The Congressional Agenda Posted by: McQ
on Sunday, January 11, 2009
If you're wondering what's up for Congress, this list of the first 10 Senate bills might give you a preview:
* S.1 – American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
A bill to create jobs, restore economic growth, and strengthen America’s middle class through measures that modernize the nation’s infrastructure, enhance America’s energy independence, expand educational opportunities, preserve and improve affordable health care, provide tax relief, and protect those in greatest need, and for other purposes.
* S.2 – Middle Class Opportunity Act of 2009
A bill to improve the lives of middle class families and provide them with greater opportunity to achieve the American dream.
* S.3 – Homeowner Protection and Wall Street Accountability Act of 2009
A bill to protect homeowners and consumers by reducing foreclosures, ensuring the availability of credit for homeowners, businesses, and consumers, and reforming the financial regulatory system, and for other purposes.
* S.4 – Comprehensive Health Reform Act of 2009
A bill to guarantee affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans, and for other purposes.
* S.5 – Cleaner, Greener, and Smarter Act of 2009
A bill to improve the economy and security of the United States by reducing the dependence of the United States on foreign and unsustainable energy sources and the risks of global warming, and for other purposes.
* S.6 – Restoring America’s Power Act of 2009
A bill to restore and enhance the national security of the United States.
* S.7 – Education Opportunity Act of 2009
A bill to expand educational opportunities for all Americans by increasing access to high-quality early childhood education and after school programs, advancing reform in elementary and secondary education, strengthening mathematics and science instruction, and ensuring that higher education is more affordable, and for other purposes.
* S.8 – Returning Government to the American People Act
A bill to return the Government to the people by reviewing controversial “midnight regulations” issued in the waning days of the Bush Administration.
* S.9 – Stronger Economy, Stronger Borders Act of 2009
A bill to strengthen the United States economy, provide for more effective border and employment enforcement, and for other purposes.
* S.10 – Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009
A bill to restore fiscal discipline and begin to address the long-term fiscal challenges facing the United States, and for other purposes.
The body of these bills - i.e. the details - aren't yet available. However it seems pretty easy to characterize them as: spend ourselves into heavy debt, spend and regulate, spend and regulate, spend, spend, your guess is as good as mine but sure to include spending, spend, blame Bush, spend and finally, give lip service to fiscal responsibility (it is the 10th bill so the priority is hard to miss).
Open Congress, who provided the list claims these first 10 Senate bills are symbolic and mostly outline the Congressional agenda to be pursued:
They’re a statement of the Democrats’ legislative priorities at this point for the next two years, but any legislative action that’s taken on these measures could very well come in a different form. The first ten Senate bills of the last session included some measures that were enacted (minimum wage increase, ethics reform), some that were vetoed by President Bush (funding for stem cell research) and some that were hotly debated but never passed Congress (comprehensive immigration reform).
Regardless, it sounds like business as usual for Democrats, even Democrats of the hopeychangitude type, doesn't it?
Spend, spend, spend some more, blame the Republicans, spend and, well, spend even more.
Maybe its just me, but I'm not feelin' the change.
The good news is that as the Dems spend us into bankruptcy and unemployment gets worse and all that, the American people will turn against them big time.
Democrats are privately saying that 70+ seats in the House are in danger in 2010.
How about we make it any even 100? I for one would be thrilled to see that happen.
1. Make sure the public knows they are NOT in control.
2. Fight anything that comes with a permanent bureaucracy or no sunset clause.
3. Criticize only. Offer no new ideas. Those will simply be seized by Obama. The public doesn’t care about those anyways. All new ideas should be prepared for use when the actual election season rolls around.
I like to call this post-capitalism era "The Age of Benevolent Socialism". I know you guys are skeptical now, but I think you’ll come around once you see it working!
You let us know when it will start working. Tell us when the blame will be off Bush, and when it will have to be at the feet of your policies. I’d like to know that so I can judge if your claim is correct or not. For example, in 2011 should we be powering ahead, or just weakly growing as business investment just doesn’t quite increase at the speed the planners envisioned?
The fact is, to paraphrase Churchill, business is the horse that pulls the whole cart forward, and if you just keep weighing down the horse and whipping it harder, it will eventually go slower and slower.
Why is it that whenever I think about the upcoming administration and Congress, I keep getting the feeling that I’m getting tossed into a jail cell with a very amorous cellmate named Bubba?
TomD,
You let us know when it will start working.
I’m not sure, but I think he was being sarcastic...
This makes my brain hurt. S.8 is a bill to review and, I assume, overturn all those "midnight regulations" that Bush slipped in on The American Peoples.
I thought EVERYONE knew that it was all Bush’s deregulatin’ that got us in our current state of affairs.
S10 has got to be the biggest joke ever. The Republicans ought to offer an amendment requiring all Federal Programs to be in compliance with all regulations applicable to the private sector, including Sarbanes-Oxley.
I laugh at the ’hope for change’ nonsense. The people who drank that kool-aid figured that there couldn’t be anything worse than Bush. Well, they’re wrong. Things can change and they can get much, much worse.
People may want to hope that Obama and the Democrats are the light at the end of the tunnel but with the outline of their agenda I’ll wager an ice cold lager that they are the train coming the other way.
