Politics

The House of Representatives will vote this week on Preventing Greater Uncertainty in Labor-Management Relations Act (H.R. 1120), a bill which stops the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from continuing to issue decisions in defiance of a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit holding that the board is without lawful authority to do so. The bill deserves bi-partisan support.
 
The bill serves three purposes: first, it eliminates the uncertainty that has arisen in the labor-management community that is being exacerbated by the three-member board continuing to issue decisions; second, it sends a message that Congress intends to protect the U.S. Senate’s role in the political appointment process; and third, it provides an example to other executive branch agencies who may think that the line has been crossed and that impertinent behavior toward a federal circuit court is now in vogue and can be copied.

Now that senators have returned from their recess, they must act swiftly to pass Senator Reid’s omnibus gun violence prevention bill (S.649), which requires that all gun buyers pass background checks — whether they purchase their firearms from licensed dealers or else in so-called “private” sales, such as online and at gun shows. And the bill must take the same record-keeping requirement that already applies to dealers and extend it to such private sellers. Failure to do so will deny police the critical tools we need to solve crimes. As law enforcement officers, we have spent decades watching our insufficient laws give criminals easy access to guns, with tragic results.

The skyline in Washington, D.C. might be slightly lower than America’s other cities, but its glass ceilings remain well below average. While women have made notable progress in attaining positions of leadership and power in the private sector; their counterparts in Washington and state capitols across the country lag far behind. The U.S. isn’t dead last in female participation politics, but it’s pretty close (at 77th, we're a notch above Madagascar). In politics, women still struggle to reach the highest seats of power.
 
Susan Rice, whose nomination for Secretary of State was preemptively and undemocratically trampled to death, is one such woman. In many ways Rice challenged the gender biases still present in American politics and, temporarily at least, lost. Both the boardroom and Capitol Hill remain highly patriarchal, and gender parity a distant ideal.

I recently wrote about the similarities and differences between the 1998 and 2014 campaign for the U.S. House. One of the main reasons the 1998 DCCC broke the six year itch (picking up seats in the sixth year of a president’s eight year term) for the only time in the twentieth century was the strong effort we made in recruiting good candidates. If the DCCC is to have a chance to repeat that success in 2014 it will need to have a strong recruiting year.

Part of strong recruiting is that sometimes you have to put your thumb on the scale and help the strongest possible candidate win your party’s primary.  Senate Republicans failed to do this in the last two cycles and thus wasted golden opportunities to take back control of the Senate by permitting weak candidates to win primaries in Delaware, Nevada and Colorado in 2010 and in Missouri and Indiana in 2012.

Let me cite five examples of how we put our thumb on the scale in 1998 when I chaired the DCCC.

Eighty years ago Sunday (April 7), the Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect after being signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This was the first step toward ending the terrible experiment in this country known as Prohibition. The Cullen-Harrison Act permitted the sale and consumption of low-alcohol beer, five months before full repeal of the 21st Amendment.

As the advocates for brewers and beer importers, the Beer Institute is commemorating the passage of these last 80 years with a review of the enduring impact of Prohibition on our nation’s laws, culture and commerce.

Much post-2012 attention has been focused on identifying weaknesses within the Republican Party, with armchair quarterbacks sounding alarms for a party that still controls one house of Congress, 30 governorships, and a majority of state legislatures across the country.
 
There are obvious issues that the party needs to address to win future national elections, but is the playing field really as uneven as the postgame analysis has made it out to be?  What about some of the looming woes soon to confront Democrats?
 
With Barack Obama in the White House, it’s easy for Democrats to wear the mantle of “change” and moving “forward,” buoyed by a re-elected president who toppled a giant to become his party’s nominee five years ago. But Barack Obama won’t be on the ballot in 2016.
 
Three names that might be pose a challenge to the “change” label: Clinton, Biden and Cuomo.
 
A once-ran for president, twice-ran for president, and son of the Democrat that never ran for president currently dominate 2016 speculation.

Small businesses expect direct decisions and actions from Congress this year. We expect Congress to carry out the people’s business in an orderly fashion. On the surface this seems peripheral to business, and that specific bills or budgets should be the order of the day; however, those bills that come up to Congress that seem to be socially weighted dramatically effect small businesses. Should the government act on banning assault rifles? Maybe, but there is more than the gun industry that is affected by this decision. Many school districts are scrambling to find budgets for additional private security, and one issue facing them is imminent need, and with the assault rifle being viewed as a direct threat, you can bet local authorities are developing budgets and asking for federal assistance to hire companies.

Much has been written recently about  the “disappearing lobbyists” -- the de-registration of individuals once registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA). The commentary generally implies that while no longer registered, these individuals are still actively lobbying and strongly suggests that something is amiss -- either the former registrants are violating the LDA or that the LDA is deficient and must be amended.

It’s highly doubtful that this is a result of an epidemic of LDA violations but it may be an indication that LDA should be amended. 

President Obama has nominated long-time public servant Thomas E. Perez to serve as our nation’s next secretary of Labor. As leaders of Maryland’s Workforce Investment Board, we had the opportunity to work closely with Perez when he served as secretary of the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing, and Regulation.
 
As Congress considers reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act, the federal legislation key to so many of the state and local programs we worked on in Maryland, Perez' experience working on this and related issues can be a crucial addition to the national debate.

I’ve got bad news for the national press: The Republican Party is not dead. I know much has been said, written and pontificated upon about how terrible the Republican brand has become and how the party needs to change. I disagree – one can look no further than Republicans in the United States House of Representatives to see an alive, vibrant and thoughtful group of Republican leaders. 

True, the GOP suffered a large-scale defeat in the presidential race and, true, the GOP failed to win important seats in the U.S. Senate. But elections do not defeat ideals and policies – elections defeat candidates. What happened in November was a wakeup call to the party that candidates and principles matter. Some of our candidates lost, but the foundation of the GOP is as strong as ever. We stand for liberty, freedom, less government, a strong defense, growth and more prosperity.