War, healthcare and employment

Lawmakers have an enormous amount of work to do over the next three weeks.

The Senate is hoping to pass a healthcare reform bill by Christmas, while the House is aiming to vote on a new jobs package. Those are ambitious goals.

President Barack Obama and his senior military advisers will spend this week making the case for sending more troops to Afghanistan. To his credit, Obama did not schedule his highly anticipated speech when Congress was out of session.

Obama could have taken advantage of the Thanksgiving recess and announced his troop surge plan, which would have effectively taken the Washington Beltway microphone out of the hands of critics of the war.

In February, Obama called for 17,000 additional troops in Afghanistan. Democrats on Capitol Hill largely supported their new president, blaming the George W. Bush administration for neglecting Afghanistan for the war in Iraq.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) have indicated they will not rubberstamp the president’s war-funding request this time.

Pelosi vowed that the June war supplemental measure would be the last. But Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the Appropriations Defense subcommittee, told The Hill in late October, “There’s going to be a supplemental, because you can’t take $40 billion out of the heart of the defense budget. So how are you going to pay for it?”

Obey, Murtha and other Democrats favor increasing taxes to offset the costs of the war. The White House has not embraced this idea, but the president will have to compromise to get Democrats to fund the troop surge.

Meanwhile, House Democrats are starting to craft their new jobs bill, though it remains unclear how much it will cost and if it will be paid for. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) recently called the nation’s 10.2 percent unemployment rate “unacceptable.”

The Senate will tackle healthcare reform and a slew of floor amendments from both parties. Other agenda items this month include stalled spending bills and controversial tax policies, such as the estate tax. 

Player of the week

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) is not a regular on the Sunday talk shows. But he could be one of the most important lawmakers in the Democrats’ effort to pass healthcare reform.

Even though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) persuaded all members of his caucus to vote for the motion to proceed on healthcare reform, he knows his opt-out public option does not have the votes to pass.

Reid, a shrewd politician, has asked Carper to work with Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.) on “a public option that’s acceptable.”

Carper recently floated a plan that would establish a public insurance plan only in states that don’t meet certain yet-to-be-defined criteria.

Liberal senators may shun Carper’s plan because it is too similar to the “trigger” public option proposal favored by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine).

But if a deal is struck that attracts 60 votes, Carper will probably be at the table.

Carper knows Washington politics and the art of compromise. He was elected to the House in 1982, successfully ran for governor in 1993 and became Delaware’s junior senator in 2001.

For years, Joe Biden attracted the spotlight on Capitol Hill as Delaware’s senior senator. As vice president, Biden is working hard so that his boss in the White House signs healthcare reform during the 111th Congress.

Yet Carper could hold the key to making that happen.

If Carper is ultimately successful, he’s not the type to gloat in front of the cameras. He’ll probably just move on to his next goal of passing climate change legislation.

The new senior senator from Delaware is a legislator’s legislator. Keep your eyes on him in the weeks ahead.

The House and Senate are hoping to adjourn on Dec. 18, but some on Capitol Hill expect lawmakers to be in town the following week, in the days just before Christmas.