Lawmaker News

Don't miss the excellent wrap-up piece by Bob Cusack in The Hill about who won and who lost in the supercommittee superfiasco. Today I focus on the mother of all winners, the person the sexist Herman Cain called "princess," who struck the mother lode of being a huge winner in this deal: Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats. House Democrats were given another great gift this week when Newt Gingrich launched another attack on Social Security by reviving that tired GOP dog of private accounts.

Remember, Democrats won a major midterm election in a historically Republican district over the issue of Medicare. Since then, the Republicans have proposed even greater attacks on Medicare, in effect suggesting Medicare be turned into a subsidy for insurance companies. Of course, the collapsed Rick Perry once called Social Security a Ponzi scheme.

I have great respect for former Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), but he neglects many critical points. Conservative governments in Europe (Germany, Britain, France) pursue a new $1.5 trillion bailout for big banks, but where is their $1.5 trillion proposal for more jobs, and why do Republicans oppose and obstruct every major new jobs program? Why do they oppose healthcare reform that would lower the deficit, such as the public option, and campaign-finance reform that would limit the ability of special interests to buy the tax loopholes and spending that raise the deficit?

If you are an American unhappy with big bailouts, huge Wall Street bonuses, mortgage scandals and skyrocketing bank fees by bailed-out banks, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is attacking you for being part of a mob! He even offers this attack at a Faith and Values conference, though I do not remember Jesus preaching in favor of big bank fees against jobless workers, small businesses, hurting consumers or poor Americans.

I guess Cantor didn't like my recent column, "Occupying Wall Street." I guess he is really upset that Americans are rallying in force to end the ripoffs that Americans are demanding should end.

In the end, it wasn’t a grand bargain that averted the possibility of yet another government shutdown this week and kicked the fiscal can down the road for at least another month and a half. There wasn’t any shelving of politics for the greater good. And there certainly weren’t any heroes. In the end, FEMA’s announcement that it had found $114 million — enough to limp through to the end of the fiscal year — cut the Gordian Knot of perpetual Washington political wrangling. And with $1 billion less to draw on during the next fiscal year, it will be disaster victims who bear the brunt.

Thanks to the constant bickering between Congress and the White House, “he started it” — the classic phrase uttered by every 3-year-old child with an older sibling — is now common Washington parlance. As with children, it is almost never a legitimate gripe or excuse for poor behavior. Moms expect more, and so should we. The nastiness, the requisite cheap shot, the inability to have a civil discussion do not move the country forward.

The latest dustup — booking a date for President Obama’s important speech on job creation — underscores that there are a lot of small people holding big offices these days. Having worked behind the scenes in Congress for about a decade, I know scheduling snafus can happen. Many a time, the members will pass it off on sloppy staff work, allowing both sides to save face and move on. Sadly — and I do mean sadly — no such luck here. This perfunctory matter became a public battlefield upon which the Speaker had a Pyrrhic victory, if a victory at all. He got the date he wanted. But he trivialized the Office of the Speaker by not differentiating between fights worth winning or, more fundamentally, fights worth having.

In the last 24 hours we learned that President Obama, his brilliant White House staff and Speaker John Boehner have learned nothing from recent events.

There they go again. Both Republicans and the White House are shirking what remains of their constitutional duties to represent the will of the people and actually come to agreement on the toughest issues facing this nation, and now they’re squabbling over when the president will give yet another speech? While it appears they’ve worked this out and let the president have his day in the sun, it’s another example of the sheer dysfunctional nature of our current leaders.

Rick Perry is on the conservative right. He’s got the T-shirt on fiscal policy, gun control, abortion and evolution. But what about the foreign policy of the Republican presidential contender?

Michele Bachmann recently said that God is sending a message through the hurricane. But isn’t it more likely that with hurricanes, earthquakes and scorching heat God is telling Rick Perry that global warming is real and telling Ron Paul that FEMA should not be abolished?

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) just hopped on television to claim that Republicans have been in charge of Washington for 210 days and still haven't created jobs.  In case there are one or two Americans who still don't understand why Democrats lost last November and gave Pelosi a well-deserved boot out of her post, she provided a fine reminder today, shining a bright spotlight on her massive failures and penchant for misrepresenting reality.
 
Democrats held the House (with Pelosi in charge), Senate and White House for two years and did nothing to create jobs. Republicans now hold only the House and Pelosi is blaming them for not creating jobs. Wow — the chutzpah is amazing. The bitterness palatable.