Re: New Proposal for Congress
AMEN!! Great (and I do mean great) idea! They have had almost a year of majority on the floor trying to obtain victory for Islamic terror, and to-date, have failed miserably!
They have ALSO failed to get anything ELSE accomplished other than naming a building! And i do mean ANYTHING. And to top it off, they hold a sleep-in at taxpayer's expense,in the hopes of getting America to surrender, only to forget that the cameras were still on at 4AM! LOL!!
They sure looked as miserable as they must be in person!
I like yer plan, Sun-Runner.
Good thinkin, new guy!! I do believe we are going to become buds.
I take it that you don't agree with the following:
By: Martin Frost
Jul 23, 2007 11:54 AM EST
The first six months of the new Congress are now history. Let's step back and take a long look at how the new Democratic leaders (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) have fared. The answer is that they have done remarkably well under difficult circumstances.
First, Sen. Reid has a very narrow one-vote margin (51-49) to work with in a body that requires 60 votes to conduct most business. Speaker Pelosi enjoys a slightly larger margin but far from the large majorities enjoyed by previous Democratic speakers like Tip O'Neill, Jim Wright and Tom Foley.
The biggest failure of this Congress to date (inability to pass an immigration reform bill) was the result of a Republican president (Bush) being unable to persuade enough Senate Republicans to join with Democrats to reach the 60-vote requirement to cut off a filibuster. The deadlock over immigration was a Republican failure, plain and simple. To describe it any other way is demagoguery in the greatest Tom DeLay tradition.
Congressional Democrats have made real progress in facing down a recalcitrant and isolated president on the top issue that voters really care about: bringing an end to our involvement in Iraq. Pelosi and Reid have skillfully handled this issue so that it is now clear to the public that the only thing standing in the way of an orderly change in policy is an incredibly blind and wrong-headed president.
Pelosi and Reid could have yielded to radical voices in their own party and pressed for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. That would have played directly into Karl Rove's hands and made it appear that Democrats, not the Republican president, were responsible for our failures in Iraq.
Instead, Pelosi and Reid kept their respective caucuses united in favor of a series of benchmarks and deadlines for ultimate U.S. withdrawal. They lost the initial showdown with the president over a timeline, but they continued to press their case in an orderly and respectful way.
By taking this approach, Pelosi and Reid gave congressional Republicans time to rethink their position and put pressure on the president of their own party to change policy. A number of high-profile and respected Republican senators have done just that in recent weeks, and now the stage is set for a real showdown in September over war funding.
Given the Democrats' small majorities in both the Senate and the House, the party leadership's handling of this explosive issue has been masterful and "just right."
And it's not like House and Senate Democrats don't have other accomplishments. They kept the heat on until the president finally accepted a significant increase in the minimum wage, which will be phased in over the next two years. This will be the first such increase in 10 years.
Also, Congress passed a budget resolution for the next fiscal year on time this spring, something that recent Republican Congresses were totally incapable of doing. In fact, the last Republican Congress failed to ever pass a budget resolution, leading to a total breakdown in Congress' budgetary role. While Republicans may criticize individual portions of the budget resolution, they should at least admire the Democrats' ability to get their work done on time.
And both houses passed significant ethical reforms. Democratic leaders didn't pass everything that the reform community wanted, but they did make major progress. Let's not ever forget that it was the shady conduct of Republicans like DeLay, Bob Ney and Duke Cunningham which created the climate that demanded changes in ethical rules. Democrats responded in a way that will make it harder for future DeLays, Neys and Cunninghams to violate the public trust.
Democrats in the Senate have already passed significant energy legislation, and hopefully the House will soon follow suit. Democratic leaders also are making progress on legislation reauthorizing "No Child Left Behind" and our nation's farm support programs.
None of this has been easy, but Reid and Pelosi deserve high marks for their first six months in office.
