dismissive of the Constitution's intent, as they've expanded the reach of government too far.
  
  
  • The House GOP's "Pledge to America" promises that no one can introduce legislation without a statement "citing as specifically as practicable the power or powers granted to Congress in the Constitution" to enact it.
  
  
  • To drive the point home, lawmakers plan to read the Constitution aloud on the House floor Thursday.
  
  
  • "One of the resounding themes I have heard from my constituents is that Congress should adhere to the Constitution and the finite list of powers it granted to the federal government," said Rep. Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., who's leading the effort,
  
  
  • Michael Munger, a professor of political science at Duke University, had a different take: "This is to make the tea party people happy. It's like a religious ceremony," he said.

• Repealing health care. To tea party activists, the 2010 health care law's mandate that nearly everyone have health insurance coverage or face a penalty is a dangerous extension of federal power.
  
  
  • The House decided late Monday that it would vote on the repeal on Jan. 12.
  
  
  • "Obama care failed to lower costs as the president promised that it would and does not allow people to keep the care they currently have if they like it. That is why the House will repeal it next week," Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Majority Leader-elect Eric Cantor, R-Va., said Monday.
  
  
  • No one expects an attempt at repeal to succeed, since 60 votes are needed to overcome a Senate filibuster and two-thirds majorities of members of Congress present in both chambers would be required to override an Obama veto.
  
  
  • But the House debate and vote could provide important clues about how Republicans would replace the current system.
  
  
  • "How would they subsidize lower-income people? And how do they provide incentives for healthy people to get coverage?" asked Paul Ginsburg, the president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, an independent research group.

• Paring the budget. House Republicans have vowed to cut $100 billion from the budget, and cut spending back to 2008-09 levels.
  
  
  • They're expected to make recommendations on budget-cutting rules Tuesday, and the full House is likely to vote Wednesday. Among the changes: Any new mandatory spending would have to be offset by cuts elsewhere. Tax increases wouldn't be permitted.
  
  
  • The first showdown is imminent: Government spending for the current fiscal year, which runs through Sept. 30, expires in early March.
  
  
  • Critics, though, find that there's no agreed-on list of exactly what Republicans want to cut. Asked about specifics, Speaker-designate John Boehner of Ohio said, "We'll start first by cutting our own budget." But after that he was vague, saying, "The House will certainly work its will when it comes to how we're going to cut spending."

• Raising the debt limit. The government is expected to hit its $14.3 trillion debt limit early this year. Unless that number is raised, Washington would be unable to borrow, and thus unable to pay for government services.
  
  
  • The idea of authorizing more debt is anathema to many conservatives.
  
  
  • Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, thought that congressional Republicans and Democrats and the White House could forge a deal on raising the limit, something that some tea party-backed lawmakers have spoken against.
  
  
  • "There are some tea party members who would welcome a government shutdown, but most wouldn't," he said.

• Rules on debate. Frustrated by Republicans using the filibuster _ extended debate _ to block or slow legislation from coming to the Senate floor, some Senate Democrats plan to propose on Wednesday changing the way the chamber conducts its business. The House will vote Friday on its own rules for debate.

Senate Democrats intend to propose making it easier to formally consider legislation. Senators also are seeking an elimination of so-called secret holds, which allow them to anonymously block the consideration of presidents' nominees for Cabinet, judicial, diplomatic and other posts.

The filibuster once was used rarely.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and other Democrats have made their displeasure known about the Senate Republican use of the filibuster, but some Senate Democrats who are creatures of the institution might not go along.

"My sense is all the Republicans would vote against it, and some of the senior Democrats — the older ones like Senator Daniel Inouye — remember when they were the minority party" and would vote against it, said Sabato, of the University of Virginia.



http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/03/106129/new-congress-likely-full-of-brimstone.html

 

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Fiscal Shock

source: New York Times

Paul Krugman


I see that the Washington Post editorial board is shocked, shocked to discover that the incoming Republicans aren’t serious about deficit reduction. Who could have suspected?

I was going to be snarky all the way here, but actually let’s be serious: the gullibility of much of the media establishment on all this amounts to journalistic malpractice..

Republicans have, after all, been the party of fiscal irresponsibility since 1980; the GW Bush administration confirmed, if anyone was in doubt, that unfunded tax cuts are now in the party’s DNA.

Then along comes a Democratic president who presides over all of two years of deficits in the immediate aftermath of a severe financial crisis – which is a time when you’re actually supposed to run deficits. Republicans begin inveighing against the evils of red ink – and, incredibly, get taken at face value.

And even if you didn’t know the history, if you actually paid attention to what leading Republicans were saying, their lack of seriousness was totally obvious. You had the Ryan plan, which claimed to reduce the deficit but, if you actually looked into it at all, relied completely on magic asterisks; you had the declarations by top Republicans that deficits are terrible but there’s no need to offset the cost of tax cuts.

The idea that these people were allowed to pose as deficit hawks is stunning.

Oh, and for those claiming that Republicans have always said that spending, not deficits is what matters: first of all, this is very much revisionist history; you can’t denounce the federal debt, then claim that you never cared about the revenue side of things. Beyond that, the deficit scare tactics lately have been all about solvency, not mere crowding out; repent, they said, or you’ll turn into Greeeeeece. That’s a scare story about solvency, for which the deficit, not spending, is what matters.

Why the blindness? I suspect a lot of it had to do with the desire to seem balanced. Journalists felt that they had to find Republican fiscal heroes, just to show how even-handed and open-minded they were. To say that the whole deficit thing was a political ploy, with no substance behind it, sounded shrill.

The truth often does.

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Re: Fiscal Shock

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Growing pains: House GOP stumbles</font size></center>

Boehner blames Democrats for partisanship, and says the GOP can't be 'perfect every
day.' | AP Photo



p o l i t i c o
By JOHN BRESNAHAN
& JAKE SHERMAN
February 9, 2011



It usually takes a lot longer for the party in charge to start with the finger-pointing, the failed votes and the backpedaling on campaign promises.

But the House Republican majority has already had two failed floor votes, is experiencing a backlash on the right over spending cuts and has bypassed the committee process it once praised for taking up major bills.


And that’s all just this week.

These initial flubs in the first month of the GOP majority are mainly public relations embarrassments — but Republicans may face much more substantial problems quelling an uprising over the debt limit and corralling conservative votes on the budget bill known as the continuing resolution, measures that are essential to keeping the government operating. The miscues indicate that House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders have a harder job than they bargained for managing an unwieldy, activist group of nearly 90 freshman lawmakers.

And the sudden resignation Wednesday of New York Rep. Christopher Lee, just hours after suggestive photos of him appeared on a gossip website, further demonstrated a GOP conference that continues to bumble its way through the opening chapter of the 112th Congress.

“The new majority has different leadership than the last time we actually were the majority. [They] have to make their own way, they have to make their own decisions, set their own policies,” said Florida Rep. Bill Young, a 38-year veteran of the House. “There’s a learning curve for leaders. There’s a learning curve for members.”

Boehner, who has tried to project an image of serenity throughout the opening weeks of this Congress, tried to downplay the challenges.

“We’ve been in the majority four weeks,” Boehner told reporters Wednesday morning. “We’re not going to be perfect every day.”

Democrats, however, are gleefully sending out press releases with the word “disarray” in the subject line, and Wednesday afternoon, the subcommittee chairmen of the House Appropriations Committee — traditionally known as “cardinals” — held an emergency meeting to seek ways to cut more than the approximately $40 billion being targeted so far. A senior GOP aide said “there are a lot of moving parts” as the leadership is working with the Republican Study Committee, freshmen and appropriators to find $100 billion in cuts.

“Governing is a bitch,” joked a top House Democrat, showing no sympathy for his GOP counterparts.

Boehner’s drive to empower his chairmen to legislate — reversing the recent trend in which all House authority was held in the speaker’s office — is getting a serious test as well. This early in a new Congress, with committees having yet to produce a wave of legislation for the pipeline, the GOP majority is scrambling to fill floor time and grappling for a message when Democrats say the majority is stagnant on job growth.



FULL STORY