California Conservative

Ron Cass has an interesting take on what I’m calling the ‘Do Almost Nothing’ Congress. He doesn’t paint a flattering picture of Democrats.

Democrats, after controlling Congress almost continuously from 1933 to 1995, were the minority party in the House of Representatives for a dozen years and for 10 of 12 years were the minority in the Senate, too. So, perhaps, it’s not surprising that they’ve gotten very good at complaining about how the nation is governed and not so good at actually doing it.

But few people have connected that to the performance of the 110th Congress. With Congress out for its Memorial Day break, commentators across the nation are taking stock of its first quarter performance and concluding that the Democrats have come up dramatically short. From left and right alike, observers are drawing the same picture of a Do-Nothing Congress. And, happy or sad, most are proclaiming surprise.

After all, things looked very different last fall, when Nancy Pelosi was promising a Democratic Congress that within its first 100 hours would pass laws that would raise the minimum wage, bring the troops home from Iraq, expand health benefits, reform immigration laws, make college affordable for all, secure energy independence, and address broad taxing and spending issues. She also promised to “drain the swamp” - changing a Congress that failed to address ethical problems of individual members and that used “earmark” provisions to give pork to constituents and favors to lobbyists. Harry Reid and colleagues on the Senate side had similar, though more muted, messages.

After 140 days, however, congressional Democrats left town with no significant accomplishments, one long-delayed bill finally enacted into law, and lots to make fun of. There was no increase in morality, no magically bipartisan era, no sweeping enactment of a coherent agenda for change, akin to what Republicans promised in their Contract With America in 1994. Instead, the 110th Congress has been a combination of “now I’ll get mine” and “now you’ll get yours!”

If Pelosi, Reid & Company don’t start passing and enacting sensible laws between now and the next election, independents will abandon them in droves. This isn’t the way to expand their base. The suburbs went heavily for Democrats this last election. If they don’t start chalking up significant achievements soon, those suburbs will return to GOP hands in 2008.

One thing that they’ll have to do better on is in dealing with Washington corruption. Democrats upped the ante by campaigning hard on that issue. If they don’t do something serious about corruption soon, people will start thinking that they were sold a bill of goods. Rest assured that organizations like the Club for Growth will attack them for voting for the biggest tax increase in history by simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire.

Imagine the difficulties Democrats would face campaigning after not passing serious anti-corruption legislation and after passing the biggest tax increase in history. They’d be greeted with brickbats, not applause. (And I’ll gladly incite the people.)

It hasn’t been pretty. And it isn’t likely to get better. Only those who were paying very careful attention last fall saw this coming.

There were lots of people who saw this coming. Unfortunately, nobody listened to conservatives like me. That’s their loss. Next time they’ll learn that we know what we’re doing.

Given the sources of the victory last fall, the story of this Congress has to be told in three parts: ethics, Iraq, and everything else. Ethics concerns included the misbehavior of individual congressmen as well as the systemic problems with earmarks and lobbyists.

From the very start, things got off on the wrong foot. Nancy Pelosi’s first act as Speaker was to push anti-war activist and vocal critic of all things Republican, John Murtha, as her choice for House majority leader, despite serious issues respecting Murtha’s ethics. The Democratic Caucus helped Ms. Pelosi out by rejecting her choice, but Pelosi has made Murtha her caucus’ number one voice on war policy.

I used this post to highlight Murtha’s ‘legacy’ of corruption, both recent and ancient. I’d also argue that making him their “number one voice on war policy” will backfire.

If the practice of earmarking hasn’t ended, it has changed a bit, for the worse. House Appropriations Chair David Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin, says he has so many requests for earmarks to add to major legislation, over 30,000 in five months, that he has no choice but to tack them on after work on the bill is complete and won’t reveal them until after both Houses vote. The other real change is that not all earmarks are put in writing; now Democrats who don’t want anyone to know what they’re doing can simply phone in the instructions on where to send the money (a practice Washington insiders now call “phone-marking”), as Harry Reid did in a call to the Energy Department.

Republicans should talk about phone-marking in every stump speech they give this summer. They should start that conversation immediately. Part of their stump speech should be spent talking about John Murtha’s and David Obey’s willful avoidance of earmark transparency. Conservatives all across the nation should condemn their shameful actions as unethical and unacceptable.

It’s also important to point out that Ms. Pelosi promised that this would be the most ethical congress in history. By pointing out Obey’s and Murtha’s avoidance of transparency, we open the door to asking why Democrats don’t believe that “sunlight is the greatest disinfectant” to the political process.

Democrats still haven’t learned that people expect more from them than diatribes and investigations now that they’re the majority party. They expect solutions to their biggest problems. Thus far, Democrats have failed miserably. The fact that Congressional Democrats have lower approval ratings than President Bush suggests that people have noticed how ineffective this ‘Do Almost Nothing Congress’ has been.

That should scare sane-thinking Democrats heading into 2008.

Technorati Tags: Do Nothing Congress, Earmark Reform, Lobbying Reform, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, David Obey, John Murtha, Culture Of Corruption, Phone Marking, Election 2008

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 10:07 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Corruption, Election 2008, Investigations, Iraq, Pelosi, Taxes, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.