posted on January 11, 2007 07:25:53 PM new
TAKING DAY OFF FOR FOOTBALL COSTS DEMS CREDIBILITY
By DICK MORRIS
January 10, 2006 -- House Democrats lost considerable credibility yesterday when their opening session was cancelled so that members could attend the Ohio State-Florida State football game.
This is not a joke.
It is, however, a blunt metaphor for how genuinely out of touch the members of Congress really are. How many other Americans do you suppose were given the same perk? A day off because of an evening football game? And how many school kids would like to have time off to watch their own favorite teams? What kind of message is the House leadership sending?
Is it that they don't get how bad it looks, or that they don't care?
Their record has been dismal. Last year, the House and Senate worked an average of about two days a week for their salary of $162,500. Nice work if you can find it. Responding to well-deserved criticisms, the new House majority leader, Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), with great fanfare, promised a five-day work week. But that was just talk. When it was the Republicans who were scheduling the eight-day month, Hoyer was outraged. But now that the Democrats control the calendar, he considers a football game to be a legitimate excuse for a vacation day. As he said in reference to the new House minority leader, John Boehner (R-Ohio), "There is a very important event happening Monday night, particularly for those who live in Ohio and Florida. In the spirit of comity, and I know if Maryland were playing, I would want to be accommodated, and I want to accommodate my friend, Mr. Boehner."
Apparently Mr. Hoyer is not familiar with the disdain that American voters feel for members of Congress. A mid-December Gallup poll showed that 74 percent of Americans disapproved of the job that Congress was doing. Hoyer is certainly doing his best to keep those negative poll numbers.
And there won't be a five-day work week at all in January. The Martin Luther King holiday falls next week and the Democrats and Republicans are holding respective retreats during the following two weeks. The Democrats are planning a day of speeches in two weeks, including one by Bill Clinton. Hey folks, ever think about doing this on a weekend?
So the promised "five-day" work week starts on Tuesday at 6:30 and ends at about 2 on Friday -- more like a two-and-a-half-day work week.
And that might not even happen if there's another important football game.
Meanwhile in the Senate, while Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) fight for an independent watchdog to enforce lobbying laws, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) insists that hearings must first be held on the issue. This is hardly a new idea. It's been proposed for years and makes sense. We've seen how little policing of lobbyists has been done -- witness Jack Abramoff and his cohorts. Requiring hearings is just another stalling tactic. And, in any event, Reid is the last person who should be in charge of designing the self-policing of lobbyists. For years, his three sons and son-in-law made millions by lobbying for Nevada interests -- often working out of his Senate office. Only when the press called attention to the practice did Reid bar the boys. Talk about the goats guarding the garbage! Sen. Obama spoke of "institutional resistance" to the watchdog provisions. That institutional resistance has led to serious lobbying transgressions that must be stopped.
If the Democrats want to stay in power, and if Congress wants to win the support and trust of the American people, they'd better start thinking about how their actions resonate with the average voter. Looks like it's already time for new Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to use her "mother-of-five voice" and turn things around in the House. As for the Senate, let's hope the new members speak out and force real and necessary reforms. This time the country is watching.
"“More Iraqis think things are going well in Iraq than Americans do. I guess they don’t get the New York Times over there.”—Jay Leno".
posted on January 12, 2007 12:17:59 PM new
After the last session of Congress anything would be an improvement.
"Gunny" Bob falsely claimed House Democrats "arranged a four-day workweek" and scheduled "47 vacation days"
Summary: Newsradio 850 KOA host "Gunny" Bob Newman falsely accused U.S. House Democrats of reneging on promises to "work harder" than the last Congress, claiming that they scheduled "more days off than they are working." He did not note that last year's Congress, under Republican control, worked the fewest days of any Congress in history.
On the January 8 broadcast of Newsradio 850 KOA's The Gunny Bob Show, host "Gunny" Bob Newman falsely accused Democratic leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives of reneging on promises to "work harder" than the last Congress, which was Republican-controlled. Newman falsely claimed that the House Democratic leadership, less than a week after taking charge, "arranged a four-day workweek" and scheduled "an additional 47 vacation days between now and August 31st," amounting to "more days off than they are working." But Newman neglected to note that last year the House, under Republican leadership, typically was in session only three days a week and scheduled nearly twice as many so-called "vacation days." Moreover, the last Congress worked the fewest days of any Congress in history.
During a rant about purported "broken promises" by the new Democratic majority, Newman asserted that House members "just got sworn in last week, and [Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy] Pelosi has already broken her promise, refusing to institute a five-day workweek in the House as promised." He continued:
They just arranged a four-day workweek. They took today [January 8] off to watch college football, and have now released their extremely generous vacation schedule that includes, in addition to Fridays and weekends off, 47 vacation days between now and the end of August.
As reported in a December 6 Washington Post article, shortly after he was voted in as House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer (D-MD) announced that the House would be in session five days a week, a change from the previous year, when "the legislative week started late Tuesday and ended by Thursday afternoon." The Post also noted that the previous, Republican-controlled Congress held session "seven days fewer than the infamous 'Do-Nothing Congress' of 1948."
While it is true that the House was not in session on January 8 because some members -- Democrat and Republican alike -- wanted to "watch college football," Newman's broader assertion regarding the new congressional workweek is incorrect. Neither Hoyer nor any other Democratic leader has since announced a four-day workweek.
Furthermore, the 2007 House Schedule lists 47 days not in session from January 4 through August 31, four of which are federal holidays -- Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 15), Presidents Day (February 19), Memorial Day (May 28), and Independence Day (July 4) -- and 43 of which are included in "District Work Periods." Contrary to Newman's assertion that House leaders scheduled "more days off than they are working," the current Congress is scheduled to be in session January 4 through August 31 for 124 days, and out of session for 116 days. Last year, during the same period, the Republican-led House scheduled 163 days out of session, more than twice as many days as scheduled in session, 77. Of the 163 days scheduled out of session in 2006, 91 were what Newman would classify as "vacation days."*
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on January 12, 2007 12:35:52 PM new
Yes those hard working Dems.
First the federal minimim wage increased passes in the house and now they have implemented the recomendations of the 9/11 commission.
House passes legislation backing recommendations of 9-11 panel
By Jill Zuckman
Chicago Tribune
(MCT)
WASHINGTON - With the families of Sept. 11 victims looking on, the House overwhelmingly voted Tuesday night to enact the languishing recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission designed to ensure the safety of the nation from future terrorist attacks.
The legislation was the first for the new, Democratic-controlled Congress to pass. Symbolically, it was labeled HR 1. And to demonstrate just how important Democrats viewed the measure, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., kicked off the debate by presiding over the House.
Lawmakers voted 299-128 to require screening of all cargo on passenger planes within three years, to check cargo ships for nuclear bombs before they leave ports bound for the U.S. and to boost homeland security funding for urban areas most likely to be terrorist targets.
"Here's a chance for Congress to stop dragging its feet and become the do-something Congress," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the new chairman of the Homeland Security panel. "We can stand around pointing fingers or we can do the job we were hired to do."
Implicit in the Democrats' message - a staple of the 2006 campaign trail - was criticism of their Republican counterparts for failing to pass many of the commission's recommendations in the last several years.
But Republicans rejected that notion emphatically, insisting that they passed 39 out of the 41 recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission, even if they originally opposed the creation of the panel.
"We passed very significant legislation in the last Congress," said Rep. Peter King of New York, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee.
Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., said Democrats were in a bind because they had campaigned on implementing the recommendations of the commission. "And now you have to at least appear to make good on that promise even though it doesn't make any sense," she charged.
King and other GOP lawmakers complained that Democrats had shut Republicans out of the process for writing the legislation.
"This should not be a partisan issue," he said. "Terrorists don't care if we're Republicans, Democrats, independents - if we're Americans, they want to kill us."
Not all Republicans were willing to oppose the legislation, with 68 joining the Democrats to pass it.
Asked about the unhappiness of his GOP colleagues, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., said, "I can't explain it." Shays had tried unsuccessfully to pass legislation during the last Congress that would have instituted 100 percent screening of cargo on passenger planes and scanning cargo at ports.
"It's a darn shame we didn't do it when we had the opportunity," said Shays, who joined several family members who lost relatives on Sept. 11, 2001, to tout the benefits of the bill.
Democrats noted that members of the Sept. 11 Commission gave Congress grades of C, D and F for its response to their recommendations. And they pointed out that the commission's two chairmen, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., and former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean Jr., a Republican, had praised the new legislation.
On CNN Tuesday, John Lehman, a Sept. 11 commissioner and former Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan, offered enthusiastic words as well, saying, "This is a terrific development because it's not just posturing."
Still, the legislation failed to substantially overhaul Congress's own oversight of the intelligence community, experts said.
The commission called that oversight "dysfunctional," and recommended joint House-Senate oversight with authorizing and appropriations committees combined to oversee intelligence matters. The commission also called for an end to term limits for lawmakers serving on the intelligence committees.
"All of these steps are important and the Congress hasn't done any of them," said Melvin Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a former CIA analyst.
The reason, he said, has to do with power.
"If they centralized into one committee, the individual House and Senate committees would lose power, and if they centralized authorizing and appropriating committees they would have to give up some power, and they just never do that even when it's clear that the security of the country demands that," Goodman said.
Even so, lawmakers and family advocates for the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks congratulated one another for finally doing what they said should have been done long ago.
"The 9/11 Commission gave us a blueprint for security and they didn't expect it to gather dust," said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., holding up a copy of the commission's report.
Mary Fetchet, whose son died on the 89th floor of Tower Two in New York, said that years after the attacks, she's not satisfied with the security of the country.
"Six years later, we're not safe," said Fetchet, president of Voices of September 11th. "It's not safe to fly in an airplane."
And Carol Ashley, who lost her daughter the same day, said not enough was done to protect the country in the years since the attacks.
"We are more vulnerable than we should be," said Ashley.
The anti-terrorism measure is the first in a series of major bills that the House is expected to pass this week and next. The list - all part of Democrats' campaign platform - includes an increase in the minimum wage, the expansion of federally funded embryonic stem cell research and permission for the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices for senior citizens.
In addition, the House is poised to cut the interest rate on student loans and to rescind federal subsidies for oil companies.
The Senate is moving at a slower pace, considering changes to Congress's ethics rules.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
