Senate

The Bottleneck on the Hill

By Jay Newton-Small | @JNSmall | June 16, 2010 | +

Here’s a story from me about the bottleneck of bills accumulating in the Senate as more and more vulnerable Dems balk at additional spending. If getting through $50 billion in emergency aid to stave of furloughs of teachers, firefighters and police will be tough, it’s hard to imagine the Senate pushing through big ticket items like immigration and climate change. I’m told that a bill taking BP out to the woodshed with a few renewable incentives — absolutely no cap and trade — might be the only thing passable in this climate.

Particularly interesting in this story was the open hostility with which congressional leaders greeted President Obama’s request for aid. So badly botched was the letter that Politico’s David Rogers is now reporting that it’s going to delay the war supplemental in the House.

On the other side of the Hill, Senator Dianne Feinstein has bluntly told the administration that she will not confirm Obama’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, until intelligence authorization work is finished, leading Marc Ambinder to speculate that the President may have to recess appoint Clapper.

In the conference on financial regulatory reform it looks like Dems are ignoring the Administration’s preferences and are keeping in at least some form of Blanche Lincoln’s derivatives language.

Does some one need to wake up the President’s legislative team?

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Related Topics: 2012 Election, Congress, Democratic Party, Economy, Republican Party, Senate

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  • nflfoghorn

    “Does some one need to wake up the President’s legislative team?”
    .
    Someone needs to wake up the legislators. They’re weak-kneed. If you can’t do the people’s business, leave.

  • diecash1

    If you can’t do the people’s business

    The people’s business and the corporate world’s business don’t often coincide with one another. As such, the people’s business takes a back seat most days.

  • Dee in Columbia MD

    My sentiments exactly. The legislators need to stop listening to the media narrative about the Republican onslaught that has no basis in fact and look at the polling data that for the second month in a row indicates that voters want Democrats in control of Congress. However, they also want change, not change of ideology, a change in implementation. Tthey want Democrats to put some steel in their spines and do what they were sent there to do Too bad the current crop of Democrats can’t stop listening to their opponents and those carrying their water and listen to their voters.

  • Paul-no not that one

    Why so much resistance to having the emergency aid as a stand alone rather than lumping it with an unrelated defense supplemental?
    .
    One fewer fight if they are tied together?

  • nflfoghorn

    Diecash, maybe I sound Pollyanna-ish, but I want them to be accountable to ME and YOU, not to lobbyists who give them $ to stay in office.

  • diecash1

    True that Nfl. I want accountability to the voters but I don’t believe that it can or will happen until corporate personhood is eliminated and elections are publicly funded. As such, it doesn’t look very likely.

  • http://phd9.blogspot.com Paul Dirks

    Concern over the deficit = People who are still employed $h!tting on the people who aren’t.
    .
    After all if only 10% of Americans are unemployed and only 10% of Mortgages are in default, then the majority of Americans are clearly just grateful it isn’t them. Raise taxes??!! Not on your life!

  • nflfoghorn

    Dee @ 1.2: I’d settle for drilling down the spines of Democrats and filling them all with concrete. This may take longer than plugging the BP leak.
    .
    BTW, how did Halliburton and Transocean escape scrutiny allasudden?

  • grape_crush

    few issues in Washington have symbolized the disconnect between politicians’ bold words and timid actions more than budget deficits. Politicians on both sides of the aisle rarely missed an opportunity to opine ominously about the dangers of out-of-control spending, all the while doing precious little to actually bring it under control.

    True. What’s funny is that, for the rest of the article, Jay chooses to highlight the ominous opining.

    Credit the Tea Party movement and voter weariness at the litany of bailouts…for making deficits suddenly a very real issue.

    That bunch of hypocritical reactionaries stayed pretty much silent when the right wingers were saying, “deficits don’t matter.” I would argue that – deep down – deficits still aren’t an issue to the Teabaggers, in that they really don’t want to cut those programs they depend on (like Medicare) or do things like raise taxes or slash money from various right-wing causes celebres, like this one.

    Deficits are a peg the Teabaggers are being told to hang their anger on. Credit an undue, uncritical focus on a confused, vocal minority by the media instead.

  • grape_crush

    ..how did Halliburton and Transocean escape scrutiny allasudden?
    .
    BP was the one calling the shots, maybe?
    .
    “Waxman and Stupak also said BP apparently rejected advice of a subcontractor, Halliburton Inc., in preparing for a cementing job to close up the well. BP rejected Halliburton’s recommendation to use 21 ‘centralizers’ to make sure the casing ran down the center of the well bore, they said. Instead, BP used six centralizers.

    In an e-mail on April 16, a BP official involved in the decision explained: ‘It will take 10 hours to install them. I do not like this.’ Later that day, another official recognized the risks of proceeding with insufficient centralizers but commented: ‘who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine.’”
    .
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100614/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill_washington

  • deconstructiva

    Thanks, Jay, good work as usual. I can understand more spending to help alleviate unemployment but the Senate’s planning to cut benefits? Just to prevent an R filibuster? So they’re addressing neither issue. Why are the R’s fighting unemployment benefits, Jay? I don’t see how voters out of work would like this, no matter if it improved the deficit even by a paltry bit. I’d appreciate more thoughts from you on this.

  • http://www.twitter.com/jnsmall Jay Newton-Small

    Indeed, one fewer fight and they whole thing is rolled together. At a time when spending is being highly questioned, the war supplemental is slightly more difficult to take apart. And now the whole $50 billion package is in danger because the climate has grown so hostile to all spending: the war supp is guaranteed to get through no matter what.
    JNS

  • http://www.twitter.com/jnsmall Jay Newton-Small

    Republicans hate unemployment benefits — big government, welfare state, etc. Many Rs would be happy to do away with them altogether.
    JNS

  • Paul-no not that one

    Thanks JNS.
    .
    If you have time, I’m curious about the reverse-why would the White House want it as a stand alone?

  • http://phd9.blogspot.com Paul Dirks

    R’s hate unemployment benefits because they want to drive down labor costs. If people are unable to hold out for a decent job, they’re more likely to take a lousy one. They also hate minimum wage laws for the same reason.
    JNS’s ‘welfare state’ and ‘big government’ catch-phrases are a red herring. They have absolutely nothing to do with the real motivations.

  • http://www.twitter.com/jnsmall Jay Newton-Small

    Paul’s right, I’ve been talking too much to Tea Partiers and Rand Paul types of late who do truly see unemployment benefits as a welfare state. The main stream GOP think more along the lines of what Paul said.
    JNS

  • deconstructiva

    Thanks Jay and Paul. It’s too bad the unemployed workers seem to be left out of all of this. Jay, it’s interesting that some older TP’s actually DO use Social Security and No-Govt-Hands Medicare even as they tell you they hate welfare states.

  • http://www.twitter.com/jnsmall Jay Newton-Small

    I think the idea was to not go down the Bush route of loading up war supps with non-related spending: keep it pure. Unfortunately, there’s a good reason those bills get loaded up: it avoids a lot of other headaches like this one.
    JNS

  • Paul-no not that one

    Thanks again JNS.
    .
    I was going to suggest the idea of “cleaner” bills but thought that this was a odd spot to draw the line.
    .
    Hope that (honorable I concede) strategy doesn’t end up hurting the teachers, firefighters and police.

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