Congress came back this week for the start of the lame duck session. During the day and half that they went to work this week, they went through the usual elections of leadership and jockeying for committee chairs. I would list the shakeups in leadership for both parties, but there were none. As the great rock band The Who put it: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
This was a historic election, but I feel like we have been saying that about every election in the past 15 years. Margins are slim and when you have razor thin majorities, they tend to Ping-Pong between parties. We all have high hopes for the new Senate, but don't get too excited.
<img width="100" height="98" data-cke-saved-src="http://MotorcycleRidersFoundation.wildapricot.org/Resources/Pictures/mrflogo.jpg" src="http://MotorcycleRidersFoundation.wildapricot.org/Resources/Pictures/mrflogo.jpg" align="left" style="margin-bottom:7px;margin-left:7px;margin-right: 7px;margin-top:7px" '="" title="" border="0" v:shapes="_x0000_s1026">Harry Reid ran the Senate like a fiefdom. He would only bring bills to the floor that he: A. knew would pass; and B. that would bolster President Obama’s agenda. So just about every vote in the U.S. Senate in the past six years were extremely left-leaning and in lock-step with President Obama. This strategy is ironic in that it put every member of the Democrat party in the Senate shoulder to shoulder with President Obama. And in a year that the president’s approval rating has tanked, that’s not a good place to be. So in essence Reid thought he was protecting the president, but at the end he just forced his fellow Democratic Senators to vote much more liberally than they might have liked to by providing zero political cover. This ultimately forced Democratic Senators into tight races to try to distance themselves from President Obama and it just did not work.
Okay, all that to say that the Republican Senate will have much more votes and should be much more productive, right? Wrong. The Senate, along with the House, will churn out more legislation, but it will go to legislative purgatory. President Obama will heave a heavy veto hammer on everything that even remotely resembles a threat to Obama Care, which is going to be a lot of things.
So what’s in store for the lame duck? Well, for starters 60, out of 535 elected officials are not coming back for some reason or another. I expect the session to be fast-paced with lawmakers wanting to put this session behind them.
What will pass: government funding (they have to pay themselves, people!). Seriously, these are the must-pass spending bills to keep the federal government governing. I also expect to see some sort of an Ebola funding bill to make an appearance, as well as our good old friends, the tax extender bills.
Some are saying there may be a war declaration on ISIS. Also possible but not likely is the Keystone pipeline authorization. I personally think this is a waste of time right now, because this has becomes President Obama’s real “line in the sand,” not like the line in the sand he drew in front of Syria, but a real line. He will not budge on this. Republicans are going to have to tie this issue to a huge sweetener for President Obama to even look in their general direction. For some reason this is President Obama’s “Holy Grail”, something to never be given up. What could possibly be his asking price? Immigration reform, his way, which means total amnesty. This is sure to make Republicans bristle.
This is shaping up to be a business as usual lame duck. Sort of like packing up the fish camp at the end of a season. Sweep up, close the windows, turn out the lights, and see you next year.