For the first five weeks of Barack Obama’s presidency, congressional Republicans sought to avoid direct confrontation with the popular president. (See here.)

No longer.

At a meeting of the Republican conference this morning, House Minority Leader John Boehner said that his party has an obligation to challenge Obama in a clear, unambiguous manner.

“There's no point in ‘triangulation’ when it comes to this budget. It's the President's budget. His name is on it. It's a bad budget, and we have a responsibility to tell the country that. We can do it respectfully - but we can do it, and we must.”

The change in strategy comes as Obama’s poll numbers are settling back to earthly levels and conservatives are growing more alarmed by the day at the vast expansion of the federal government that Obama is proposing.

UPDATE: Jackie Kucinich, from Roll Call, has more.

UPDATE II: They weren’t kidding. House Republicans have let loose today with a fusillade of emails, statements and press releases targeting the Obama administration.

At 11:28, we received this Boehner statement: “Political operatives in the White House are trying to divert attention away from the challenges facing our economy, the sinking stock market, and the irresponsible spending binge they are presiding over. This diversionary tactic will not create a single job or help a single family struggling in today’s economic crisis. That’s where our focus should be. President Obama has said we must change the way Washington operates in order to address the challenges we are facing. In the midst of a deepening recession, White House staff should have higher priorities than this cynical strategy.”

At 12:54 came another Boehner statement challenged Obama on wasteful spending. “If the Administration is serious about cutting wasteful government spending, it can start by vetoing the $410 billion ‘omnibus’ spending bill that is loaded with 9,000 unscrutinized earmarks.”

Two minutes later, the House Leadership sent a press release linking to a Washington Times blog post headlined: “Boehner Blasts White House for Stoking Rush Story.”

At 1:53 Brad Dayspring, Press Secretary to House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, teed off on a comment by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, who said today that engaging in rhetorical fights with Rush Limbaugh and others might be “counterproductive.”

Said Dayspring: “Now that the Obama Administration has declared their own distractions, diversions and manipulations strategy to be counterproductive, House Republicans would like to see this Administration join us in our bipartisan national conversation about job creation, stimulating small business and middle class tax relief. They should apologize to the American people for supporting these tactics and get back to work."

At 2:20 a “GOP Leader Alert” email warned “The Administration’s Budget Hikes Taxes on Every Single American.”

At 2:47 there was an email highlighting a post from Kevin Smith on Boehner’s blog, headlined: “President Pushes for Anti-Worker Card Check Bill That would Hurt the Economy.”

Rep. Jim Cooper, a conservative Democrat from Tennessee, told a liberal radio network that the Obama White House encouraged him to pick a fight with Nancy Pelosi on the stimulus bill. According to Glenn Thrush at Politico, Cooper said: "Well, I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I actually got some quiet encouragement from the Obama folks for what I’m doing." Thrush notes that Cooper has signed a letter criticizing Pelosi for her handling of the rules on the stimulus.

Cooper then teed off on Pelosi and his party's leadership in Congress: "They know its a messy bill and they wanted a clean bill. Now, I got in terrible trouble with our leadership because they don’t care what’s in the bill, they just want it pass and they want it to be unanimous. They don’t mind the partisan fighting cause that’s what they are used to. In fact, they’re really good at it. And they’re a little bit worried about what a post-partisan future might look like. If members actually had to read the bills and figure out whether they are any good or not. We’re just told how to vote. We’re treated like mushrooms most of the time."

The Obama-Pelosi tension is consistent with what I was hearing in the aftermath of the House vote on the stimulus. White House officials were telling reporters that they were surprised by the outcome, in part because of Pelosi's heavy-handed approach to Republicans as she put the package together.

The obvious question, then, was why the White House didn't push its own version of a stimulus package?

Who's the president here?

It looks like Republicans may be able to foil the narrow Democrat majority in its quest to dole out money to the first in a list of private companies making bad business decisions that should be rewarded with your tax money:

House Republican leader John Boehner, Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, and Alabama Representative Spencer Bachus, have all criticized aspects of the aid package being crafted by Democrats in the House and Senate.

"I don't know of a single Republican who is willing to support'' the auto bailout, Democrat Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said yesterday, adding that he would be careful about bringing up any measure that might fail.

General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC would receive $25 billion in loans out of a $700 billion financial bailout package approved earlier this year under the legislation, which Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan are writing. The Bush administration opposes using those funds for the auto companies.

The finer print reveals several less-encouraging quotes from Republicans, who sound far too willing to approve a bailout if the money has certain strings attached:

"Spending billions of additional federal tax dollars with no promises to reform the root causes crippling automakers' competitiveness around the world is neither fair to taxpayers nor sound fiscal policy,'' Boehner said in a statement yesterday...

"The financial situation facing the Big Three is not a national problem, but their problem,'' Shelby said in a statement this week. ``I do not support the use of U.S. taxpayer dollars to reward the mismanagement of Detroit-based auto manufacturers in such a way that allows them to continue and compound their ongoing mistakes.''

Chuck Grassley has asked top auto executives to cut their own pay until the crisis is averted, and Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) has suggested any bailout money be tied to automakers' ability to renegotiate labor contracts.

Complicating the Dems' problems: Obama resigns his Senate seat on Nov. 16, decreasing their majority, and the bill would likely need enough support to withstand a presidential veto.

If Republicans can stand up to the Washington pressure to do this, they're likely to come out on the right side of this issue, according to numbers from Rasmussen:

Forty-six percent (46%) of Americans are opposed to a taxpayer-backed bailout of the Big Three automakers. Thirty percent (30%) support such a plan, and 25% are undecided.

A near identical percentage (45%) are opposed to a specific government bailout for General Motors, which says it is facing bankruptcy in the near future without an infusion of federal aid. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans support a GM bailout, with a sizable group (20%) not sure.

A whopping 73 percent are worried the government will run out of money if it keeps bailing companies out, recognizing that there's likely no end in sight once GM gets the goods. If Republicans need more incentive to oppose this, there's the fact that women are more worried than men, and younger Americans more than older Americans. Good government is the most attractive part of the Republican message right now, and it's an inroad to groups Republicans lost this time around.

Dan Mitchell of Cato disputes the notion Democrats are selling that this is the requisite bailout of Main Street required after the bailout of Wall St.:

Bailouts are a particularly bizarre form of redistribution, however, because the corporate bureaucrats at the Big Three are among the very richest Americans. The UAW bosses make extravagant salaries, as well, and even regular union workers make an average of approximately $70 per hour, far higher than the average American.

Bankruptcy may be the quickest path to profitability, painful though it is. A court-supervised opportunity to streamline production and costs would undoubtedly make union bosses and executives uncomfortable, but it's what they need to do to become viable in the long term. BMW, Nissan, and Toyota all make money making cars in the United States. Most of them do it in South Carolina and Alabama, where workers have been glad to trade insurance-covered massage therapy for steady jobs working for companies that aren't constantly on the verge of collapsing.

NBC news reports that the Justice Department has begun an investigation into whether Countrywide Financial Corp used the 'Friends of Angelo (Mozilo)' program to buy influence with Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT), Kent Conrad (D-ND), and others. According to a senior Countrywide official who handled its VIP program, there was no way Dodd and Conrad could not have known they were getting a special deal:

...Feinberg says part of his job was to hammer home to the V.I.P. clients that they were getting special deals.

"You spoke in a manner that was different than you spoke with a regular customer," said Feinberg. "'Your loan has been specially priced by Angelo.' 'You're getting special discounts because you're in the V.I.P. loan department."

So what would a "Friend of Angelo" get that an average customer would not? According to Feinberg, the possible benefits ran the gamut.

"They got a discount on the interest rate," said Feinberg. "They got discounts on their fees. They got a free floatdown option before closing..."

"There were many, many taglines we used to let them know their level of importance to make sure that they understand where they're located," said Feinberg. "And nine times out of ten, once you mention 'V.I.P' the person's gonna ask you 'what am i getting for being in this V.I.P department?' Or 'what am I getting because I know Angelo?' Or 'I talked to Angelo and he said I'm getting this...'"

Feinberg says he's not aware of any discounts linked to favors, but he did see e-mails noting the potential value of the relationships to Countrywide's political and business interests. The e-mails noted one particular client was "of importance to Countrywide." Another encouraged a discount, noting "they are incredibly important to us." Yet another asked that the loan officer, "make an exception" in Countrywide's lending rules, "due to the fact that the borrower is a Senator."

If Dodd and Conrad somehow missed the special treatment they were receiving, Feinberg's testimony suggests that it was only because they chose not to listen. Nevertheless, Dodd is still refusing to release the paperwork related to his loans--information he promised to share weeks ago.

According to Roll Call, Rangel hasn't yet hired the forensic auditor he promised 6 weeks ago, and there's no assurance from Democratic leaders that they'll renew the ethics investigation next year:

An attorney for House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (N.Y.) acknowledged Monday that more than six weeks after the senior Democrat announced he would hire a forensic auditor to scour his tax and financial records, he has yet to do so, saying an extensive review process has delayed any action...

Rangel is also under scrutiny by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, which voted in late September to establish an investigative subcommittee into a multitude of alleged rules violations by the senior lawmaker.

The panel’s investigation will examine Rangel’s ownership of a Dominican Republic villa — the lawmaker has admitted he failed to report rental income, the nexus of his tax troubles — as well as his use of House parking facilities for long-term vehicle storage, fundraising efforts on behalf of a City College of New York center bearing his name, and the lawmaker’s use of multiple rent-controlled apartments as his primary residence...

However, it remains unclear when the ethics panel would resume consideration of the matter if the report is not completed before that time. The committee would be required to initiate a new investigation at the start of the next Congress.

Rangel's attorney is Lanny Davis, who says that Rangel is in negotiations with an auditor and will likely make an announcement next week. Of course, whatever announcement Rangel makes next week is likely to be drowned out by the noise of election day -- a curious coincidence.

Ted Stevens got a lesson yesterday in what can happen when elected officials make errors in their ethics filings. Rangel hopes to shepherd Barack Obama's tax and health care agenda through the Ways and Means Committee, so he has every incentive to try to make this investigation go away. With the Democrats set to expand their majority in the House, are they willing to take the heat that will come with looking the other way on Rangel's transgressions?

A few weeks ago Congressman Tim Mahoney led his Republican challenger by 7 points, according to the challenger's own polls. Now he trails by 26:

A new Republican poll indicates Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.) is the most endangered incumbent in the country days after a news report showed he paid a former mistress hush money.

The poll, released Friday and conducted for Republican Tom Rooney’s campaign and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), shows a big shift in the race, which Mahoney had been leading. He is now behind Rooney, 55 percent to 29 percent, with 16 percent of voters undecided.

House Democratic leaders are hoping to avoid any questions about Tim Mahoney, and what they knew about his affairs. As Politico reported last night, Minority Leader John Boehner is pushing hard to make sure that the Democratic leadership is properly investigated:

The Associated Press reported today that the FBI has begun a "preliminary investigation" into the Mahoney case. Both Mahoney and Pelosi have already called for a House ethics committee probe into the matter.

“I am requesting that you immediately take all steps necessary to ensure the offices of Rep. Rahm Emanuel, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Rep. Tim Mahoney, the Office of Compliance, and House Information Resources, as well as your own office, preserve and protect all documents, e-mails, electronic communications, transmissions, and the like related to allegations surrounding Ms. Allen’s employment until an investigation into this matter is complete," Boehner said in a letter today to Pelosi, House Administration Committee Chairman Robert Brady (D-Pa.). Clerk of the House Lorraine Miller and Chief Administrative Office Daniel Beard.

Would Senate Democrats dump Harry Reid if Barack Obama is elected president? That's the question from veteran Senate watcher Kirk Victor, after talking to several Democratic staffers and strategists:

Still, when a new administration takes office next year, along with a likely Democratic-controlled Congress, the Senate will be the center of action. Reid is a tenacious fighter, but different skills may be needed in his chamber, where reaching across the aisle is required to prevent a determined minority from wreaking havoc. In the House, by contrast, the rules give Pelosi the power to steamroll the minority.

"Harry Reid," a Democratic strategist said, "is a team player, services his members well, and knows the institution." But, the strategist added, a Senate leader must be "someone who inspires confidence, who can advance an agenda and a message, and who can both contribute to and execute a strategy. That is just not Harry Reid's strong suit."

Those shortcomings were evident in recent weeks. Asked by reporters on September 17 why he had said that Congress would punt the financial-markets legislation until next year, Reid replied: "Because no one knows what to do."

Reid has clear and obvious shortcomings as a leader. He is prickly, partisan, and prone to popping off at the wrong time. He has little demonstrated ability to reach across the aisle and work with Republicans to get the job done. Those flaws may not have been fatal shortcomings when his primary job was to block President Bush's agenda and not push any controversial legislation of his own. If Obama wins the presidency, however, Reid's job will be changed overnight. Instead of blocking a Republican agenda, he will be responsible for building 60 votes in favor of all of Obama's initiatives -- a much tougher task. If Reid wants to keep his job, he just might be hoping for a McCain win on November 4.

The Wall Street Journal continues to report on Democratic malfeasance in overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the unrestricted growth of which helped to create today's financial crisis. In their own words:

Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.): I worry, frankly, that there's a tension here. The more people, in my judgment, exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness, the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury, which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially and withstand some of the disaster scenarios. . . .

Rep. Frank: I do think I do not want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OCC [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] and OTS [Office of Thrift Supervision]. I want to roll the dice a little bit more in this situation towards subsidized housing. . . .

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.): I, just briefly will say, Mr. Chairman, obviously, like most of us here, this is one of the great success stories of all time. And we don't want to lose sight of that and [what] has been pointed out by all of our witnesses here, obviously, the 70% of Americans who own their own homes today, in no small measure, due because of the work that's been done here. And that shouldn't be lost in this debate and discussion. . . .

In other good messaging news, the YouTube video of these guys' comments has over a million views.

After the Senate passed the bailout bill (+ sweeteners) last night, the House is tentatively set to vote on it again this Friday.

Here is the list of senators who voted "no"— 10 Democrats and 15 Republicans.

House members, though frustrated by Senate machinations, are expected to pass it:

The Senate’s maneuver infuriated House members, who don’t want the cost of the tax breaks added to the deficit. But aides say the political risk of blocking the bailout has grown too large since Monday’s stock market plunge, which erased $1.2 trillion in market value. One leadership aide called passage “a fait accompli.”

Even members who weren’t spooked by the largest point drop in the history of the Dow Jones average have noticed a significant change in the tenor of their constituent calls. Poll numbers show that while people don’t like the bailout package, even more fear its failure.

“We’re going to get rolled,” said a top aide to a Democratic representative who’d supported the bill Monday but didn’t like the Senate’s handling of the tax provisions. “House members who care about fiscal discipline are being backed into a corner here.”

Staff on the Hill tells me that phone calls against the bailout have slowed somewhat, but that constituents are still overwhelmingly against it. Some have had trouble getting through:

At times, the Capitol Hill switchboard is so clogged that callers get a recording, and lawmakers' answering machines sometimes pick up during regular business hours because all telephones in their offices are in use.

Nancy Pelosi, noted uniter not divider, is calling for "decisive bipartisan action:"

"I welcome Senate passage of the economic rescue plan, which includes robust safeguards to ensure that taxpayers are protected through oversight and accountability." Pelosi said in a statement released by her office.

"The House will act in a bipartisan way to restore market confidence as well as Main Street’s confidence in our economic future."

Conservative members are said to be warming to the bill. Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.), Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) have all expressed openness to the new version, and others will likely feel pressured by the "yes" votes of their home state senators.

Politico's David Rogers reports:

Treasury’s $700 billion rescue plan for the financial markets passed the Senate Wednesday night, giving the White House new confidence it has turned the corner and can win final approval from Congress by Friday.

The 74-25 roll call endorsing the package featured a rare joint-return appearance by the two major presidential candidates, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain, who both supported the measure.

Download all 451 pages of it, here.

A preview of some of the yummy pork (see correction below) stuck in it:

- Virgin Island and Puerto Rican Rum (Section 308)
- American Samoa (Sec. 309)
- Mine Rescue Teams (Sec. 310)
- Mine Safety Equipment (Sec. 311)
- Domestic Production Activities in Puerto Rico (Sec. 312)
- Indian Tribes (Sec. 314, 315)
- Railroads (Sec. 316)
- Auto Racing Tracks (317)
- District of Columbia (Sec. 322)
- Wool Research (Sec. 325)

Correction: I got mixed up in my initial reading of this bill. The above are not earmarks, but targeted tax cut extenders. As much as liberals would like us to believe it, tax cuts are not spending, and therefore not the same as earmarks. One can make the argument that these provisions shouldn't be included in this bill as sweeteners for House Republicans—that the bill should stand on its own for a vote—but exempting wooden arrows designed for use by children from the excise tax (Sec. 503) is not an earmark. Treating them as if they constitute spending is a liberal argument.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), chairman of the Republican Study Committee is not happy about the developments. Hensarling, along with many in the conservative RSC, opposed the House version of this bill:

“The Senate will attempt to pass that legislation and then leave town, putting the House in a take-it-or-leave-it position on Thursday,” Hensarling wrote in the letter.

“The RSC is proposing a number of alternatives and continues to fight for a legislative package that would solve the credit crisis, protect taxpayers, and not fundamentally alter our nation’s free market system.”

Reports are suggesting this bill will easily pass the Senate, about 75-25, with opposition split between Republican and Democratic camps. There is talk of a press conference after its passage, which would feature both presidential candidates.

Both House and Senate have been at work today to create an alternative bailout bill after the modified Paulson plan went down in a surprising House vote Monday. With both liberal and conservative members (and constituents) rejecting the biggest government bailout of private industry in history, neither party's leadership was able to whip enough people into acquiescence. The Dow tumbled more than 700 points Monday afternoon, but regained several hundred Tuesday.

The new bailout bill, originating in the Senate, will be attached to a tax-break extender, and will require 60 votes to pass instead of a simple majority. The high threshold was part of the deal for getting it to the floor on Wednesday, according to reports.

The House has already rejected the energy and business tax breaks this new version of the bailout will be attached to, but the Senate is also set to add important AMT relief, which would be palatable for both House Dems and Republicans.

The new version of the bailout is also said to include an increase in the FDIC cap, from $100,000 to $250,000, and possible reforms to "mark-to-market" rules, which "require banks and other financial institutions to adjust the value of their assets to reflect current market prices, even if they plan to hold the assets for years."

House Republican leader John Boehner has already said he backs the new bill, the text of which is not available in any form yet, as far as I can tell:

"He (Boehner) was consulted on it and gave it the green light," [a spokesman) said of the measure that the Senate intends to consider on Wednesday.

Some of the tax relief, however, has House Democrats iffy:

But Senate leaders attached the measure to a package to extend business and energy tax breaks that a number of House Democrats have opposed, which could imperil votes there after Monday's narrow defeat of the original bill.

House Republicans leaders quickly embraced the revised package, while House Democratic leaders issued cautious statements.

Nancy Pelosi, utterly useless as usual, had this enlightening quote to offer:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said House Democrats remained "strongly committed to a comprehensive bill that stabilizes the financial markets, restores confidence, and protects taxpayers, and we hope Congress can agree on legislation in the very near future."

McCain and Obama will return for the vote.

CNBC has a run-down of possible inclusions in the alternative bailout bill. This list was crafted by House Republicans, so it's unclear how much of a shot any of this has of getting in a final Senate version, even if the House and Senate are working closely.

* Require the Treasury Department to guarantee, at up to 100 percent, bank losses resulting from failed mortgage-backed securities originated prior to the plan's enactment. Such insurance, supporters say, would provide immediate value to the securities and a foundation for which they could then be sold. The Treasury Department would finance that insurance by assessing a premium on outstanding mortgage-backed securities.
* Allow companies to carry back losses arising in tax years ending in 2007, 2008, or 2009 back five years, generating a tax refund and immediate capital
* Allow a "repatriation window" for profits earned by U.S. firms overseas. Such repatriation amounts would not be taxed if invested in distressed debt (as defined by Treasury) for at least one year.
* Allow banks to treat losses on shares of preferred stock in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as ordinary losses, not as capital losses
* Suspend the capital gains tax rate for two years
* Limit backing of high-risk loans by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
* Schedule Fannie and Freddie for privatization
* Suspend "mark-to-market" accounting until the SEC can issue new guidelines that will allow firms to mark these assets to their true economic value
* Stabilize the dollar by repealing the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, which alternative bailout supporters say diverts the Federal Reserve's attention from long-term price stability to short-term economic growth
* Require the Treasury to write rules prohibiting excessive compensation or golden parachutes to executives of failed companies
* Task the SEC with regular, annual audit reports of entities the federal government has brought under conservatorship or now owns

The bill should be available in its final form for members and the public before a vote is taken, but I have my doubts. I'll keep you updated. Voting is set to start at 7 p.m., with a vote on the bailout around 9 p.m.

Politico's Crypt blog reports both Obama and McCain will be back in D.C. for a vote on the bailout. This is the plan according to a Senate GOP aide:

The Senate will vote on the economic rescue plan tomorrow night after a series of stacked votes starting at 7:30.

The structure is this:

The Senate will call up H.R. 1424, the text of which will be substituted with the economic rescue plan (a Dodd amendment which must have the consent of both the Majority and Minority Leaders). The only other amendment in order will be a Sanders amendment that will be handled by a voice vote.

Reps. Boehner, Blunt, and Cantor just held a press conference, during which each of them blamed the loss of at least 12 Republican votes on Pelosi's floor speech, which struck a partisan tone that made teetering Republicans set their teeth and vote against her.

Republicans largely pulled their punches during the floor debate today, avoiding blaming the Democrats who deserve some blame for this crisis. They clearly felt the delicate bipartisan nature of the project was betrayed by Pelosi's fire-breathing, and they called her on it, Cantor holding up her speech in his hands as the "reason this did not pass today."

Democrats have been blaming Republicans for sinking the effort, but 97 Democrats voted against the bill. Cantor placed the blame, not only on Pelosi's inability to listen to Republican members, but her inability to lead her own party, claiming Republicans brought important bills to the floor when they were in the majority only when they were ready to deliver votes.

"We could have gotten there today had it not been for the partisan speech that the speaker gave on the floor of the House," House Minority Leader John Boehner said. Pelosi's words, the Ohio Republican said, "poisoned our conference, caused a number of members that we thought we could get, to go south."

I'm looking for text of Pelosi's speech. Update: Very rough transcript below the fold.

Update: I think the House Republicans handicapped themselves by not making the central thrust of their argument against Pelosi about her inability to lead her own party. The criticism of Pelosi's speech is an easy one to parry for House Dems, who will say, "Really, one little speech is all that was required for you to endanger your country?" Even if the speech did matter, and it was undoubtedly a petty, impolitic move, it's hard to make that argument too loud without looking like they're whining.

Pelosi's inability to lead her own party and, indeed, her inability to even read them— she evidently believed she had the votes to make it happen— is closer to a political winner as an argument for Republicans. She is just an utter hot mess of a leader, and the opinion polls on Congress show it.

The argument:

Pelosi has 235 members. She needed 218. She could spare 17 members and still pass the bill.

The GOP spotted her 65 members, for a bill that made most Republicans' skin crawl in both broad outline and in terms of detail.

That meant Pelosi could afford to lose 82 Democrats.

She lost 95.

Regardless, we're going to be covering this bickering for another week or so, and who knows where the markets will go. Where are McCain and Obama right now?

The tally with just a few seconds remaining in the original voting time is 213 Nays and 192 Yeas with only 26 votes remaining.

Update: In the words of President Bush, "this sucker's going down." 228 against, 205 for, with one not voting. There would have to be some serious arm-twisting in the next few minutes to get this passed.

Now, what do they do?

Update: 227-206 was the final vote, with one abstention. The Dow was down 700 at its lowest point today. It's now down 550.

The extent to which Rep. Barney Frank, Sen. Chris Dodd, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama himself are avoiding blame for this crisis despite symbiotic relationships with those who caused it is truly amazing.

The nerve with which they hold forth about "unbridled capitalism" and "deregulation" while conveniently forgetting their culpability in government interference in the market, which first pressured banks (via Community Reinvestment Act) and then incentivized banks (via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) to make risky loans to people with troubled credit history.

Obama has been heavily involved with a certain group of community organizers that encouraged such behavior since the very beginning of his career— ACORN. I'm going to pull out a little bit of Stanley Kurtz's piece on this connection, but read the whole thing. The details are devastating, even if you know the basic outline already:

[Prominent Chicago ACORN activist Madeline] Talbott continued her effort to, as she put it, drag banks "kicking and screaming" into high-risk loans. A September 1993 story in The Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions (including two of her former targets, now plainly cowed - Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings) were "participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories."

What made this program different from others, the paper added, was the participation of Fannie Mae - which had agreed to buy up the loans. "If this pilot program works," crowed Talbott, "it will send a message to the lending community that it's OK to make these kind of loans."

Well, the pilot program "worked," and Fannie Mae's message that risky loans to minorities were "OK" was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.

IT would be tough to find an "on the ground" community organizer more closely tied to the subprime-mortgage fiasco than Madeline Talbott. And no one has been more supportive of Madeline Talbott than Barack Obama.

As for Frank and Co., watch them deny, deny, deny the crisis in 2004, a year after the Bush administration tried to tighten up Fannie/Freddie oversight, so they could keep the gravy train moving. Republicans are not blameless in this by any means, as they still had a majority when reforms were suggested, but the brazenness with which Democrats are blaming today's crisis on the market they manipulated for their own gain should not be overlooked. Spread this video.

Given that the bailout bill is largely agreed upon as a necessary "crap sandwich" that "sucks," it is worth noting that conservative outrage did succeed in stripping the most egregious pork from the bill— funds in an "affordable housing trust fund" that could have gone to Democrat-allied and often nefarious advocacy groups like ACORN.

All possible proceeds from the sale of these toxic assets will now go toward the national debt, not to affordable housing groups that pressure politicians to pressure banks to offer risky loans to low-income families, so those families can get into mortgages they can't afford. Hmmm, doesn't that sound familiar?

Unhappy with the revocation of another round of gorging at the government teat, ACORN is releasing angry press releases, which is at least one reason to smile:

“Members of Congress worked tirelessly over the weekend to rid Wall Street of its toxic assets, which are responsible for the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Unfortunately, families who fell victim to Wall Street’s toxic lending practices and now risk losing their homes were largely left out. ACORN members are extremely disappointed that the bailout package does little to assist these homeowners, such as providing them relief through the bankruptcy courts.

Although weak, there is language in the bailout package authorizing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to facilitate more loan modifications. ACORN members plan to hold Secretary Paulson accountable and ensure he uses this authority to make streamlined loan modifications a priority for struggling American families.”

ACORN will undoubtedly mobilize all of the dead people, cartoon characters, pets, historical figures, and illegal immigrants it has registered to vote in order to achieve this goal.

A 110-page bailout bill, negotiated by Congress under the glare of global investors and an election-year spotlight, will come up for a vote in the House Monday. A week into wrestling over how to save the financial sector from a meltdown while simultaneously shielding themselves from the political fallout of an unpopular bill, negotiators settled on plan they claim includes increased oversight, limited CEO pay for participating companies, an insurance option as an alternative to buying toxic assets, and less pork than previously considered versions.

Democrats patted themselves and each other on the backs generously Sunday as they announced the accord in a press conference about as charismatic and crowd-pleasing as open-mic night at the morgue. It's leadership like this that leads a party to nominate the junior senator from Illinois for President.

At least some House Republicans, particularly conservatives, who had been the hold-outs on a deal until Sunday, sounded poised to cast their votes for the bill.

Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) reportedly called the bill a "crap sandwich" twice during a final meeting of House Republicans on the subject, but said he'd vote for it on the floor.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), a prominent opponent of the bill made a similar argument in the same meeting:

"It sucks," he said before saying it has to be passed to stave off collapse of the financial system.

Other former opponents said to be backing the new version of the bill are Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Rep. Eric Cantor, (R-Va.) The former negotiated on behalf of the House GOP and the latter was a lead proponent of the insurance option central to the GOP's alternative plan, which was eventually included in the final bill language.

The GOP's press release on the final version of the bill says this about the insurance option included: "Treasury is mandated (Section 102) to establish an insurance program and set risk-based premiums. This will protect taxpayers by requiring the beneficiaries of the insurance program to pay risk-based premiums."

But the bill language seems only to require the establishment of the insurance program, which Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson and participating companies would then have the option to employ or not. Though on the surface it seems a good development that the House GOP's insurance option was included, it's unclear to me why Paulson would choose to use it when he's publicly expressed doubts about its efficacy or why companies would opt into it instead of just getting bought out by Paulson. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. I'm no expert on the insurance plan or the bill language, but that's what I gathered from my read-through.)

Other members expressed less antipathy and more urgency:

“If we don’t pass it, we shouldn’t be in Congress,” snapped Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), the lead negotiator for Senate Republicans.

John McCain and Barack Obama are still undecided about whether they'll be back in the Capitol to vote for the bill when it comes to the Senate on Wednesday, but urged the bill's passage by the House. Obama somewhat mischaracterized the conflict as one between Congress and the White House (about a week past that, Barry!), no doubt in an effort to meet his personal goal of fitting either the word "administration" or "Bush" into every single campaign statement of the year:

“The breakthrough between Congress and the administration is the culmination of a sorry period in our history, in which reckless speculation and greed on Wall Street and lax oversight from Washington led to a meltdown of our financial markets,” Obama said. “But regardless of how we got here, a failure to deal with the current crisis would have devastating consequences for our economy, costing millions of Americans their jobs and retirement security.”

On ABC's "This Week," McCain used an economy of words with which his opponent is unfamiliar to express an appropriate combination of disgust and necessity: “This is something that all of us will swallow hard and go forward with.”

Both candidates were on the phone with lead negotiators during the Saturday-night sessions, along with leading economists and market experts such as Warren Buffet, said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.)

Bush called the compromise a "very good bill" that does what's necessary to "protect our economy against a system-wide breakdown."

Critics from the left held a meeting of the "Skeptics' Caucus" today, during which Rep. Dennis Kucinich claimed there were not enough votes for the bill to pass, and expressed uncharacteristic solidarity with conservative House Republicans:

“There is an attempt to create a fake partisan dichotomy here. This is not about Democrat versus Republican. This is about Main Street or Wall Street,” said Kucinich.

Update: Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) remains staunchly against the bill:

Economic freedom means the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail.

The decision to give the federal government the ability to nationalize almost every bad mortgage in America interrupts this basic truth of our free market economy.

Republicans improved this bill but it remains the largest corporate bailout in American history, forever changes the relationship between government and the financial sector, and passes the cost along to the American people. I cannot support it.

Before you vote, ask yourself why you came here and vote with courage and integrity to those principles.

If you came here because you believe in limited government and the freedom of the American marketplace, vote in accordance with those convictions.

Duty is ours, outcomes belong to God.

Politico's Martin Kady II reports that top negotiators in the Senate, Republican Robert Bennett and Democrat Chris Dodd, have reached an agreement

on a government bailout of the nation's financial system, granting extraordinary powers to the secretary of Treasury to purchase hundreds of billions in bad debt while attempting to stem foreclosures for homeowners struggling on Main Street. ... But Dodd cautioned that this is still a "set of principles" and not completed legislative language.

Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), the top GOP negotiator in the Senate, said, "We have a plan that will pass the House, pass the Senate and be signed by the president, and bring certainty to the markets."

Dodd said the agreement includes a crackdown on executive compensation, but it does not appear to have a bankruptcy provision, coveted by liberal Democrats, which would allow judges to restructure mortgages for people facing foreclosure.

Via Hot Air, Fox News's Jim Angle reports:

Politico's Ryan Grim reports:

After months of demanding that Democrats lift the ban on offshore drilling, Republicans have gotten their wish.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) told reporters Tuesday evening that Democrats were removing the ban from the continuing budget resolution because of a White House veto threat.

But they've vowed to fight another day.

"Chairman Obey negotiated the best package he could get with the White House to take a budget standoff off the table so we can address the larger Bush financial crisis,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman, Drew Hammill “The White House made it clear any new drilling provision was a non-starter. The future resolution of offshore drilling will have to be addressed with a new President.”

AP

"I believe if the credit markets are not functioning, that jobs will be lost, that our credit rate will rise, more houses will be foreclosed upon, GDP will contract, that the economy will just not be able to recover in a normal, healthy way." —Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

"Nobody is happy." — House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

"I understand speed is important, but I'm far more interested in whether or not we get this right." — Rep. Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate banking committee

"What he is saying here is, this program that they think is very important, we need it to get the economy out of the doldrums, but if it is going to nick them of a couple of million of the millions that they already have, they are going to boycott it." — House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Barney Frank on Paulson's objections to restrictions on CEO pay-outs

"Just because God created the world in seven days doesn't mean we have to pass this bill in seven days," said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas.

"You worry about taxpayers being on the hook?" he replied at one point. "Guess what - they're already on the hook." — Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

“If we get consensus and everybody is popping champagne, then I’ll probably go back to campaign with folks who are having a tough time in Ohio and Michigan,” Mr. Obama said. “If this ends up being a close vote or a vote where the outcome is at all in question, then obviously this is a top priority.” — Sen. Barack Obama

“Whether calling for a bipartisan oversight board or prohibitions on golden parachutes, Barack Obama is simply following in John McCain’s footsteps while trying to respond to this financial crisis, as he followed in John McCain’s footsteps when he attempted to respond to the recent crisis in Georgia.” — Tucker Bounds, spokesman for the McCain campaign

"The truth is, every time somebody tells you that you've got to do the deal right now, it usually means they're going to get the better part of the deal." — Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.

"The party is over for this compensation for CEOs who take the golden parachute as they drive their companies into the ground. ... The party is over for financial institutions taking risks [and] at the same time privatizing any gain they may have while they nationalize the risk, asking the taxpayer to pick up the tab." — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

"This massive bailout is not a solution. It is financial socialism and it's un-American." — Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky.

"I think you should think of that as unthinkable." — Tony Fratto, White House spokesman, when asked what would happen if the bail-out didn't pass

"They are saying this is failure of the free markets of capitalism when, in fact, this is a failure because government injected itself into the free market, created this easy credit, these guaranteed loans, and these loans are what have turned into the bad paper that are bringing all these financial institutions down." — Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

"Nobody wants to do this. Nobody wants to be involved in this. Nobody wants to take the chance, but I would argue... if we do nothing, we are jeopardizing our economy, jobs and people's retirement security." — Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio

"What troubles me most is that we have been given no credible assurances that this plan will work. We could very well spend $700 billion and not resolve the crisis." — Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

Today, Harry Reid said this about the current turmoil on Wall Street: "No one knows what to do. We are in new territory here. This is a different game. We're not here playing soccer, basketball or football, this is a new game and we're going to have to figure out how to do it."

The RNC pounced:

“Harry Reid’s despair and Barack Obama’s failed leadership is what’s wrong with Washington. Since crisis hit Wall Street, Obama has offered partisan attacks in lieu of fresh ideas or leadership. No wonder his party’s leaders says they don’t know what to do. If Harry Reid and Barack Obama don’t know what to do, they should not be so dismissive of a bipartisan commission tasked with discovery and reform.” – Alex Conant, RNC Spokesman

Reid's statement will undercut whatever the Democrats say to attack McCain's plans--whatever they may be--to deal with the situation on Wall Street. But since there isn't any indication that Republicans, or anyone else, know what to do, I think it goes a bit too far to attack Harry Reid's "despair." As much as I'd love to rip anything Harry Reid says, his statement seems more like a breath of fresh air.

Jim Geraghty characterized both Obama's and McCain's remarks on Wall Street as "painfully vague." The same could be said about the stylistically pleasing but substance-free ads they released today.

But until the dust settles, I don't think we can expect anything more concrete from either candidate.

A bipartisan coalition of House Members is pressing Speaker Pelosi to invite Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to address a joint session of Congress:

House and Senate leaders should invite Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to address a joint session of Congress, according to bipartisan members of the Congressional Georgia Caucus.

The gesture of support would express “solidarity and commitment” to a U.S. ally under attack by Russia, according to a “Dear Colleague” letter sent to House and Senate Democratic and GOP leaders by Reps. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) and Bill Shuster (R-Pa.).

“Importantly, Georgia has been a close ally of the United States and deployed its forces to assist our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as cooperated with the United States in a number of other counter-terrorism measures,” the members wrote...

Schwartz and Shuster serve as co-chairmen of the Congressional Georgia Caucus, which includes 14 members. The letter was addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

An invitation to address Congress is an honor awarded relatively rarely, but clearly an appropriate one for the leader of a fledgling democracy under fire.

From a new Pew survey on the public's knowledge:

About half of Americans (53%) can correctly identify the Democrats as the party that has a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. In February 2007, shortly after the Democrats gained control of the House after a dozen years of GOP rule, many more people (76%) knew the Democrats held the majority.

In 2004, voter turnout was 64 percent. That means there will be at the very least 20 million Americans heading to polls in November who don't know that the Democrats control the House. Sigh.

House Republicans refuse to give up on their push for a comprehensive energy bill, including expanded domestic drilling options. It’s important to put the emphasis on the word “comprehensive.” Media shorthand often equates Republicans with a “drill only” approach. In reality, the GOP “all of the above” initiative is a wide-ranging plan.

The protest continues today -- gaining momentum and press coverage. I received this email from a senior House GOP aide outlining events so far today. Sounds like some tourists are getting an unexpected glimpse of democracy in action.

The protest has kicked into a whole new gear this morning. We have more than 20 members here, including moderates like Shays (CT) and Biggert (IL). The floor is packed full of people (real people – not politicians or aides), and there is a line of them waiting to get onto the House floor. The members just did a news conference with Newt and as they walked through Statuary Hall on their way to the news conference, it was packed full of people who broke out into applause as the members walked through. The only sign of Pelosi, who of course is off on her book tour, was a staffer feebly passing out a fact sheet from the Speaker’s office asking “10 questions” of the House Republicans.

Today is Charlie Rangel's birthday. Actually, it's not the day of his birthday, and Rep. Rangel just doesn't seem to know it. THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained an invitation to Rep. Rangel's "birthday gala," and although Rep. Rangel turned 78 nearly two months ago on June 11, his b-day bash is this evening. Like George Washington and Martin Luther King, it would seem our country commemorates Rep. Rangel's b-day on a day other than the one he was born. The only difference between Rep. Rangel and these other great Americans is that Rep. Rangel's party will be at Tavern on the Green (not one of his rent stabilized apartments). It's also a political fundraiser to benefit the Rangel Victory Fund.

Among the VIPs who will attend are Gov. David Paterson, Senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, DNC Chairman Howard Dean, and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. William Jefferson Clinton will be the "special guest." Perhaps he'll pop out of cake without his clothes on like last year? For regular folk to honor Rep. Rangel, it will cost a hefty price. The cheapest ticket appears to be $2,500. That would make you a sponsor of the event. The next highest up, to be a Host, will cost $5,000. Becoming a Vice Chair will cost you $10,000. And a Chair will cost $25,000. I guess there will be a lot of candles on that cake and food prices sure have gone up in the past year.

Potential invitees out there in the blogosphere should be careful in reading the fine print on the invitation. Not all that moola is going to benefit candidates in close congressional races that Rangel has personally endorsed. "The first $1,000 will be allocated to Rangel for Cognress. Every dollar after will be diviced equally among the other participating campaigns committees."

For Democrats interested in increasing their majority rather than hobknobbing with the Democratic elite, attending the gala is not a great investment. After all, Rangel won reelection in 2006 with 94 percent of the vote.

We see it every day in Congress. Lawmakers take popular positions back in their districts but somehow gridlock prevails in Washington. This pattern produced the “I hate Congress but love my Congressman” phenomenon.

No group does this more effectively or consistently than the congressional “Blue Dog” coalition, a group of self-styled “moderate to conservative” House Democrats that have found a comfortable home in the liberal kennel. Many Blue Dogs represent districts won by President Bush in 2000 and 2004. So as Democrats many often find themselves in tight races because they represent many conservative constituents. Back home, these “reasonable,” middle-of-the-road lawmakers stand for spending constraint, lower taxes and bipartisanship. But in Washington, their voting records are more murky and strategic.

Blue Dogs would become extinct in a parliamentary system. But in the United States they thrive. Their liberal Democratic leadership in the House can ignore popular will on an issue like expanded drilling and adjourn for a five-week vacation. How do the Blue Dogs explain it? Those that need to buck the party leadership do so, and tell the folks back home “they tried.”

It’s all part of an intricate legislative dance in Washington. Speaker Pelosi takes the national heat – because her San Francisco district is one of the few where a majority actually opposes offshore drilling – while more vulnerable Democrats position themselves with the majority in America. But despite the “dogs” best efforts, Speaker Pelosi somehow always wins.

Politico’s Martin Kady II and Patrick O’Connor outline the Democratic strategy whey it comes to energy:

But what looks like intraparty tension on the surface is part of an intentional strategy in which Pelosi takes the heat on energy policy, while behind the scenes she’s encouraging vulnerable Democrats to express their independence if it helps them politically, according to Democratic aides on and off Capitol Hill.

What’s the end game? Kady and O’Connor write this:

Pelosi’s gambit rests on one big assumption: that Democrats will own Washington after the election and will be able to craft a sweeping energy policy that is heavy on conservation and fuel alternatives while allowing for some new oil drilling. Democrats see no need to make major concessions on energy policy with a party poised to lose seats in both chambers in just three months — even if recess-averse Republicans continue to pound away on the issue.

And you wonder why politics produces cynicism?

Congress skipped town on Friday without passing comprehensive energy legislation or lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling. Despite Republican objections, Democratic congressional leaders opted for a five-week vacation rather than passing legislation to ease pain at the pump.

But as Politico’s Patrick O’Connor reported Friday night, some lawmakers refused to take adjournment for an answer.

A small band of Republicans, protesting the decision to adjourn without an oil vote, started to speak from the well — even though the lights weren’t on, the microphones were turned off and most of their colleagues were scrambling to catch flights out of town.

Confused tourists watched from the gallery, as Republican congressmen used a host of new media tools to text messages and stream video about what some called “21st century Boston Tea Party.” With C-SPAN turned off, Texas Rep. John Culberson kept his friends updated on the activities on Twitter.

When House officials tried to close the galleries, lawmakers invited the tourists to join them on the House floor – something prohibited whenever the House is in session.

“This is the most fun I’ve had on the Hill in 15 years on the Hill,” a senior Republican aide said.
Over the weekend, House Republican leaders John Boehner of Ohio and Roy Blunt of Missouri encouraged Members to continue their activities this week.

Yesterday we witnessed the power of American democracy in action. Dozens of House Republicans joined hundreds of American citizens on the House floor to protest Speaker Pelosi’s decision to send Congress home for the rest of the summer without a vote on the American Energy Act. In doing so, we sent a powerful message that Republicans are united with the American people. We’re writing today for two reasons. One is to thank you for what you’ve done. The other is to ask that we keep it going.

More than a dozen GOP lawmakers will return to the Capitol today – with or without live mikes or lights.

Republicans have worked hard this summer trying to break through the communications challenges of serving in the congressional majority. Gas prices have been an engine for those efforts. This story is as they say…developing.

The Hill reports that jury selection for Senator Ted Stevens's trial

is scheduled to begin Sept. 24, but the judge said the case could start a couple days sooner or later, depending on whether other trials affect his schedule.

Stevens's lawyer was optimistic that the case could conclude a week after the start, but Justice Department prosecutor Brenda Morris said it could take up to three weeks.

A Stevens conviction in late October could have a toxic effect on the GOP not only in Alaska but across the country. Some conservatives have suggested it might make more sense for Stevens to step down after the August 26 primary, thus allowing the Alaska GOP to select a better candidate than any of his primary opponents. But Stevens, who trails his Democratic opponent by 13 points in the most recent poll, appears to have every intention of fighting this race to the bitter end. If Republicans can't get Stevens to agree to step down after the primary, their only choice may be to rally around one of Stevens's primary opponents.

But there is considerable reluctance to push aside Stevens, who is regarded as a "founding father" of Alaska. Gov. Sarah Palin tells the New York Times: “Two days after an indictment coming down, it’s premature for me to say he needs to step down. [...] But I do believe Alaskans are craving for change.”

There are only 25 days until the Alaska primary. If Palin and other Republicans want to avoid a slow-motion car-wreck, the time to act is now.

When reports surfaced that Orrin Hatch had written a song dedicated to Ted Kennedy, THE WEEKLY STANDARD requested the complete lyrics. Some senators are known for their less than captivating memoirs. Other are known for their carousing. A surprising number of Republicans on the Hill are aspiring singers. Take the now defunct Singing Senators, which was a barbershop quartet featuring former Sen. John Ashcroft (baritone), Sen. Larry Craig (lead), former Sen. James Jeffords (tenor), and former Sen. Trent Lott (bass). I think we know who kept time with a little foot tapping.

Sen. Hatch had the good sense to venture off on his own, launching a solo career with My God Is Love. Eight albums have followed, which can be purchased at Hatch's non-government web site that spotlights his musical genius. His titles alternate between the religious (How His Glory Shines) and the patriotic (America United), although sometimes he manages to combine the best of both worlds (Heal Our Land).

Alas, we couldn't pry loose the lyrics for the senator's latest tune, "Headed Home," even on deep background. But now Hatch has decided to share his love of Sen. Kennedy with the entire world. Although the Hatch staff didn't see fit to give THE STANDARD our much-desired exclusive, we're still proud to link to the song at CNN. With lyrics like "Just honor him / honor him / and every fear will be a thing of the past / America / America!," it delivers the goods.

House Democrats pulled out all the stops to win a hard fought legislative victory yesterday – prevailing on a dramatic 213-212 nail-biter vote on the “adjournment resolution,” authorizing a five-week summer recess. Congress sets dates for its “district work periods”, through these normally routine measures that must pass both the House and Senate, but don’t require the President’s signature.

Earlier in the week, House Republican leader John Boehner urged his colleagues to “vote no” on what customarily amounts to a legislative housekeeping matter. He implored Congress not skip town without considering comprehensive energy plan, including lifting the ban on offshore drilling.

For their part, House Democratic leaders seemed more interested cracking the whip for a five-week vacation than hammering out a plan to lower gasoline prices. Still, 17 Democrats – almost all from vulnerable districts – joined all the Republicans present (195) and voted “no” on the motion to adjourn. But 213 members (all Democrats) voted to leave town. You can read the tally here.

Losing would have amounted to a stinging embarrassment for the House majority. Even the speaker of the House – who by tradition normally abstains except for highly substantive or symbolic matters – cast a vote for adjournment. Speaker Pelosi joined in the last minute cajoling like a burly Chicago precinct captain. But Democrats from swing-districts that voted “no” decided to buck their leaders’ heavy lobbying rather explain why they chose a holiday over energy price relief.

The “vacation vote” arm-twisting became rather heated, according to several sources that witnessed yesterday’s legislative battle. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer reportedly “got in the face” of freshman Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina and persuaded him to switch his vote at the last minute to “yes” after he initially voted “no.” The former Washington Redskins quarterback doesn’t have much of a race this November. Nevertheless it still may be tough to explain back in the Tar Heel state where Mr. Shuler likes to advertise his “independence” from the liberal congressional Democratic leadership.

Mexico is our third-leading supplier of foreign oil, but Mexico's national oil company -- Pemex -- faces serious challenges. Pemex will be unable to produce from new deep-water fields without an infusion of private capital, and the Mexican constitution forbids private investment in the petroleum sector. With the Cantarell field in decline, Mexican oil production will fall off dramatically.

Mexican president Felipe Calderon has proposed a reform package to enable Pemex to contract with private companies. In contrast to the package proposed by former president Vicente Fox, this one seems to have a chance of passage. But the socialist opposition party has staged a series of non-binding referenda in parts of the country, and the results could chill the move for reform:

More than 80% of those who cast ballots Sunday in Mexico City opposed the plan, according to the official tally of the federal district released Monday. The results were even more lopsided outside the capital, where nine of Mexico's 31 states also participated. With about two-thirds of the ballots counted, more than 90% of those voters gave the president's proposal a thumbs down...

Orchestrated by the opposition Democratic Revolution Party, the so-called Citizen Consultation was the first of three public referendums to be held throughout Mexico over the next month to gauge public opinion on pending energy reforms.

The results have no official bearing on legislation being hashed out in Congress. But the left-leaning PRD is gambling that strong public opposition will force lawmakers to back off proposals to open portions of the state petroleum monopoly to private or foreign firms.

According to the head of Pemex, Mexico's production of oil will fall by about 1.2 million barrels per day by 2015 without this reform. The U.S. currently imports slightly less than that. There's no doubt that if Mexico's production tailed off so dramatically, we would bear the brunt of it. Suddenly canals might seem practical.

Politico reports that yesterday Senate Republicans blocked Harry Reid's "Tomnibus"--an omnibus bill of many measures that Tom Coburn had placed a hold on:

The vote sent Reid into one of his trademark tirades on the Senate floor, as he basically accused Republicans of voting against people with strokes, people in wheelchairs and those suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.

"You go home and explain to your folks [voters] about stroke legislation," Reid said. "You go home and tell people ... in a wheelchair you voted against moving forward on something that could get them out of their wheelchair."

"You're going to have to go home and explain to the poor, the disabled and the elderly," Reid continued.

Coburn objected not only to the spending increase these measures would incur but also Reid's attempt to "hotline" the bills--unanimously pass them without debate or amendment. Senate Republicans joined Coburn and said they would hold up all legislation until the Senate deals with rising gas prices.

Democrats like Sen. Durbin and Sen. Kerry are eager to resurrect the so-called Fairness Doctrine, whereby radio stations will be required to give equal time to liberal talking heads. They know this would kill talk-radio, a traditionally conservative medium, which would instantly become unprofitable if stations were forced to give liberal hosts equal time despite the fact no one would listen to them. I'm sure Sen. Durbin and Sen. Kerry are tickled pink, however, that they get to talk about free speech and compelling government interests even as they gag their political enemies.

If the Fairness Doctrine is justified with the airwaves, why not with newsprint as well? Today Howard Kurtz reports, "With this week's Newsweek cover story on Obama's religious beliefs, he has been featured on Time and Newsweek covers 12 times in the past three years, compared with five for McCain." If Sen. Durbin and Kerry are so preoccupied by the absence of fairness and diversity on radio stations, surely they would agree the same compelling interests apply to print media. No, actually, they wouldn't, because fair speech is liberal speech in their minds.

Of course, the Fairness Doctrine is a relic of a time when there were so few channels existed that government did have some compelling interest in ensuring all sides were equally represented. No such interest exists today. That goes for radio stations just as much as magazine covers.

It was delicious poetic justice when famed plaintiffs’ attorney William Lerach, formerly of the firm Milberg Weiss, was sentenced to two years in federal prison for paying shareholders of large corporations millions of dollars in kickbacks in exchange for their cooperation as name plaintiffs in Milberg’s class actions. On the same day Lerach began his prison term, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced the Securities Litigation Attorney Accountability and Transparency Act (SLAATA), aimed to thwart future malfeasance in private securities litigation. Cornyn’s bill recognizes that the problem with shareholder class actions transcends flatly illegal misconduct, such as Lerach’s famous armoire full of cash, and is better captured by his 1993 boast to Fortune magazine: “I have the greatest practice of law in the world. I have no clients.”

A securities class action works as follows: A company’s stock price drops substantially (sometimes due to actual executive misconduct, frequently to any number of market forces). Plaintiff firms like Milberg Weiss find a shareholder--the more pliant and less engaged the better--who lost value in the transaction and use him as the name plaintiff in a class action against the corporation. Months and years of litigation ensue, draining the pockets of the corporation’s current shareholders with the theoretical goal of compensating the “wronged” shareholders. (Meanwhile, in cases where actual corporate misconduct has occurred, the SEC and/or DOJ have already investigated and issued appropriate sanctions on the company and its executives). Eventually, the matter settles. The former shareholders receive some nominal compensation and the plaintiffs’ attorneys cash in on enormous fees--which are calculated largely as a function of the sheer quantity of time spent on the matter.

The perversity of the incentives are clear. Plaintiffs’ counsel will seek endless rounds of marginally relevant depositions and discovery requests, geared not toward developing a true case against the company, but to justify large fees for all of their “hard work.” The only shareholders even theoretically compensated are those who sold their stock at its low point after the initial drop before it tanked further--drained in part by the very litigation purported to vindicate shareholders rights. Meanwhile, the threat of government prosecution has already much better deterred executive misconduct than the private litigation ever could. The plaintiffs’ attorneys, quite literally, have “no client” but themselves.

SLAATA, of course, would not eliminate this structure entirely but calls for three alterations. The first would mandate broad disclosure of fee arrangements, contributions, and payments between counsel and plaintiffs. It is unclear, however, that this would actually prevent the worst conduct, such as Lerach’s bribery (which was, of course, already illegal) and--since plaintiffs would file these disclosures with the presiding court as attachments to the complaint--the practice would almost certainly result in further protracting the litigation, as the sides squabbled over the disclosures themselves. SLAATA’s second and third provisions, however, make a great deal of sense: one would require the court to exercise discretion over selection of plaintiff’s counsel, implementing a competitive bidding process such as that used to select government contractors. The other would mandate a five-year study to determine the effective average hourly rate for counsel in such actions. These two features could serve to place at least some sort of reality check on the spoils gleaned by counsel, thereby disincentivizing the most wasteful and frivolous behavior. The bidding provision would also supplant the current ambulance chase joined by the plaintiff bar each time a big name stock price drops.

Charlie Rangel is a shameless self-promoter who proceeds from any meeting at the White House to the flock of reporters that congregates outside the West Wing. His accounts never bear much resemblance to reality, but they get him in the paper. In soliciting funds to build a $30 million monument to himself, Rangel takes egotism to heights unseen outside the fiction of Ayn Rand.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel is soliciting donations from corporations with business interests before his panel, hoping to raise $30 million for a new academic center that will house his papers when he retires.

The New York Democrat has penned letters on congressional stationery and has sought meetings to ask for corporate and foundation contributions for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York, a project that caused controversy last year when he won a $1.9 million congressional earmark to help start it. Republican critics dubbed the project Rangel's "Monument to Me."

The Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. only cost $8 million. The FDR Memorial cost $48 million. The World War II memorial cost $175 million. In Rangel's mind no doubt, the expense is proportionate to his greatness.

House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is causing controversy on Capitol Hill for his decision to have his chief of staff serve as staff director of the committee, as well. The staffer has no security clearance--which would severely undermine his ability to deal with the sensitive issues that come before the committee. Perhaps it's not such a great detriment, however, given that Thompson has refocused the work of the committee away from homeland security, and toward the agency's contracting process.

Democratic and Republican congressional aides say there is turmoil within the the House Homeland Security Committee's majority staff and that oversight work is being eclipsed by a focus on promoting contracting opportunities for small and minority-owned businesses.

Sources who spoke only if they could remain anonymous said they are particularly concerned that the committee's new staff director, I. Lanier Avant, does not have the qualifications to lead the committee and faces a conflict of interest because he continues to serve as chief of staff in the congressional office of House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.

They expressed concern that Avant must balance his duties on Thompson's personal staff, which includes attention to politics and fundraising, and managing the heavy responsibilities of running the committee, which he began doing last month...

But sources said the arrangement with Avant has made Thompson's agenda of reaching out and helping small, minority-owned and disadvantaged businesses secure homeland security contracts the overriding focus of the committee staff. Not enough attention has been paid to broader national security matters, the sources said.

Thompson created an electronic newsletter, Business Opportunities at DHS, which includes an e-mail address -- DHSBizOps@mail.house.gov -- that small and disadvantaged businesses can use to tell the committee if they feel they are being treated unfairly by the department.

Democrats claim to be serious about homeland security and national defense, but can't they come up with more serious concerns about homeland security than DHS's contracting practices?

The Senate voted to confirm General David Petraeus as Commander of CentCom by a vote of 95-2. The near-unanimous vote of confidence is rather surprising, given the doubts expressed about Petraeus by Senate Democrats just a few months ago:

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV):

Q: “…General Petraeus is going to come to the Hill and make it clear to you that there is progress going on in Iraq, that the so-called surge is working. Will you believe him when he says that?” REID: “No, I don't believe him, because it's not happening. All you have to do is look at the facts.” (CNN’s “The Situation Room,” 04/23/07)

“[He] Isn’t In Touch With What’s Going On In Baghdad.” “And for someone, whether it's General Petraeus or anyone else, to say things are great in Baghdad isn't in touch with what's going on in Baghdad, even though he's there and I'm not.” (Press Conference, 06/14/07)

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL) On Gen. Petraeus:

“By carefully manipulating the statistics, the Bush-Petraeus report will try to persuade us that violence in Iraq is decreasing and thus the surge is working. Even if the figures were right, the conclusion is wrong.” (Remarks To The Center For National Policy, Washington, D.C., 09/07/07)

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY) To Gen. Petraeus:

“I Think That The Reports That You Provided To Us Really Require The Willing Suspension Of Disbelief.” (Armed Services Committee, U.S. Senate, 09/11/07)

SEN. BARBARA BOXER (D-CA) To Gen. Petraeus:

“I don't consider the surge a nuanced policy. It's killing our soldiers at a great rate. … I think that we need to look at reality. Senator Biden talked to you about what the comptroller general said, and you're going to argue about it? I think the comptroller general ought to be listened to. He says you're cherry picking your numbers in terms of the overall violence. … I ask you to take off your rosy glasses. You had them on in '05.” (Foreign Relations Committee, U.S. Senate, Hearing, 9/11/07)

SEN. JOE BIDEN (D-DE) On Gen. Petraeus:

“This is ridiculous. There is no plan. I ask the President and everyone else who comes forward with a plan, whether it is capping or surging or whatever they have: Will it answer the two-word test: Then what? Then what? Then what? What happens after we surge these women and men? And by the way, he said General Petraeus is one who believes. He may be the only one who believes this is a good idea. Virtually no one else thinks it is a good idea.” (Congressional Record, S.3080, 03/14/07)

“Delaware Sen. Joe Biden said yesterday Gen. David Petraeus is not ‘betraying us,’ as a liberal activist group charges, but the Democratic presidential hopeful did not reject charges that the military commander is using selected statistics to do the White House's bidding. ‘There is some accuracy to’ so-called ‘cooking-the-books’ charges being leveled against Petraeus, Biden, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday in a telephone interview from Washington.” (John Distaso, “Democrats Cool To Latest From Petraeus,” New Hampshire Union Leader, 09/11/07)

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA) On Gen. Petraeus:

“I think the general will present the facts with respect to the statistics and the tactical successes or situations as he sees them. But none of us should be fooled -- not the American people, not you in the media, not us in Congress -- we should not be fooled into this tactical success debate. That's not what this is about.” (ABC’s “This Week,” 09/09/07)

All of these Senators voted to confirm Petraeus. Perhaps the senators in question can explain how they came to realize that they were so spectacularly wrong about Petraeus just a few months ago.

As recently as a few weeks ago, pollsters were not generally asking Americans to rate the importance of gas prices as an election issue. Since May, several national polls have included gas/energy prices as a potential poll answer, and voters have consistently ranked it quite high. It's among the top 3 in most recent polls, including CNN's latest effort. With the likelihood that pump prices will remain high through the election (and beyond) it's possible that this will be the first election in recent years in which gas prices influence the outcome.

And what is the Democratic plan, according to an anonymous Hill aide?

“Right now, our strategy on gas prices is ‘Drive small cars and wait for the wind,’ ” said a Democratic aide.

A senior Democratic leadership aide acknowledged this week that there are plenty of members of the majority caucus “who want to drill and want to drill where Republicans want to drill.”

Even if Democratic leaders could beat back a GOP motion on drilling, the vote could be used as political ammunition against their vulnerable members this fall...

One pro-drilling Democrat predicted that the backlash against Congress for gas prices could rival the outrage voters felt about the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

Another, Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.), is frustrated at not being listened to.

“My concern with my leadership is that they’re not letting all the people in the room to present the facts,” said Melancon, a proponent of more offshore drilling. “Where are all the pro-oil legislators? I’m not in the room. I don’t know who is. My feeling is we are not being all-inclusive to pass legislation that can get through the Senate and avoid a veto.”

In the past, the salience of gas prices as an election issue has generally faded as gas prices fell in the wake of the summer driving season. This year there may not be much of a price decline, and that ought to worry Democrats who are standing in the way of increased supply.

Yesterday, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff David Addington refused to discuss particular interrogation techniques during a meeting on Capitol Hill because al Qaeda could benefit from such communications being broadcast on television. Democratic Congressman Delahunt replied: “I’m sure they are watching. I’m glad they finally have a chance to see you, Mr. Addington, given your penchant for being unobtrusive."

Delahunt claims he was trying to say "I have a chance to see you," rather than "they." It sure doesn't seem that way when you watch the video.

This wouldn't have been the first time Delahunt expressed a friendly attitude toward our enemies. In the past, he expressed gratitude to Hugo Chavez for impoverishing the people of Venezuela to help the people of Massachusetts.

At a breakfast meeting sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor this morning, Nancy Pelosi said that a Senate filibuster of the FISA bill would be "healthy and wholesome" for public debate, but she's "not encouraging" it. "I don’t think [the FISA bill] dishonors the Constitution," she said, arguing that "exclusivity was more important than retroactive immunity" for telecom companies. Telecoms should not "take this as a compliment," she said. "They have come out of this tainted."

Did Hillary Clinton lose the nomination because of sexism? "Being a woman has a positive upside in the campaign, probably offset by more sexism, I don’t know,” Pelosi said. “I’m a victim of sexism myself all the time, but I just think it goes with the territory.”

Will Pelosi hold a vote on Mike Pence’s bill to ban the Fairness Doctrine? “I won’t…. The interest in my caucus is the reverse,” she said. “I support the Fairness Doctrine.” (Look out Rush Limbaugh, and other radio-talkers!)

Pelosi was also asked about public financing—which she supports “across the board”—and how House Democrats’ campaigns are coordinating with Barack Obama. Answer: He’s been asked to raise money.

Pelosi came ready to talk about energy policy. Upon arrival, her staffers passed out a press release on energy, which included proposed "Use It Or Lose It" legislation that would compel "the oil industry to start drilling or lose permits on the 68 million acres of undeveloped federal oil reserves which they are currently warehousing, keeping domestic supply lower and prices higher." But apparently this was just too tedious for the reporters.

By the time the breakfast had ended she had not fielded a single question about energy policy. Or about the war in Iraq, for that matter. Pelosi cited these two issues as the primary reasons for public disapproval of Congress. Too bad she didn’t get a chance to talk about them.

The most taxed, regulated product in the country is about to become even more regulated. Congress is weighing a ban on flavored cigarettes that are popular among today's youth. The tobacco companies are even supporting the legislation, and with good reason. It contains one big exception--it exempts menthol from the ban.

The reason? Menthol is preferred by 75 percent of black smokers. Although this type of pandering is business as usual on the Hill, it is appalling that the American Medical Association would be so spineless as to refuse to take a stand. Some doctors with integrity are publicly opposing the exemption, noting it hurts the black community. They are right: A recent study concluded, "smokers who favor menthol cigarettes are twice as likely to fall off the wagon after quitting than people who smoke other cigarettes." Either menthol should be included in the law, or the whole law should be abandoned.

Democrats love to push tobacco legislation in election years, but it might backfire this time. Only one of this year's presidential candidates is a smoker, and it's not John McCain. So how will Obama, a rumored Marlboro man, vote on this legislation? Will he take a stand against menthol?

It's generally agreed that the political climate for Republicans will be toxic this year, so it's not surprising that there are painfully few Democrats who seem to face uphill climbs for re-election. It looks there may be one, however, Pennsylvania's Paul Kanjorski, who's being challenged again by Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta:

Kanjorski’s district leans Democratic, with 53 percent voting for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) for president in 2004, but Republicans see an opportunity in the blue-collar district. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) performed poorly in the district in the April presidential primary, losing by 42 points to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

In a polling memo released Monday by Barletta’s campaign, Barletta led Kanjorski in a ballot test, 47 percent to 42 percent. The Susquehanna Polling and Research survey took the opinion of 400 likely general election voters March 27-29. The poll had a margin of error of 4.9 points...

But it’s clear that national Democrats are nervous about the district: The DCCC made $26,000 in independent expenditures in the district to pay for polling.

Kanjorski has made the news several times already this cycle. He's gained plenty of unwanted attention for admitting at a town hall meeting that the Democrats overpromised on their ability to end the war in Iraq. He's also had to answer questions about steering earmarks to family members. And we've previously covered his plan to 'dust off' the New Deal and give it to voters again once Democrats regain the White House.

Kanjorski has far more cash on hand than his challenger. However, Barletta has high name recognition and as Reid Wilson notes, HIllary Clinton gained 75 percent of the vote in Kanjorski's district in the recent primary.

While the approval ratings for Republicans are awfully low, those for Congress are worse. That means there ought to be opportunities for challengers of both parties to take down long-entrenched incumbents who are symbolic of what's wrong with Washington. Can the GOP find more Paul Kanjorskis?

No timetables, no nothing. Democrats are in full retreat.

Democrats in the U.S. Congress, who came to power last year on a call to end the combat in Iraq, will soon give President George W. Bush the last war-funding bill of his presidency without any of the conditions they sought for withdrawing U.S. troops, congressional aides said on Monday.

Lawmakers are arranging to send Bush $165 billion in new money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, enough to last for about a year and well beyond when Bush leaves office on Jan. 20. ...

Since January, 2007, when Democrats took majority control of the House and Senate, they have tried to force Bush to change course in Iraq, mostly through troop withdrawal timetables and requirements that U.S. soldiers be more thoroughly trained, equipped and rested before returning to combat.

And while various versions have passed each chamber since then, there have not been enough votes in Congress to enact the war conditions over Bush's objections.

Congressional Republicans will unveil a new economic agenda tomorrow. The plan promises to lower gas prices, put an immediate moratorium on earmarks, fix a broken tort system, stop taxes from spiking once the current tax cuts expire in 2010 and more.

Republican Leader John Boehner previewed the plan saying this:

One of the things I have often asked our Members since Election Day, 2006 is what we would do differently if we had the majority in the House of Representatives again. This agenda we’re unveiling today is a big part of the answer. It is chock full of the sort of real reforms our nation needs. Over the past 18 months, the American people have seen what the Democrats who run Congress have to offer: higher taxes, broken promises, and skyrocketing gas prices. This agenda is our response. It is not just change for the sake of change, it is change rooted in freedom. We will fight to lower taxes, expand American energy to bring down gas prices, establish patient-centered health care, and cut wasteful Washington spending.

No one in the Republican high command expects these initiatives to ever see the light of day given the current Democratic majority. But they do offer the GOP fresh rhetorical ammunition and a growing positive agenda, as Republicans put together with the Contract with America or the Democrats “Six for ’06” agenda two years ago. Read the full outline of the plan here.

We've chronicled here how the Congress has refused to fund the war on terror. Congress is approaching a critical deadline, as Secretary Gates recently testified before the Senate that the Pentagon will not have the funds necessary to pay troops as of June 15, unless the Congress approves a reprogramming of other funds. Now Congressman John Murtha has decided to stand in the way:

All four panels must approve the request before the Pentagon can carry out the transfer. But with the panels in disagreement over the amount, the Defense Department will be allowed to shift only the lowest level of funding approved by the committees, according to congressional and defense sources.

House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John Murtha, D-Pa., said his panel approved only a portion of the reprogramming request because he believes the Pentagon can get by without the full amount.

"We approved part of the [reprogramming]," but not all, Murtha said. "They don't need that much money that fast..."

Service members, including those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and essential civilians would serve without pay, while nonessential civilian employees would be furloughed, the department said.

The Pentagon has already borrowed against its fourth quarter budget to cover current military expenses. Additionally, the soaring cost of oil has put a significant dent in DoD accounts. Further, Congress shows no sign of having figured out how to buy off competing Democratic constituencies to pass a funding bill, and Democratic leaders refuse to bring for a vote clean legislation that would pass with largely Republican support. Nevertheless, Murtha believes it's appropriate to nickel and dime the Pentagon, while holding up long-term funding.

But don't worry: Congress supports the troops.

Mitch McConnell is not going to win the Scott McClellan Award for Unity, Bipartisanship and Comity. Good for McConnell. He's forcing the clerk to read nearly 500 pages of a global warming bill now before the Senate as an objection to the Democrats' stalling on judicial appointees.

It's nice to see a conservative elected official willing to pick a fight.

A friend on Capitol Hill emails a brief dispatch from the Associated Press reporting that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il received a gift from a visiting delegation of congressional staff members.

North Korea's official news agency says the country's leader has received a gift from the chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The Korean Central News Agency said Wednesday the gift for Kim Jong Il was delivered to a North Korean official by a group of committee staffers visiting the communist nation.

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is Howard Berman. Not surprisingly, Claudia Rosett has more, though she has not gotten word from Berman's staff confirming or denying the gift.

A few questions: What was the gift? If it came from Berman, why did he give it? What was the delegation of congressional staffers doing in North Korea? Did the State Department arrange the trip?

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal has a brief item on the Democratic gift in today's paper.

In a speech on the House floor on May 13, Rep. Howard Berman noted, accurately, that "the human rights situation in North Korea remains one of the bleakest on the planet." Two weeks later, what's the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee doing sending a personal gift to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il?

A spokeswoman for Mr. Berman said the gift was a "plate or platter with the congressional seal." It was delivered by four committee staffers who were in Pyongyang last week to "show support for the six-party talks."

So in the past week Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi credits the reduction in Iraq violence to the "goodwill of the Iranians" and the Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is giving gifts to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Barack Obama is a hardliner by comparison. He just wants to negotiate with leaders of rogue states.

After ending 2007 with abysmal approval ratings, Congressional leaders seemed to recognize that protracted fights over Iraq funding bills were damaging their credibility. They acknowledged that it made little sense to split their conference, only to capitulate to the president at the last minute. It seemed like Democrats simply wanted the Iraq issue to go away. Along those lines, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer made clear a few weeks ago that Democrats would no longer try to play games with Iraq funds:

"Clearly we're at war, or it's a different kind of war, but we have, as you know what my position has been, we have men and women that we have asked and sent in harm's way," he said. "And obviously we have a responsibility to address that. The President says that they need additional sums to fund that effort. And my position, as you know, is until such time as we take them out and have a policy of redeployment we need to support them while they're there."

Either Hoyer doesn't speak for his party, or he can't marshal the votes he needs to deliver. That became clear yesterday, when the Pentagon requested authority to shift money among defense accounts to ensure that our troops in the field don't have their funds cut off due to Congressional inaction:

The Pentagon has asked Congress for the authorization to borrow and transfer $9.7 billion from various accounts to pay for war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The so-called reprogramming request is necessary because a new war supplemental funding bill is still pending in Congress, the Department of Defense stated...

The Army will run out of money to pay its soldiers, including those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, after June 15, Gates told the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee last week.

Around July 5, all services starting with the Army will run out of operations and maintenance funds.

Democratic leaders have tried to move legislation to fund the ongoing war, but their domestic spending has alienated fiscal conservatives without buying the votes of anti-war liberals. Assuming Democrats retain control of the Congress in 2009, the calculus won't suddenly change: leaders will still need to cobble together a majority.

But if Barack Obama is elected president, there's no way that Congressional leaders will suddenly tack right -- and force on the president spending bills that require a more aggressive stance in Iraq and the war on terror. Rather, the majority position will be dictated by the anti-war liberals, who regard the 'War on Terror' as a police action, at best. Will President Obama stand up to them?

Maxine Waters let the cat out of the bag yesterday. Congressional Democrats talk a moderate game, but when they speak candidly it's clear they have an extreme agenda in mind. It may be unfair to pick on Representative Waters; she is probably the most confused Representative in Congress. Want proof? She's introduced legislation to reverse the Kelo decision. So she's a fierce defender of private property rights, who thinks a critical sector of the economy should be taken over by the government.

It may be lost on Ms. Waters, but it should be pointed out that two of the other nationalized oil companies in our hemisphere are currently collapsing because their governments are skimming their profits and underinvesting in future production:

Petróleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, ''is overstretched to capacity with any number of needs,'' said Patrick Esteruelas, an analyst at the New York-based Eurasia Group.

The firm is borrowing billions from foreign lenders, while independent estimates show its output falling. U.S. data shows imports from Venezuela last year hit a 12-year low after dropping 8.2 percent from 2005...

PDVSA is not the only state oil company in Latin America to face such problems. Mexico's Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, now faces rapidly shrinking reserves and outdated technology. Company executives agree they must reinvest much more but are hamstrung by Mexico's constitution. Nearly 60 percent of Pemex's revenues go to the federal budget each year, while debt and pension obligations total upward of $100 billion.

So while Barack Obama is campaigning on a promise of bringing the parties together on a practical, problem-solving agenda, senior Democrats in Congress are talking about nationalizing oil, nationalizing health care, slamming Americans with higher taxes, and re-creating the New Deal. Obama should be asked where he stands on this extreme agenda (and not least because he's the proponent of nationalized health care I linked to above).

HT: Hot Air

The first rule about handicapping Congressional races is not to assume that just because Congress is unpopular, individual Members of Congress are endangered. If you mistakenly made that assumption, you might think that just because the Democratic Congress is held in historically low esteem by the voters, individual Members of Congress are threatened for re-election.

This year, the Democratic Congress sees its ratings in the toilet, and Republicans face tougher re-election fights:

When respondents were asked whether they favored their local representative (who was cited by name) in an election against a generic candidate from the other party, voters represented by a Democratic incumbent favored the Democrat, 2 to 1. But those surveyed in Republican districts were much more open to throwing out their incumbents: While 53 percent said they would re-elect their GOP incumbent, 43 percent said they would vote for the generic Democratic challenger.

No wonder more than 60 percent of the DC Republican leaders polled by National Journal now believe that they will lose somewhere between 1 and 20 seats in the House this year. And if the election were being held today, they probably would. There's no question that things need to change dramatically for the GOP between now and election day.

In the course of a rambling speech yesterday at the Center for American Progress about why the United States should embrace the anti-American terrorists who run Iran, while abandoning the pro-American moderates who run Iraq, Joe “Malarkey!” Biden attempted to take a couple swings at John McCain’s vision for Iraq.

Senator McCain, you’ll recall, spoke last week about his vision for victory in Iraq, in which he predicted, among other things, that--provided we continue to follow the advice of General Petraeus and General Odierno--the Iraqi government will increasingly be capable of securing its own country, with only minimal help from the United States.

Senator Biden attempted to challenge this prediction, sneering: “John’s crystal ball also reveals a 'government of Iraq capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq.' Right now, it can't even impose its authority in Baghdad.“

Ha! What a wit, that Joe Biden! Alas for the senior Senator from Delaware, he might have wanted to pick up a newspaper before trotting over to CAP. As the lead story in the New York Times yesterday blared:

Iraqi troops pushed deep into Sadr City Tuesday as the Iraqi government sought to establish control over the densely populated Shia enclave in the Iraqi capital.

The long-awaited military operation, which took place without the involvement of American ground forces, was the first determined effort by the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to assert control over the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood, which has been a bastion of support for Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel cleric….
Numerous Iraqi tanks and armored personnel carriers were parked on street corners, relaxed-looking soldiers sleeping in their vehicles or looking out onto the street through steel hatches.

The Iraqi flag was flying from the army vehicles in many areas of Sadr City that had been under the control of the Shia militias.

Other soldiers manned checkpoints, some chatting with children. There were no visible signs of the Mahdi Army, although many walls bore posters of Mr. Sadr, and they seemed to have been put up in the last few days.

When it comes to foreign policy, could Democrats be any more divorced from the reality-based community?

Secretary of Defense Gates testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee today. He touched on the failure of Congress to provide funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:

“After June 15, we will run out of funds in this account to pay soldiers, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Gates said.

The second fund affected is operations and maintenance. “Around July 5, O&M funds across the services will run out, starting with the Army,” the secretary said. “This may result in civilian furloughs, limits on training, and curbing family support activities.”

Senator Reid has conceded that no Iraq funding bill is likely before the Memorial Day recess, but he is attempting to push through a short-term measure to obviate the need for furloughs.

It's a novel approach:

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Tuesday called for the elimination of the House rule that prohibits holding votes open for the purpose of changing the outcome.

“Rule 2(a) is not enforceable,” Hoyer told the Select Committee to Investigate the Voting Irregularities of Aug. 2, 2007, adding that he would not be opposed to a committee recommendation to eliminate that rule.

The rule in question was one of the signature accomplishments of the new Democratic majority when they took leadership of the House in 2007. It was intended to prevent the sort of arm-twisting that has become common on close votes. Now that it's become inconvenient to a majority that frequently faces close votes, they will apparently do away with it.

Harry Reid and the Democrats promised in 2006

The Frist & Hastert Reform: Prohibit “Dead of Night” Special Interest Provisions. Require that all conference committee meetings be open to the public and that members of the conference committee have a public opportunity to vote on all amendments.

Yesterday Democrats announced agreement on a conference report for the federal budget:

Senate and House budget writers have reached a compromise on a budget resolution that could be taken up by both bodies as soon as next week, said Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad.

"We reached agreement," Conrad said Monday. "We reached agreement on Friday night..."

The compromise clears the way for congressional leaders to name members to a conference committee.

"So we are ready now for the House and Senate to name conferees," Conrad said. "We expect that will be done this week and we could perhaps have a conference either late this week or early next."

In retrospect, the Republicans simply weren't very efficient. Too often they named Democratic conferees and then made key decisions without them. Democrats are far more efficient: making all the decisions before any conferees are even named.

The House Democratic Blue Dogs have enshrined one policy goal above all others: balancing the federal budget. So far this Congress they've rolled over and allowed Democratic leaders to push through legislation to increase spending and maintain existing tax rates, even where such moves have expanded the deficit. Now that it's time to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan however, they say they will not budge:

So far in the 110th Congress, Democrats have added hundreds of billions in unpaid-for spending on the wars, tax cuts and domestic programs while trying to claim credit for reinstituting a PAYGO rule, albeit one that is so weak that Democrats have been able to all but ignore it.

Last year, Democrats forced through an alternative minimum tax relief package without offsets over the objections of Blue Dogs, and this year, they passed a massive bipartisan stimulus package without offsets as well.

To be clear, the Blue Dog objection is not to the war funding itself -- which is almost certain to be approved as emergency spending. Rather, it's to a $52 billion expansion of veterans' benefits that the Democratic leadership is trying to push through without paying for it. Democrats may wind up deeply embarrassed that the 'difficult vote' they had set up for Republicans -- for a clean funding bill, or for more veterans' benefits -- will be short-circuited by their own team.

And as for the funding for our troops? Don't worry -- Congress will get to it eventually...

How many times have we seen this happen?

The Senate Appropriations Committee postponed its scheduled Thursday markup of this year’s war supplemental spending bill, after the House delayed floor consideration of the legislation until next week...

Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, says the Pentagon needs the funding bill completed by Memorial Day:

"We need [the supplemental appropriations bill] very badly before the Memorial Day recess. We stop paying soldiers on the 15th of June and we have precious little flexibility with respect to that," Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview at his Pentagon office last week. "Clearly that creates incredible constraints and difficulties for us."

Without the extra funding, Mullen said, the Defense Department would be forced to delay contract awards and withhold other spending to pay for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. "It makes it extremely difficult to execute the day-to-day business of the Pentagon without knowing the money is coming," he said.

The only reason this legislation has not yet passed is that Congressional Democrats refuse to allow a stand-alone funding bill to come to the floor, where it would likely be supported by all Republicans and a handful of Democrats. Instead, Pelosi and Reid insist that the legislation be supported by a broad swath of Democrats -- a policy they decried when it was practiced by Republicans. Instead, they again choose to play politics with the safety of our troops. It's become clear that for Democrats in Congress, they simply can't help themselves.

The president made clear today in his comments before the Organization of American States that he will continue to press ahead for Congressional consideration and passage of outstanding trade deals:

Yesterday I met with the President of Panama. I assured him our efforts to get the Panamanian trade bill passed will be just as vociferous and vigorous as our efforts to get the Colombia trade bill passed. Congress must understand they have a chance to spread prosperity in our neighborhood; they have a chance to support friends in our neighborhood. And there's no better way to express that friendship than to support the Colombia free trade agreement, the Panamanian free trade agreement, and while they're at it, to send a clear message around the world that the South Korean free trade agreement is good for the U.S. economy as well.

Each of these trade deals is good for the U.S. economy -- reducing barriers to our exports and giving consumers more choices and better prices when they make purchases. That's reason enough to continue to press ahead for passage.

Beyond that however, it's good politics. As things now stand, the Democratic leadership in Congress will never give the president a fair shot to win passage of these accords. Their preference is effectively to kill the deals by never allowing them to see the light of day. That being the case, the president has an incentive to force the question on Congress in each instance, and make the Congressional leadership take responsibility for inaction.

As the election approaches, we'll see if Democrats in Congress really are content to insult Panama and Korea, as well as Colombia.

From Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA) writing at the Huffington Post:

Had the French been victorious in that original Battle of Puebla on May 5th, 1862, they could have continued their influence across the Mexican nation, and would have likely supported the Confederacy in its battle against Union forces. Instead, the French had to regroup their forces and concentrate on their war with Mexico, which was much more united just one year after the first attack. Of course, just fourteen months after the Battle of Puebla, the U.S. Civil War would see a major battle when Union forces claimed victory at Gettysburg and effectively brought a close to the Civil War.

I guess nobody told General Sherman. And while I'll concede a rather weak grasp of Mexican military history, I'm pretty sure the French sacked the Mexican capital one year after that first attack--as in conquered the country and installed an emperor a month before the Battle of Gettysburg. Exit earmark proposal: $100,000 for remedial history courses for the esteemed and honorable members of the United States House of Representatives.

Ted Stevens (R-AK) needs all the friends he can get. He's the subject of a Justice Department investigation and he faces a real Democratic challenger for the first time in years. It's made him one of the top Democratic targets this year. But in a strong demonstration that Congressional appropriators are the third party in Washington -- and more united than both Republicans and Democrats -- Daniel Inouye (D-HI) is raising money for his re-election bid:

Putting their friendship above party, Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye (Hawaii) will headline a fundraiser today for one of the Democrats’ top targets this cycle, Republican Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska).

Inouye, who chairs the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, on which Stevens is the ranking member, is the “special guest” at the noon event at 101 Constitution Ave. NW. According to the invitation, the lunch is organized by several high-profile lobbyists, including Stevens’ former top aide, Lisa Sutherland. The fundraiser seeks $1,000 in contributions from individuals and $5,000 from political action committees to aid Stevens’ bid for an eighth term this fall.

Inouye and Stevens have long been allies and senior appropriators, and have reputations for putting their personal and working relationships ahead of party politics. In the 2004 cycle, Stevens similarly helped Inouye raise thousands of dollars for his re-election, which was not seriously contested.

It's good to know that some bonds are stronger than ethics investigations.

A number of contributors to this blog have written on the controversial tanker deal awarded by the Air Force to EADS, and currently being investigated by GAO (examples here, here, here, here, and here). Now it looks like the House at least, is getting ready to pass legislation to undo the deal:

First, those lawmakers are readying measures that would prevent the Air Force from following through on the contract, which was awarded to a team led by Northrop Grumman Corp. and the U.S. arm of the European Aeronautic Defense and Space company (EADS).

Second, they propose to permanently change Pentagon contracting rules that they believe favor foreign firms over U.S. companies...

The Buy American movement could be helped by a slowing economy, growing concern about the outsourcing of jobs abroad and the pressures of an election year, analysts said. In the House, particularly, the odds are good for passage of legislation related to the tanker deal.

The White House is likely to issue a veto threat on any legislation to retroactively overturn the contract award. This probably gives Boeing advocates in Congress a free pass: they can vote for legislation to protect American jobs, knowing that in the end it won't be enacted. That's assuming of course, that Congressional leaders are content to let the issue die after a veto.

The more significant question is what U.S. trading partners do if and when Congress adopts legislation to reverse the award. Congressional actions typically get a lot of attention in foreign capitols.

Last year Congress cracked down on banks making too big a profit off of student loans. Democrats were delighted to stop rapacious lenders like SLMA from taking a pound of flesh from America's students. Speaker Pelosi was so proud of the bill that she even convened a photo-op intended to make it look like a presidential signing ceremony, and then instructed people to applaud (around 1:56).

The only problem with slashing the rate of return on student loans? Lenders are now losing money hand over fist. Sallie Mae continues to write loans in the hopes that Congress fixes the mess it created, but many other banks have dropped the business entirely.

Congress is frantically trying to enact a fix before May, when many college-bound students will be submitting loan applications. But rather than admit their error and repeal the bad bill they passed last year, Democrats in Congress are getting ready to craft a bill that provides taxpayer subsidies to hurting lenders:

Usually, the law of unintended consequences takes so long to reveal itself that no one remembers the culprits. But the speed at which Congress's student lending changes have gone south is raising political danger for Democrats, if Republicans had the wit to point it out. (They don't; that's why they're Republicans.)...

The result is that the same man who authored last year's bill to cut lenders' returns has crafted a new bill to subsidize those same lenders. Last week the House passed Education and Labor Chairman George Miller's latest foray into collegiate finance. The bill gives the Department of Education new authority to purchase loans directly from lenders.

To summarize: Congress mandated a return on student loans that is too low to attract private capital in the current market. So Congress will now use your money to create artificial investor demand. Taxpayers will bear more risk so that Congress can fashion a new business model to replace the one it just destroyed. The Bush Administration, unwisely but typically, has endorsed this approach.

The hypocrisy defies belief. And it gets worse when you realize that Congress is also trying to convince the Fed and the U.S. Treasury to take on these nonperforming student loans, even as they criticize the Fed for accepting bad mortgages. It seems the essential difference is that if the Fed puts itself on the hook for the student loans, at least the Senate might not look so bad. Not to worry though -- at the end of the day it'll all be papered over with a little more taxpayer money.

Army Times reports:

Concerned that the military is selling pornography in exchange stores in spite of a ban, one lawmaker has introduced a bill to clean up the matter.

“Our troops should not see their honor sullied so that the moguls behind magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can profit,” said Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., unveiling his House bill April 16.

His Military Honor and Decency Act would amend a provision of the 1997 Defense Authorization Act that banned sales of “sexually explicit material” on military bases.

The good news: Barry Fleming, Broun's challenger in this summer's Republican primary, has outraised him 9-1. Writing in Reason a few months back, Dave Weigel said "Fleming may start this campaign as the favorite, but there is substantial, enduring support for a congressman [Broun] who shares the voters’ contempt for Congress." Yes, contempt for Congress, I wonder where that comes from...

I've pointed out recently how House Democrats have threatened to block Canadian oil imports. The proverbial thumb-in-the-eye of Colombia has also been well-chronicled. Now comes news that House Democrats may soon get the chance to kill the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. That's because Korea has conceded on the one issue that is preventing the accord from coming up for a vote:

The U.S. and South Korea have reached formal agreement on a plan to lift the Asian nation's long ban on U.S. beef exports, removing a major impediment that has held up action in Congress on a trade pact that would tighten economic ties between the two nations...

Two-way trade between the U.S. and South Korea in 2007 totaled more than $80 billion. U.S. officials estimate the proposed trade deal would spur billions of dollars a year in added economic activity, boosting sales abroad of American-made goods but also opening creating new opportunities for U.S. financial-services companies. The deal with South Korea would be the largest U.S. bilateral trade pact since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement.

The usual cast of characters opposes the Korea FTA. The AFL-CIO says it hurts both the United States and Korea. Public Citizen has organized a coalition against the accord. A grand coalition of labor and environmental groups will soon descend upon Capitol Hill to threaten any Democrats who seem inclined to vote for the FTA.

Yet the agreement is another win-win for U.S. consumers and workers. Korea's agricultural tariffs are about four times those of the United States. Overall, Korea applies tariffs roughly three times those of this nation. Once the agreement is implemented, 95 percent of bilateral trade in consumer products will be duty-free, and more than half of all agricultural trade will be duty-free immediately. It's not surprising that the accord is supported by dozens of export-oriented U.S. industries.

The U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement won't be sent to Capitol Hill immediately. While the administration may see political value in forcing House Democrats to go on record on the issue, they would rather see it enacted. Therefore the first step will be to hold consultations with Congressional leaders.

Congressional Democrats have a difficult negotiating position, however. The last thing they want to do is vote against the unions just a few months before election day. At the same time, it would be politically damaging to kill a second agreement with a key U.S. ally in such short order.

Of course, if Speaker Pelosi hadn't killed the Colombia FTA so rashly, they might not face such a tough choice.

Democrats frequently complain about gasoline prices, right before they take action to limit our available supply of oil -- thereby increasing prices further. The energy bill that they passed last year is an excellent example. In that legislation, Congress reclassified oil derived from Canada's tar sands as an alternative fuel which produced excessive amounts of carbon -- thereby putting it off limits for use by the U.S. government. That could put a serious crimp in plans to increase U.S. consumption of this fuel from 1 million barrels per day to 3 million barrels. From Investors Business Daily:

"Classifying the oil sands as a nonconventional fuel," said Tristan Landry, a spokesman for Canada's Embassy in Washington, "would unnecessarily complicate the integrated Canada-U.S. energy relationship."

"Unnecessarily complicate" is putting it politely. Really, it's like someone dying of thirst but refusing to drink from a burbling spring just feet away. It makes absolutely no sense.

Curiously, this provision poses problems for the U.S. and Canada -- one of our most loyal and trusted allies. However, just like the decision to block the Colombian FTA, it also makes Hugo Chavez very happy, since it would leave the United States a little more dependent on Venezuelan oil. One wonders what the Congressional approval rating is in Caracas.

In any case, the Air Force is weighing in heavily in an effort to get Congress to undo the ban. And Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is expected to offer an amendment that would correct congress' monumental blunder:

Sources say Inhofe, who recently introduced a bill to repeal the GHG restrictions in section 526 of the 2007 energy law, may offer the proposal as a floor amendment to defense authorization legislation, which is currently pending in the Senate Armed Services Committee. The defense bill is expected to pass out of committee within the month and go to the floor shortly thereafter. Inhofe is a member of the Armed Services Committee and the ranking Republican on the Environment & Public Works Committee.

Let's hope that Congress decides its better to address the interests of the Defense Department and Canada than it is the government of Venezuela. No sure thing.

Roll Call reports:

The House agenda appears thin even for an election year, and majority Democrats are in no hurry to send bills to die in the Senate or to provide targets for Republican sniping.

Democrats are counting on picking up seats this year, and observers say they plan to run on the strength of their accomplishments in 2007. ..

Of late, House Democrats — back in the majority after a 12-year hiatus — have begun taking bills that would normally be considered under suspension and putting them through the rules process to have something to debate on the floor.

The suspension calendar is reserved for non-controversial bills, which are expected to pass by better than a two-thirds majority. And if you look at the list of recent House votes, there's not much there apart from post offices and federal buildings -- what else is new.

Democrats are banking on a fall victory that gives them control of the White House, and of Congress by a wider margin. Democratic strategists say that will allow them to pursue a more 'ambitious' agenda next year. For the time being, their strategy is to avoid difficult legislation, and hope that a combination of a fundraising advantage and a popular nominee allows them to overcome their dismal approval rating.

CQ Politics reports that the sponsors of the chief Senate climate change legislation are pleased with the cost estimate of the bill released by the Congressional Budget Office. That's because their proposal won't cost the federal government a dime. In fact, it will raise taxes by about $1.2 trillion over ten years. And CQ cryptically notes that it will 'cost the private sector billions of dollars annually.'

This imprecise report led me to go and find the CBO estimate. What do they mean by 'billions of dollars annually'?

CBO estimates that enacting S. 2191, as amended, would increase revenues by about $1.21 trillion over the 2009-2018 period, net of income and payroll tax offsets...

S. 2191 also would impose private-sector mandates as defined in UMRA. The most costly mandates would require certain types of private-sector entities to participate in the cap-and-trade programs for GHG emissions created by the bill. CBO estimates that the cost of those mandates would amount to more than $90 billion each year during the 2012-2016 period...

So $1.2 trillion in new taxes, and about $100 billion more a year in compliance costs borne by the private sector. Given that concerns about jobs and economic growth are now the overriding issue for the 2008 election, is it really smart for Democrats to push a measure that's likely to be a major job killer, and a drag on economic growth?

With the House of Representatives likely to vote today to kill the Colombia trade deal, it's worthwhile to look at what the deal would do for our trade with that nation. The U.S. Trade Representative sends the following data:

...Since 1991, Congress has given Colombian products almost complete duty-free access to the US market while US products going into the Colombian market place still face stiff tariffs. The Colombia agreement finally allows American workers to compete on a level playing field. Eighty percent of all tariffs on US goods will go to ZERO on day one of the agreement entering into force (the tariff on cars is 35%, furniture is 20%, high quality US beef is 80%, etc).

Since 1991, U.S. workers and businesses have paid over a BILLION in tariffs to sell their wares in the Colombian market. Colombian workers and businesses have paid close to zero to sell in the U.S. Every day we delay enactment of the Colombia FTA we hurt U.S. workers, farmers and entrepreneurs who will benefit from opening the Colombian market to U.S. exports in manufactured goods like tractors from Illinois, TVs from Pennsylvania, washers from Ohio and agricultural goods like beef, pears and rice – all the time while the U.S. market is almost totally open to theirs.

Is the Colombia deal a good one for U.S. workers and consumers? Listen to Democratic Representative Linda Sanchez of California, who opposes it because it is too effective in expanding markets for U.S. goods:

The safety of Colombian workers is too important to risk. We need to see results.

I am also concerned that the FTA will gut Colombia’s legitimate agricultural industry. Colombian farmers will be forced to compete with subsidized crops in the United States.

Here's a crazy idea: let the Colombian government worry about their agricultural sector. If you honestly believe the accord will significantly increase sales of U.S. exports -- as it clearly will -- then you ought to approve it as quickly as possible, not kill it.

Speaker Pelosi's arrogant and unilateral move is a stick in the eye of America's staunchest allies in the hemisphere. By demonstrating that America is willing to break its word even to its best friends, it empowers Hugo Chavez just when it seemed that his influence was on the wane in the region. It also takes away from future presidents one of their most important 'soft' foreign policy tools: improved trade relations with the U.S.

That's a lot of damage done in one quick stroke. And for what?

Speaker Pelosi won't admit it, but if the House backs her recommendation to indefinitely postpone the consideration of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, then the accord is dead for the foreseeable future. That's because the decision removes the single most important driver for support of trade agreements: the knowledge that a vote will take place by a specific date, no matter what.

Under the rules of Trade Promotion Authority, once the president submits an agreement to the House and Senate, it must receive an up-or-down vote within 90 days. No amendments are permitted, and neither are any delays. Speaker Pelosi is preparing to strip the timetable from the law, so it does not apply to the Colombia FTA. Even Pelosi cannot claim that this is consistent with House rules -- she says "it's sort of in-keeping with the rules of the House".

Pelosi claims that the reason she's indefinitely deferring a vote is that if it came up for a vote today, it would lose. But the fact is, the vast majority of Reps. commit their votes only when the schedule forces them to. Why should they anger labor or the business community unless forced to? Only when a vote is scheduled do most elected officials come off the fence.

By deferring the vote, Pelosi has taken away that urgency permanently. Once the Democratic leadership demonstrates a willingness to do the unprecedented -- and cancel a vote that was previously set in stone -- there's no reason for them not to do so again. Members of Congress will now be able tell advocates of the agreement that they're still considering both sides of the argument, and that it would be irresponsible to take a firm stand without knowing what the region may look like when the agreement is voted on.

Make no mistake: if the House ratifies Pelosi's decision -- as it likely will -- then this Colombia Free Trade Agreement is dead. This is an important victory for Hugo Chavez and America's enemies in Latin America, and a serious blow to our staunchest ally in that critical region -- and Mark Penn

There have long been rumblings that Senate Democrats no longer believe Robert Byrd (D-WV) capable of fulfilling his duties as Appropriations Committee chairman. There have been backroom whisperings that the time had come to push him aside and allow someone younger and more energetic to take the reins -- even if Byrd remained the nominal chairman of the committee. Now it seems that time has come:

The Senate Democrats met during their weekly leadership meeting that includes the elected party leadership, as well as a broader group of regional whips and officers. Byrd’s diminishing health was not the reason for the session, sources said, but came up during the Senators’ discussion about the upcoming debate over a $100 billion-plus supplemental spending bill on Iraq.

Byrd, 90, has been in and out of the hospital in recent weeks, and he missed a series of votes before the spring recess. Concerns have been mounting for some time about his ability to handle his appropriations duties, but so far, Senate leaders have been unwilling to take action.

One high-level Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Senators on Tuesday raised “serious concerns about his ability to handle his appropriations work, especially with the upcoming hearings on the supplemental.

“They are struggling to try to figure out how to deal with the situation.”

Officially, it's not yet been decided that Byrd will see his workload lightened, but it seems things have reached a tipping point. Options under discussion include relieving Byrd of his chairmanship, or naming him 'Chairman Emeritus' while another senior Democrat takes over the panel.

Roll Call reports that the Members of Congress who are deciding how to address the depressed housing market and economic slowdown are among those who've lost the most. And one of the contenders for the title of biggest loser is John Kerry:

Congress’ uber-rich had the most at stake. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), who married into the Heinz ketchup fortune, is near the top of Roll Call’s list, with as much as $2.9 million in potential banking stock losses. According to his 2007 disclosure form, Kerry owned at least $1 million apiece in insurer AIG, investment bank Morgan Stanley and mortgage issuer Washington Mutual, whose stock alone has lost 75 percent of its value during the past 15 months.

It's useful to remember that hundreds of Representatives have experienced losses direct and indirect as a result of the slowing economy. Few if any will recuse themselves from voting on legislation that may directly influence their net worth. And if you may have lacked faith in the wisdom of Congress to properly address the slump, check out this:

Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who works with many GOP Members on their financial disclosure statements, suggested during a conversation about potential pitfalls in disclosing financial information that it's not surprising that nearly 10 percent of lawmakers may be out millions of dollars because of the current credit collapse.

“Frankly ... these people are economically illiterate,” she said.

There's always been a wealth of evidence that Members of Congress don't understand the economy, but it's nice to have it confirmed by someone who handles their investments on a day-to-day basis. It explains a lot.

The FEC currently has just two out of its six board members because of a Senate dispute over the nomination of Hans Von Spakovsky. For months, Barack Obama had a hold on Von Spakovsky's nomination because of Democratic anger over his activities at the Department of Justice (although he has recently been vindicated). Now Obama has released the hold, but Democrats are holding out for a stand-alone vote on the nomination -- instead of the traditional bloc vote -- in order to defeat him. Without a quorum of the board, the FEC is unable to take any enforcement actions. As a result, it cannot implement the bundling rule that Barack Obama and the Democrats are so proud of:

Under last year's ethics and lobbying law revisions, campaign and political action committees affiliated with lawmakers should have completed their first quarter of tracking and identifying the lobbyists who raised large amounts of money by "bundling" smaller contributions.

But the new disclosure requirement cannot take effect without publication of final rules by the FEC, whose work ground to a halt late last year in a congressional showdown over the six-member commission's makeup...

Bundling allows lobbyists to increase their influence with politicians by collecting campaign checks from clients and lumping them with their own contributions. Under current rules, the name of the bundler, who is often a lobbyist, is not revealed.

Barack Obama and Russ Feingold derailed Von Spakovsky's nomination last year, placing a hold on him right before he was to be confirmed. Now that he has been cleared, will Obama call on his Democratic colleagues to allow the FEC to do its work? Or is Obama too beholden to lobbyist fundraisers to allow disclosure to go forward?

The Senate is considering a bipartisan housing bailout bill, loaded with tax breaks, that seems destined for easy passage. But it’s also guaranteed to meet stiff resistance in the House from fiscal hawks. The legislation aimed at helping ease the pain of the deflating housing market includes about $11 billion (over 10 years) in fiscal incentives. According to Congress Daily:

The Senate bill is heavily weighted toward tax breaks -- which are not offset with corresponding spending cuts -- that would cost approximately $11 billion over the next 10 years. The bill would allow property owners who do not itemize on returns to claim a deduction for their property taxes. That provision would cost $1.5 billion.

It also includes language that would allow businesses to write off recent losses incurred in 2008 and 2009 over a longer period of time so they could claim greater refunds. The change would extend the write-off from two years to four years, at a cost of $6 billion.

Senate Democrats originally wanted it to apply to five years as a special favor to the homebuilding industry, which has suffered massive losses in the downturn.

The measure would raise the cap on mortgage revenue bonds by $10 billion so housing finance agencies could refinance subprime loans, mortgages for first-time homebuyers and multifamily rental housing. The cost of that provision is $1.7 billion.

"I don’t see anyway that kind of package--not offset--passes the smell test in the House," a person following the issue closely for the housing industry told me. Early polling on the issue by Gallup released yesterday also reveals a mixed bag. The federal government taking steps to ensure people don’t lose their home is far from uncontroversial--56% of Americans say they support such a proposal, while 42% oppose. Not surprisingly, Democrats overwhelmingly support the idea, but 6 out of 10 Republicans oppose it, according to Gallup.

The dance of "Congress has to do something" in an election year bumping up against fiscal and philosophical constraints has begun.

In 1998, Congressman Jim McDermott (D-WA) -- a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee -- obtained and distributed to the media an illegally-obtained tape of a private conversation of Representative John Boehner (R-OH). After litigating the dispute for ten years, and losing each step of the way, McDermott is now being forced by a federal judge to pay Boehner some $1.6 million in damages and legal fees:

A federal judge in Washington has ordered Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott to pay more than $1 million in attorney’s fees awarded to Minority Leader John A. Boehner as part of a protracted lawsuit involving an illegally taped cell phone call.

U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Hogan ruled that McDermott, D-Wash., must pay $1,053,181, plus $520,761 in interest to Boehner, R-Ohio.

McDermott's reaction is priceless:

“While the amount of damages assessed in this case is significant, I submit that defending the First Amendment is beyond measure and worth every penny,” McDermott said in a statement, adding, “With the end of this case, another threat against the First Amendment has been met and turned back.”

I guess it's true that the First Amendment has been defended -- after all, the court said that private citizens cannot have their phones illegally tapped by other private citizens. It's wonderful that McDermott was willing to spend so much of his time and money to make that point.

Still, it's amazing that House Democrats have stood with McDermott in his attempts to prod the courts to authorize warrantless wiretaps by private citizens against other law-abiding private citizens, while they continue to refuse to authorize government wiretaps of terrorist communications.

Wiretapping for me, but not for thee (i.e. -- you, the American people).

And unfortunately for McDermott, he won't be able to rely on his old buddy Saddam to help with the bill on this one.

The headline is for emphasis; what the Democrats are really promising is to end all our efforts in Iraq -- including anti-terror efforts, training of Iraqi security forces, and anything else you can think of:

More than three dozen Democratic congressional candidates banded together yesterday to promise that, if elected, they will push for legislation calling for an immediate drawdown of troops in Iraq that would leave only a security force in place to guard the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad...

The starkest difference between the group's proposal, dubbed a "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq," and those embraced by many senior Democrats and the party's presidential candidates is that it rejects the idea of leaving U.S. troops on the ground to train Iraqi security forces or engage in anti-terrorism operations. The group instead calls for a dramatic increase in regional diplomacy and the deployment of international peacekeeping forces, if necessary.

While it is both novel and reckless to propose withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq, these Democrats share one critical element with the Democrats already elected to power in Washington -- they refuse to commit to a timetable. Nevertheless, the anti-war wingnut crowd should really believe them this time, since they pinky-swore it.

The document also seems to follow the Obama Doctrine on Iraq: we're getting out as fast as we can, regardless of conditions on the ground, and we reserve the right to get back in if we learn that al Qaeda is, in fact, operating in the country.

Last night came the news that Saddam Hussein's regime paid for a high-profile trip taken by three congressional Democrats to Baghdad in the fall of 2002. The visit, by Democratic Representatives David Bonior, Jim Thompson, and Jim McDermott, was brokered by Muthanna al Hanooti, a Michigan resident with close ties to the Iraqi regime. Hanooti is being prosecuted for spying on behalf of Saddam's regime.

Reacting to the latest news, Mike DeCesare, a spokesman for Jim McDermott, one of the three congressmen, said his boss wasn't aware that the money came from Saddam Hussein's regime when he accepted it. He told me the same thing in 2004, when I asked him about the $5,000 McDermott had accepted for his legal defense fund from Shakir al Khafaji, one of Saddam Hussein's biggest U.S. boosters before the war. Khafaji, who accompanied the congressmen and made the arrangements for their visit, had run "expatriate" conferences in Baghdad for Saddam as recently as 2000. He also provided $400,000 to former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter for Ritter's propaganda film on behalf of the former Iraqi regime. In an interview back in 2001, Ritter told me that Khafaji was "openly sympathetic" with Saddam Hussein.

All of this was public record -- available to the lawmakers with a Google or Nexis search. But they went anyway. Reacting to the news yesterday, Jim Thompson pleaded ignorance.

"Obviously, had there been any question at all regarding the sponsor of the trip or the funding, I would not have participated."

Thompson and McDermott would have us believe that they visited a sworn enemy of the United States -- one who had tried to assassinate a former president and declared that the "Mother of all Battles" had never ended -- without doing even the most basic research about who was funding their trip? That's hard to believe. And Bonior, who was from Michigan and had taken money from al Khafaji before, had no idea that he was backed by Saddam Hussein? When I spent a week reporting in Michigan for a story on Iraqi exiles, virtually every Iraqi I spoke to told me about al Khafaji and his dirty money. Is is possible that nobody ever mentioned this to Bonior, who recently chaired John Edwards' presidential campaign, before he traveled to Iraq with al Khafaji? Again, hard to believe.

In any case, they knew well that they would be used as propaganda tools before they left. This is how we put it in a piece on the trip back in October 2002:

EVEN BEFORE the Baghdad boys left Iraq, media outlets throughout the Middle East gleefully highlighted divisions in the U.S. government and the travels by the "antiwar" congressmen. The Iraq Daily, for example, published by Saddam's Ministry of Information, printed daily updates of the trip and posted them in English on their website.

For example, a September 30 report says, "the members of the U.S. Congress delegation has underlined that this visit aims to get acquainted with the truth of Iraq's people sufferings due to ongoing embargo which caused shortage in food and medicine for all Iraqi people." (That article appeared next to a report on Saddam's continuing financial support for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers or, to use the paper's formulation, "intrepid Palestinian uprising martyrs." Also in that issue is an article by American white supremacist Matthew Hale, "Truth About 9-11: How Jewish Manipulation Killed Thousands.")...

So how does it feel to be used as a propaganda tool against your own country? McDermott, who was asked that question by CNN's Jane Arraf when he was still in Baghdad, said it feels fine. "If being used means that we're highlighting the suffering of Iraqi children, or any children, then, yes, we don't mind being used."

Once again? "We don't mind being used."

In travel news today, AP reports:

Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly financed a trip to Iraq for three U.S. lawmakers during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The three anti-war Democrats made the trip in October 2002, while the Bush administration was trying to persuade Congress to authorize military action against Iraq. While traveling, they called for a diplomatic solution.

You remember seeing the Representatives--Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan, and Mike Thompson of California--glowering at the news camera every night as they implored America to let Saddam provide a training ground for terrorists and torture his people in peace. Normally I’d say it’s a good thing they weren’t doing this on the taxpayers’ dime, but in this case the phrase "rock and a hard place" comes to mind.

Their little junket reminded me Ted Kennedy’s outreach program to the Soviet Union in 1983. As reported by the CNS News service, "Kennedy offered to assist Soviet leaders in formulating a public relations strategy to counter President Reagan's foreign policy and to complicate his re-election efforts." Whether he took a fee for his consulting work is unknown.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but here are four guys who, as members of Congress, actively worked against America’s best interests during dicey times. I’m loathe to use a loaded word like “traitors” but at the very least, they’re ungrateful louts with no concept of shame.

Sleeping with the enemy under the guise of loving your country: the p.r. strategy favored by Democrats 4-1.

Roll Call reports that the House Appropriations Committee had its website crashed yesterday by a flood of requests for earmarks. As a result of the problem, they've been forced to extend the deadline to give Members more time to submit requests:

In a sure sign that earmarks remain as popular as ever, an overload of pork requests clogged the House Appropriations Committee’s Web site Wednesday, forcing an extension to the request deadline to next week.

The committee extended its deadline for earmark requests until 11:59 p.m. on March 24 after a “massive influx of requests” caused “unavoidable access and processing delays,” wrote Rob Nabors, staff director for the committee, in a memo to Member offices.

And thus the Democrats act to dramatically reduce the number and scope of earmarks.

The left is happy today. For months they've been pushing House Democrats to force a reauthorization of FISA that fails to protect American telecommunication companies for their good-faith cooperation with America's intelligence agencies--and which was doomed to be vetoed by the president. Instead, the House has done them one better: They've passed a bill--by a party-line vote--that's not even going to pass the Senate:

But the bill appeared destined for oblivion. The Senate likely will not accept any of the major House changes to the version it passed Feb. 12, and Bush has vowed to veto the legislation if it should reach his desk.

Debate broke along predictable party lines, with Democrats contending the measure would grant the intelligence community all the authority it needs to spy on foreign terrorism suspects while protecting civil liberties of Americans.

By taking weeks to pass a bill with no chance of enactment, the House is intentionally wasting time in the effort to get a reauthorization of the program signed into law. Why do they want to prolong the period of time that our nation's terrorist surveillance program is weakened? And if they are serious about this law, then why would they drag out the debate with pointless actions such as the one the House took today--particularly when Congress is beginning a two-week recess?

This is a clip from Speaker Pelosi's recent press availability. She was asked about the House Democrats' decision to hold open a recent floor vote to change its outcome:

Pelosi seems to be arguing that, in her view, it's OK to hold a floor vote open to change the outcome, as long as you don't hold it open for an egregious amount of time. How long is that? Apparently 10 minutes is OK, but 3 hours is not. If they do this a few more times, we may be able to figure out the cutoff point.

Earlier this afternoon, Democrats broke Senate rules in order to defeat the Kyl amendment, which would have set the top death tax rate at 35 percent with a $5 million exemption. Under current law, the death tax will jump from zero in 2010 to a top rate of 55 percent with a $1 million exemption in 2011.

You can watch the Democrats' shenanigans unfold here. About four minutes after the vote was scheduled to end, the measure was winning 50 to 48, and Sen. Tester announced: "Time has expired. The clerk will tally the vote."

Then senators Dodd and Biden come in to defeat the measure 50 to 50--Cheney was not in the Senate to break the tie.

A GOP aide told me that Republicans may ask Cheney to come to the Senate tonight if they can bring the amendment up for another vote. But the aide doubted the measure would pass because Mary Landrieu--a Louisiana Democrat up for reelection this year--changed her vote from "nay" to "yea" only after learning that Dodd and Biden were on their way to defeat the bill.

Yet even if the amendment didn't pass, Cheney's presence could force Landrieu to officially flip-flop on the same vote on the same day.

Congressional Democrats are so committed to cleaning up Congress, they'll even break House rules to do it:

But Republicans, and some Democrats, charged that Pelosi and the Democratic leadership "stole" the vote on the parliamentary procedure, technically known as "ordering the previous question." In response to GOP manipulation of votes during their years of control, Pelosi promised at the beginning of the 110th Congress that floor votes would last only 15 minutes, and that "no vote shall be held open to manipulate the outcome."

Pelosi, however, appeared to go back on that promise during the "previous question" vote, which was open for for a total of 31 minutes before it was gaveled closed. Republicans stood on the floor during the dramatic 16-minute period following the official end of the vote, clapping and cheering, occassionally breaking into chants of "Rules of the House!"

Read the whole article. According to the Politico, the House will soon have its own "independent" six-member office of Congressional Ethics, which is not expected to do anything this year. That's too bad. If House leaders really want to deliver on ethics promises, maybe they could charge the office with reviewing the propriety of the vote that created it.

Via Instapundit and Freedom Project

Over the last year or so, I've chronicled the attempt of Congressional Democrats to have it both ways on Iraq. They've consistently promised their base that they'll do everything in their power to end the war (except de-fund it), and they've told the general populace that they'll never cut off money for the troops. It looks like we're about to see another act in the long-running farce. Or perhaps the willingness of Senate Democrats to proudly advertise the fact that they're fully-funding the war means that this fight really is over.

The accompanying graphic is from the powerpoint summary of the budget resolution prepared by Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND). It was delivered on the floor this morning.

Things can sure change quickly in Washington!

It seems just a few weeks ago that Democrats were again talking about attempting to force a withdrawal from Iraq. That was odd, since they had recently funded the war. It's even more surprising when you consider that the Democratic budget plan for 2009 matches President Bush's request for war funding, before even being confronted on the subject:

Here's what the Senate Democratic budget has to say on war funding:

The Chairman’s Mark matches the President’s core defense budget and the President’s request for additional war costs. While the war funding request in the President’s budget is insufficient for a full year’s costs under his policy of a long-term commitment in Iraq, the Chairman’s Mark’s war funding will cover expenses for about the first six months of the next administration, and longer still under the policies preferred by most Democrats in Congress.

The reference to 'longer still under the policies preferred by most Democrats' clearly signals that the money will last longer if it's spent on redeploying from Iraq. However, the fact remains that Democrats are planning to provide the funds, regardless.

It's stunning how completely and convincingly Congressional Democrats switch between bluster about forcing a withdrawal and full-funding for the mission. All it takes is a change in audience for leaders in Congress to change their tone.

After World War II, Congress passed what I consider to be one of the most important pieces of legislation in U.S. history, the GI Bill. The bill, which provided college benefits for troops returning from the war, quite literally built the American middle class.

Today the GI Bill is still alive (though not so well). The legislation hasn't been significantly modified or adjusted in years, failing to match the ever rising costs of state college tuitions and falling well short of the cost of most private institutions. And that's to say nothing of the sky-high price of textbooks, increases in cost of living, health care, etc. Though Congress incrementally increases the monthly payout annually, the most a veteran can receive is a measly $1,100 dollars a month in tuition assistance.

Fortunately, there's been a growing movement in both Congress and the national media to completely overhaul the GI Bill. Senator Jim Webb (D, VA) has led the charge, and is currently enjoying bipartisan support for the initiative (though an early version failed to pass last year). Here are some of the specifics:

Under the updated bill introduced today, service members returning from Iraq or Afghanistan could earn up to 36 months of benefits, equivalent to four academic years. Covered benefits would include the established charges of their program, up to the cost of the most expensive in-state public school; a monthly stipend equivalent to housing costs in their area; and a small stipend per semester for books.

In an effort to reduce the cost of private institutions, Senators Webb and Warner worked collaboratively to include incentives for private schools to further offset the tuition costs above what the benefit provides. A new program would be created in which the government will agree to match, dollar for dollar, any voluntary additional contributions to veterans from these institutions.

This makes an awful lot of sense. If we're serious about initiatives to increase the size of the Army and Marines, and are equally serious about preserving the all-volunteer force, better incentives are needed to attract the right candidates for military service. The Pentagon is concerned that a plush benefits package will affect retention rates (the brass doesn't want too many GIs leaving after their initial service commitment), but as noted ad nauseam here at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, the Pentagon needs to look inward on retention, not outward.

The government shows up at your office just days after the 9/11 attack and asks for your help in the war on terror. What are you going to do? According to Glenn Greenwald, you should call a lawyer (isn't that always what the lawyers say). But telecom executives did the only thing they could do--assist the government in whatever way possible. I doubt any of them even had a moment of doubt in complying with the government's request--worst case, the NSA captures a call from some innocent, naturalized American talking to his al Qaeda-affiliated cousin in Paktia, not exactly an ethical minefield.

But the industry now faces as much as $7.243 trillion in liability, as practically every telephone customer in North America is to be considered a victim of this dastardly operation. After months of demagoguing the issue, the Dems in Congress are finally going to cave and grant the firms immunity from lawsuits that are not only frivolous, but a threat to national security.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald, who's devoted the last three months of his life to this issue, is despondent:

There's very little point anymore in writing about how the Congressional Democratic leadership is complicit in all of the worst Bush abuses, or about how craven they are. All of that is far too documented and established at this point to be worth spending any time discussing. They were never going to take a stand against warrantless eavesdropping or the destruction of the rule of law via telecom amnesty for one simple reason: many of them don't actually oppose those things, and many who claim to oppose them don't actually care about any of it. That's all a given.

But what is somewhat baffling in all of this is just how politically stupid and self-destructive their behavior is. If the plan all along was to give Bush everything he wanted, as it obviously was, why not just do it at the beginning? Instead, they picked a very dramatic fight that received substantial media attention. They exposed their freshmen and other swing-district members to attack ads. They caused their base and their allies to spend substantial energy and resources defending them from these attacks.

And to think of all the other things Glenn Greenwald could have not achieved over the last few months were his energy and resources devoted to other hopeless crusades!

The House of Representatives is likely to vote next week on a FISA extension, but not the bipartisan bill which passed the Senate by a wide margin:

“We don’t have agreement but ... I am very hopeful that we will have legislation on the floor next week, “ House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer , D-Md., said on the floor Thursday in a colloquy with Minority Whip Roy Blunt , R-Mo...

The Senate version, which the White House helped to draft, would grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have been sued for their alleged cooperation with the administration’s warrantless surveillance activities after Sept. 11, 2001. The House measure includes no such liability shield.

Liberals in the House are unwilling to extend liability protection to telecommunications companies that facilitated surveillance on suspected terrorists operating abroad. Quin Hillyer looks at the lawsuits that House Democrats are insisting go forward:

Moreover, the suit defines the class of aggrieved citizens as “all individuals” who were customers of the phone company “at any time after September 2001” that the program was in effect. In this one suit, that class is identified as consisting of 24.6 million people. How all 24.6 million Americans could possibly be harmed by this program aimed at suspected foreign terrorists is a question perhaps best answered in the Twilight Zone...

Do the math: The total potential payout by AT&T for the first two categories of alleged violations is $49.2 billion. Meanwhile, at $100 per day for each day of the four years at issue after 9/11, the total potential liability for each of the two latter counts is $3 trillion, 591 billion.

That number times 2, plus the $49.2 billion, comes out to a potential grand liability of $7.243 trillion. That is half of the entire national economy! And that’s even before “punitive damages” are taken into account.

Don't worry, though. Speaker Pelosi is 100 percent certain that there's no national security risk for allowing FISA to lapse, or leaving telecom companies on the hook for cooperating.

Feel better now?

Ron Paul's presidential campaign exceeded expectations--at least in the fundraising department. Now he's using his cash and donor lists to elect other Republicans who back a withdrawal from Iraq:

Murray Sabrin, a New Jersey Senate candidate who has been endorsed by Paul, is expecting a “moneybomb” from his own backers and Paul’s this Friday. Sabrin has raised $194,260 since launching his campaign last month, according to a calculator on his Web site...

Republican Rep. Walter B. Jones , a fellow Iraq war critic who faces a tough primary challenge in North Carolina coastal 3rd District, has rented access to Paul’s list of donors in the state...

Paul’s presidential spokesman said the campaign is still in the process of figuring out how best to make full use of its massive list of campaign donors.

“A likely use would be to help candidates for office who are running on a constitutionalist platform,” Jesse Benton said. “It will go to a good use.”

I wrote about Walter Jones here. Sabrin, an underdog in the New Jersey Senate race, has called the Iraq war a 'fiasco,' and warns darkly that George Bush may do something to check Iran's nuclear ambitions.

When Texas Republicans decide on Tuesday whether they want Ron Paul representing them in Congress, they ought to consider how he will use the platform they give him.

I covered yesterday the reluctance of Senate Democrats to begin debate on an Iraq withdrawal resolution. The irony of the situation is that the withdrawal bill is cosponsored by Majority Leader Harry Reid, who promised last year to bring it up. Democrats became even more angry when Senate Republicans voted to allow the Senate to debate the Feingold withdrawal bill. It led to a bizarre floor appearance by Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, complaining that Republicans -- by not shutting down the debate -- were forcing the Senate to waste valuable time. The Politico says:

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) accused Republicans of “obstruction,” even though the GOP had just voted to allow debate instead of blocking the Iraq bill. Twenty Democrats voted against taking up the Iraq bill.

“The real reason is they’re scared to death of the housing bill,” Durbin said...

Right. The terrifying housing bill. It's unclear at this time whether Durbin was aware that it was the Democratic leadership which called up the bill and forced a debate.

The Politico also captures some fascinating statements from Democrats and Republicans about the debate, which will likely continue through Thursday, at least:

“Our view is that there’s been so much improvement in the situation in Iraq, ... we’re happy to talk about the improvements,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “We welcome that debate...”

“The truth of the matter is, the surge completed the military effort, but the question is how do we get to a political settlement?” said Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “That’s really where the debate should be...”

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) who has made several trips to Iraq and is considered one of the Democrats’ top voices on military strategy, said he admired Feingold’s efforts but believes a 120-day troop withdrawal mandate “is just too restrictive.”

And Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) admitted the Democrats were gaining no ground by debating a doomed Iraq troop withdrawal measure that was so similar to previously unsuccessful proposals...

So Republicans welcome the invitation of the Democratic leadership to debate improvements in Iraq, while Democrats cite a variety of reasons that the bill cosponsored by Reid and called up by him doesn't make much sense. Do you wonder why people give Congress such poor ratings?

As regular readers know, the Senate has passed an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by a bipartisan vote of 68-29. The legislation is critical to ensuring that our intelligence agencies can listen to foreign terrorists abroad as they communicate with other foreign terrorists abroad, and without having to resort to a court order. The practical effect of the expiration of FISA surveillance authority?

The House's lack of action meant that at midnight on Feb. 16, the nation's terrorist surveillance law expired. At that moment, intelligence officials who spend their days listening in on phone calls between terrorists overseas were legally barred from following new leads without first following outdated and cumbersome warrant procedures — even if neither caller is calling from within the U.S.

The consequences of inaction are real. Today, if someone in a previously unknown terror cell calls an eager new recruit in London, our agents will have to hang up the phone, apply for a warrant and hope for the best.

Considering that there is a bipartisan majority in the House in support of the measure, one might have expected a vote of support when House Republicans attempted to force a vote on the Senate bill today. One would be wrong, as the House Democratic leadership whipped its Members into line to block a vote.

So to sum it up: the Democratic leadership threw its weight around to block a bipartisan majority from getting a vote on a bill they supported to allow surveillance of foreign terrorists.

Who says Democrats aren't credible on national security?

The Senate is preparing to begin a debate on several Democratic proposals to force a withdrawal from Iraq, but in contrast to last year -- when Democrats were eager to vote on Iraq over and over -- there is little enthusiasm for a fight:

Democrats privately said Reid was not enthusiastic about resuming the debate on Iraq at this point — he had hoped to put that fight off until the supplemental spending measure comes up later this spring. But Reid, who has become increasingly outspoken against the war, agreed to allow the votes in part because GOP opposition would likely defeat them, limiting the amount of time the Senate would debate the issue...

Republican Senators are aiming to put Democrats in the uncomfortable position of having to cast votes on a measure that links war funding to a scaling down of operations in Iraq. The proposal mirrors similar legislation that failed last year.

As one Republican aide put it: “It’s not as great a vote for them as it once was.”...

“This provides us with an opportunity to talk about the political progress and military progress we’ve seen in Iraq and [allow for a] demonstration of the remarkable split within the Democrat Congress,” said a Republican leadership aide.

Just a year ago, Congressional Democrats couldn't schedule enough votes on Iraq. They wanted to take every opportunity they could to tie Republicans to the president's policy. Now suddenly, they're shying away from a debate that splits their conference. The reason, of course, is the success of the surge -- which has taken away the salience of Iraq as an issue. Voters don't want to see Congress waste its time on Iraq when there are many more pressing issues that need attention.

What does this mean for the general election? Well, if Democrats seek to make Iraq a central point of debate, they better be prepared for Republicans to use it against them. Voters are unlikely to reward politicians for wasting time on the past.

Ray Robison has an excellent piece on the media's disinterest in a major case of conflict of interest centering on Nancy Pelosi. Specifically, she has interceded on behalf of pharmaceutical company Amgen in an attempt to encourage expanded government purchasing of an HIV drug. Without her intervention, a change in Medicare rules was set to dramatically reduce the use of the same drug -- so her intervention meant the difference between a falling stock price and a rising stock price for Amgen. At the same time, she owns $500,000 worth of stock in Amgen, and the company employs two former senior staffers as lobbyists.

It's central to House ethics rules that a Member of Congress may not use his or her official position for personal gain. Ms. Pelosi was aware of her stake in the company. Rather than intercede on their behalf, it would have been more appropriate to divest her stake in the company. Instead, she used her office to push a policy that would fatten her wallet.

At the core, this is what the Keating 5 scandal was about: politicians using their official positions to change government policy to protect a personal interest. The elected officials involved are still tarnished for having been associated with it, and the matter is sure to be brought up again this year as Senator McCain seeks the White House. Will Pelosi be risisng to his defense?

It sometimes seems that Harry Reid's mouth runs far ahead of his brain:

“There are more jobs to be created in the green field than in the old standard fields,” said Reid, adding that the coal industry passes out fliers wherever he goes pointing out the senator’s opposition to coal and accusing him of wanting to raise utility rates. “But actually, it’s just the opposite.”

He accused the coal industry of using “the old Hitler lie — when you say things long enough people start believing them.”

The U.S. gets more than 50 percent of its electricity from coal. More than 100,000 Americans make a living mining the stuff. In what way are they like Hitler? And on a related note, why do Democrats even bother to claim that they oppose the divisiveness of American politics when they paint political adversaries in this way. Has Harry Reid ever compared al Qaeda to Hitler?

House Democrats had a busy day yesterday: they voted to hold in contempt two administration officials, and allowed the expiration of legislation authorizing terrorist surveillance. It was clear from the start of the day that there would be major fireworks, and bitter partisan warfare.

So was it really such a good move by Democratic leaders to start a fight in the middle of the memorial service for the late Tom Lantos?

Republicans said they thought they had an agreement with the Democratic leadership not to start regular House business until after the Lantos service ended. Instead, the service was still in progress when the House came into session.

Knowing that the first order of business would be the rule (H Res 982) on the contempt citation, Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart , R-Fla., a GOP member of the Rules Committee, raced back to the chamber, followed his party’s plan and moved to adjourn...

Once the debate began, Diaz-Balart explained what had happened and why he left the service to call the vote.

“It was most disturbing that the bells rang. The House was going back into session,’’ he said. “I’m very, very sorry that the day had to begin in that ultimately unfortunate fashion...”

Hoyer tried to soothe the bad feelings. “I regret the actions that precipitated this have occurred,’’ he said...

There seems to be very little on which Democrats and Republican in Congress agree, but one point of agreement was that a legislator with such a distinguished career of service warranted a proper memorial. But they couldn't even get that right. One wonders just how low a Congressional approval rating can go.

The Hill reports that the leading recipients of pork-barrel projects under the new Democratic leadership in Congress are freshmen Democrats in swing districts:

A new study of December’s omnibus spending package shows that the party in power has resisted pressure to abandon earmarking, at least to the extent of handing lawmakers in tough districts plenty of pet projects they can boast about to voters...

Freshman Reps. Nick Lampson (D-Texas) and Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.), two of the Republicans’ top political targets this year, were among the biggest beneficiaries. Lampson collected $15.2 million in earmarks by himself. Including projects he shared with colleagues, Lampson grabbed $42 million.

Boyda secured for herself an astonishing $20.7 million worth of projects. She shared another $17 million worth of projects with colleagues.

Senate Democratic leaders also doled out political protection money. Sen. Mary Landrieu (La.), the chamber’s most vulnerable Democratic incumbent, shared $469.7 million worth of projects with colleagues...

Not to belabor the point, but Democrats will actually be forced to defend the general practice of earmarking when they campaign against Senator McCain. Articles like this will not help.

As the Democratic presidential race careens towards what may be an ugly finish, liberals are increasingly outraged that superdelegates could frustrate the will of a majority of Democratic primary voters. To this I say: what's the big deal? Liberals in the House of Representatives are doing it right now.

Here's the FISA state of play: the Senate yesterday soundly rejected an amendment by Chris Dodd to deny telecom companies legal protections for their good-faith cooperation with terrorist surveillance. Dodd and other liberals apparently want future requests to the telecom companies to sound like this: "Hi, I'm with the CIA and we want you to listen in on Osama bin Laden's phone calls. It's an urgent matter of national security, and you better have plenty to spend on lawyers because you'll get sued out the wazoo."

The Senate rejected this approach 67-31, then passed the surveillance bill 68-29.

This should effectively end the debate over whether to extend protection to these companies. That's because 21 'Blue Dog' House Democrats have written to Speaker Pelosi and told her that they support the Senate bill, and want to see it brought to the House floor promptly for a vote:

The Rockefeller-Bond FISA legislation contains satisfactory language addressing all these issues, and we would fully support that measure should it reach the House floor without substantial change. We believe these components will ensure a strong national security apparatus that can thwart terrorism across the globe and save American lives here in our country.

Combined with the 198 Republicans who support this approach, there is a clear majority in favor of telecom immunity, and of the Senate bill more generally. For those committed to majority rule, there's no more need for discussion, right? The bill ought to come to the House floor, be approved, and sent to the president.

But that's not what House Democrats are doing. This afternoon they're muscling through a 21-day extension of FISA, which they hope will give them breathing room to twist arms. Then they might pass a bill that takes the teeth out of terrorist surveillance, and which the president would veto.

Why are Democrats throwing out the principle of majority rule just to wind up back where they started? Because that's what MoveOn.org and their liberal base demands -- regardless of how futile the effort is. And if you don't intend to make laws that reflect the will of the majority, why select a presidential nominee that way either?

The Democratic party did lots of things differently in 2006 to help them win a majority in the House of Representatives. Among those changes was the decision to run Iraq war veterans in a number of competitive races. Most of them lost, and among the few who did win, it doesn't seem as if their veteran status made a big difference. Nevertheless, they attracted a great deal of attention and helped Democrats change the view of voters about their party.

This year, it seems that the majority of Iraq veterans running for Congress will be Republicans. And they're working together to attract attention to their efforts. Last week I had the chance to meet with Kieran Michael Lalor, a former Marine Corps infantryman in Iraq, who's running for New York's 19th Congressional district (against an incumbent who professes moderation while being feted by George Soros).

Lalor is a bright, hard-working, and energetic candidate, who is proud to call himself a Reagan Republican. He seems likely to face a contested primary for the Republican nomination, but will undoubtedly earn a following as the campaign develops.

Beyond that, Lalor is also working to coordinate the efforts of Republican veterans of the Iraq war running campaigns in New York, Indiana, Florida, North Carolina, California, Ohio, and several other states. They include Eric Egland, who's a strong candidate in California's 4th Congressional district. Take a look at the list, and see if one of these American heroes may be running in your district.

With the passing of the Greatest Generation, the number of military veterans in Congress has been falling. The 2008 election may mark a turning point in that trend, and none too soon given the at times appalling lack of seriousness with which Congress deals with matters of national security.

The AP reported that Rep. Tom Lantos from California died this morning at age 80. Lantos "twice escaped from a Nazi-run forced labor camp in Hungary and became the only Holocaust survivor to win a seat in Congress."

Lantos became chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in January 2007, and "disclosed last month that he had been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. He said at the time that he would serve out his 14th term but would not seek re-election." The San Francisco Chronicle then quoted Lantos as saying, "It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress...I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."

With his death, public officals like Senator Lieberman are praising Lantos: "Tom Lantos was deeply dedicated to the promotion of freedom and human rights because he intimately knew the horror of tyranny. Congressman Lantos was an effective and tireless ally of all those throughout the world who were struggling to achieve liberty and justice. The heroic life of Tom Lantos is an inspiration to all of us who must rededicate ourselves to continue his profound and lasting legacy."

Time's Swampland blog has more on Lantos's inspiring life story.

Yesterday House Republicans forced a vote on their proposed earmark moratorium, which Speaker Pelosi had declined to implement. The measure was defeated, but the depth of support for it was stunning.

There have been many earmark votes in the House and Senate in recent years -- on proposed amendments by people like Jeff Flake and Tom Coburn. They've regularly been defeated by overwhelming margins. Congressional leaders of both parties have frequently downplayed the importance of earmarks and described the issue as a red herring. Despite the track record, the moratorium got the votes of all House Republicans and 7 House Democrats. It was defeated by a margin of 204-196 -- so it got about 200 more votes than you should have expected.

House Republicans see this as an issue whose time has come, and one which can help them restore their brand on fiscal responsibility. With John McCain as the near-certain nominee, they will for the first time have a top-of-the-ticket candidate who brings credibility on the issue. Democrats meanwhile, are still living in the past:

"For the Republican Party leadership to belatedly give us lectures on earmarks is, in my view, akin to reformed alcoholics giving lectures on temperance," said Rep. David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. "The previous Republican leadership was notorious for using earmarks as enticements in order to get their membership to vote for bills that individuals may otherwise not be inclined to vote for."

Earmarking and pork-barrel projects are unlikely to be the top issue of 2008, but it will give Republicans an advantage on reform and on fiscal issues -- which will be important.

When Republicans controlled Congress, the opposition Democrats regularly zinged them for failing to attend to their most basic duties: funding the federal government. When appropriations bills were late in enactment, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and others argued that it was because of some combination of laziness, sloppiness, political games, and apathy about the requirements of the job.

How to explain the conscious decision by Democrats to follow the same course?

The occasion for this observation is the fresh warning from the Department of Defense that our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are endangered by the refusal of Congress to provide needed funding for the war:

Pentagon leaders, who have grown increasingly impatient with Congress's slow action on war funding, warned that they need $16.8 billion in the still-pending request to pay soldiers past June. Wartime operations accounts will run dry by July, they said.

In addition, $43.6 billion requested for new equipment -- including $2.2 billion for 300,000 new sets of body armor -- is tied to congressional approval of the remaining FY08 war request, according to Pentagon officials who briefed reporters on the defense budget Monday.

"Delay degrades our ability to operate and sustain the force at home and in theater and makes it difficult to manage this department in a way that is fiscally sound," Gates said.

Of the $189.3 billion requested for Iraq and Afghanistan for FY08, Congress has approved $86.8 billion, including $16.8 billion for mine-resistant vehicles.

My colleague Mike Goldfarb commented yesterday that it's a mistake to assume that a Democratic president will follow the same course as a Republican president in Iraq. That's obviously true. Even as there is a broad national consensus that we have turned the corner in Iraq and are headed in the right direction, Democratic leaders refuse to fund the war in Iraq past the next few months.

And is this an aberration? Not remotely. Democrats may be refusing to fund the war because they don't like it, but Harry Reid is simultaneously declaring his refusal fund the rest of the government because of politics:

“The president really had us over a barrel last year on the appropriations bills because we did not want another continuing resolution,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said. “But he doesn’t have us over a barrel this year, because either . . . Clinton or Obama will be the president in less than a year — and if we have to deal with a CR [continuing resolution] next year, we’ll deal with it.”

Is there anything that Harry Reid doesn't want to defer until there's a president he agrees with?

No surprise, really:

Several news stories have pointed out that much of CREW’s [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington] funding comes from liberal groups and big donors to Democratic candidates and causes. And all but a handful of its complaints against Members of Congress have targeted Republicans.

But in some cases, there appear to be deeper links between the agenda of the donor and CREW’s attacks. In February 2006, CREW asked the Senate Finance Committee to investigate the Center for Union Facts, an anti-union group, and its sister organization, the Center for Consumer Freedom, which CREW claimed are “front organizations for for-profit industry entities.”

The complaint noted that the Center for Union Facts Web site had “negative information about unions,” including the Service Employees International Union. Later that year, CREW launched a Freedom of Information Act request, followed by a lawsuit, to get the Department of Labor to hand over documents regarding the department’s contacts with the founder of the two centers.

On Sept. 1, 2006, CREW received $75,000 from the SEIU, according to documents that the union filed with the Department of Labor.

CREW has also received hundreds of thousands from ARCA, an organization which favors reopening trade with Cuba, and has filed ethics complaints against individuals and companies which favor the current policy. The Executive Director of ARCA has served on the board of CREW, and is now running for Congress as a Democrat. (CREW has attacked her opponent.)

CREW has been supported by the Gill Foundation, which supports expanded rights for gays and lesbians, and filed an unfounded ethics complaint against Representative Marilyn Musgrave immediately before her 2004 election. Ms. Musgrave is the sponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would circumscribe gay marriage rights. CREW later filed complaints against Ms. Musgrave with the FEC; those complaints were subsequently dismissed.

Of course, none of this proves that CREW is just a well-funded schill for Democratic politicians, but it sure looks that way.

Do Congressional Democrats believe this is the only thing they were elected for?

Liberal Democratic lawmakers will push House leaders to return the Iraq War to center stage as early as next week.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), who co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said late Tuesday she is preparing to reintroduce legislation calling for a troop withdrawal from Iraq and will urge leadership to move the measure in the wake of the economic stimulus package that has been the center of attention for several weeks...

“I don’t think it throws it [the agenda] off track,” the [Democratic leadership] aide said, and later added: “Nothing’s been absolutely decided yet.”

House and Senate lawmakers had not been expected to turn their attention back to Iraq until at least March — the fifth anniversary of the war is March 19 — and possibly into the summer months, when another supplemental spending request is expected from the White House.

Congress still needs to complete the funding for the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2008. The wise political strategy would be to avoid flaunting their ineffectiveness in opposing the war on terror. They have repeatedly caved and provided funding, and they will do so again. So why not quietly pass the measure? Instead, it seems that Democrats will once more raise the hopes of their antiwar base, only to cave.

This looks more and more like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, with Pelosi and Reid in the Lucy role.

Congressional Democrats remain unable to bring themselves to authorize intercepts of phone calls by terrorists into the United States. Instead, Congress has cleared legislation to extend such surveillance by just 15 days -- hoping that they can come to agreement on a long-term fix in that time. The only problem is that such a fix has eluded them for months.

The House on Tuesday passed a 15-day extension (HR 5104) of the temporary surveillance law (PL 110-55) by voice vote, with the goal of giving lawmakers in both chambers more time to work on a more comprehensive overhaul. The Senate cleared it by voice vote.

The extension would keep the current law in force until Feb. 16, the day before lawmakers are scheduled to begin their Presidents Day recess.

Bush is expected to sign the bill, after vowing to veto earlier Democratic proposals to enact a 30-day extension.

Do Democrats imagine that national security will not be an important issue in this year's presidential campaign?

There's been a lot of discussion about the effort of House Republicans to promote a one-year earmark moratorium, and of the president to force Congress to limit them. How seriously should we take this? Well, the lobbyists are scared:

After a year of grappling with new transparency standards and efforts by the House Democratic majority to chop earmarks in half, lobbyists returning to work are facing a fresh set of challenges, including Members who purposely are shifting their appropriation deadlines forward to decrease the number of requests...

One appropriations lobbyist described the situation as “pretty close” to a crisis for the industry. “There’s so much uncertainty across the board. Last year was tough, and the threat still continues...”

Another appropriations lobbyist, speaking on background, said leaner times could prove healthy for the business long term. “We were due for a shakeout,” this lobbyist said. “Lobbying has been growing tremendously in the past several years, with anyone thinking they could leave the Hill to put out a shingle. It’ll shake out and we’ll see who survives.”

Every once in a while you need to thin the herd, apparently.

Also worth reading is this post from Andrew Roth -- a list of all the Members who have gone cold-turkey on earmarks.

While the president last night touted the agreement among the White House and House leaders (both Republican and Democrat) on the framework of a stimulus package to be enacted quickly, it looks like the agreement may be delayed. That's because Senate Democrats are developing their own version:

Baucus’ $156 billion proposal would extend unemployment insurance for 13 more weeks beyond the usual 26 weeks. Workers in states with unemployment rates above 6 percent would receive an extra 13 weeks of benefits, for a total of up to 52 weeks...

Baucus’ plan would expand proposed payments to senior citizens, who would qualify based on their Social Security income. Some might not qualify under the House plan because they did not work in 2007 or did not pay income taxes...

Senators have suggested potential changes, including more-generous food-stamp payments, money for road resurfacing, energy tax breaks, low-income heating assistance and aid to states.

There seems ample room to improve the 'consensus' stimulus package that the House is preparing to pass. But it's not clear that the Baucus/Senate Democrat plan will be much more effective at boosting economic growth. Extending unemployment benefits and boosting home-heating aid are nice ideas, but they're unlikely to generate new jobs. And when a bill like this one is delayed, it increases the chances of collapsing under its own weight -- as happened to president Clinton's 1993 stimulus package.

The Washington Post reports:

In November, the Democratic-led House spent about $89,000 on so-called carbon offsets. This purchase was supposed to cancel out greenhouse-gas emissions from House buildings -- including half of the U.S. Capitol -- by triggering an equal reduction in emissions elsewhere.

Some of the money went to farmers in North Dakota, for tilling practices that keep carbon buried in the soil. But some farmers were already doing this, for other reasons, before the House paid a cent.

Other funds went to Iowa, where a power plant had been temporarily rejiggered to burn more cleanly. But that test project had ended more than a year before the money arrived.

There was ample warning that the House leadership might be wasting taxpayer money. Republican leaders suggested waiting for the GAO to complete a report this spring on the effectiveness of carbon offsets. The House's Chief Administrative Officer -- Daniel Beard -- defended his decision to go ahead and spend the money anyway:

Beard argued that the plan has gone through all the required steps. Companies such as Ford and IBM use the Chicago Climate Exchange, he said, and he is confident that the money will go to beneficial projects.

“Why wait?” he said. “Global warming is not going to wait, why should we wait?”

It now turns out -- as seemed likely when the purchase was made -- that this 'investment' won't make a bit of difference toward reducing global warming.

Interestingly though, the directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange have made 15 contributions to Democratic candidates and campaign committees in the last year. All but one of those came from former Carter and Clinton White House official Stuart Eizenstat.

Both the House and Senate Republican conferences are meeting in separate retreats this week to chart a course for the year ahead. That includes identifying both political and policy strategies, and ensuring that members are on board to the greatest degree possible. As details emerge, it's interesting to see how different those strategies will be. According to Congressional Quarterly, House Republicans seem eager to draw clear distinctions with the Democratic leadership:

As a feisty, ambitious backbencher in the “Gang of Seven” in 1994, John A. Boehner worked with his top aide, Barry Jackson, to develop a list of conservative principles that would become the “Contract With America.”

Now House minority leader, Boehner has once again turned his attention to devising a conservative manifesto, with ending earmarks as its centerpiece. And again, there is input from Jackson, who is now a top political adviser to President Bush...

Boehner declined to discuss the details of the conversations but said he expects to develop a unified GOP position on earmarks in appropriations, tax and authorizing bills.

The Senate GOP appears to have decided on a moderate course centered on bipartisan achievements that can be taken to the voters:

According to internal Conference e-mails and participants in a daylong, closed-door Conference retreat at the Library of Congress, Senate Republicans will rely largely on supporting legislation that has garnered bipartisan support regardless of who the lead sponsor is...

Alexander and other lawmakers Wednesday outlined a series of bills and issues they hope to pursue this year in a handful of areas including entitlement reform, health insurance, the creation of a two-year budget cycle and legislative steps Congress could take to keep “jobs from going overseas,” according to the agenda.

There's little question which will excite conservative voters more. Erick Erickson of RedState has already launched a shot across the bow of the Senate Republican leadership, and there's word of dissension from Senate conservatives.

But the fortunes of Congressional Republicans will be influenced by what happens at the top of the ticket. If the presidential matchup is Clinton vs. McCain, many in Washington anticipate a decisive Republican victory that will produce coattails at the Congressional level. If that happens, the strategies that these senators and representatives decide on may matter very little.

National Journal reports that Democrats in Congress have hit on a new formula for 2008: less legislation enacted, and more investigations conducted:

Waxman, D-Calif., at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and other chairmen are promising to keep up the pace in 2008. They'll continue ongoing investigations -- and launch new ones -- into the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts and management of the Iraq war, and into regulatory matters affecting a host of industries. Furthermore, with a year of investigations already under their belts, the chairmen will be pushing a variety of legislative measures to restrict executive branch powers, revamp regulatory agencies, and address corporate misbehavior...

"If anything, you'll see generally an increase in oversight hearings," said former Rep. Gerry Sikorski, D-Minn., an investigations specialist at the lobbying firm Holland & Knight. "It's an even-numbered year. Congress is going to be flushed out. The legislation all has to be reintroduced or forgotten, and so too the ongoing investigations will be flushed out. There's an incentive to get it done before the new Congress comes in."

Democrats are arguing that these hearings are being conducted to increase transparency, and ensure that the American people get the 'change' that they are demanding. But hearings don't change anything; to date, they've merely demonstrated the partisan crusade of Democrats to destroy the Bush administration. Lest anyone doubt the view of the public on this strategy, just look at the Congressional approval rating. In every poll, Congress is rated as ineffective and unpopular. Do House leaders really imagine that more of the same will lead the American people to re-evaluate?

In the last year of the Bush administration, voters will be asking themselves which party has a better vision going forward, for keeping America secure and the economy strong. A focus on investigations over legislation -- however difficult it may be to legislate in an election year -- will help Republicans make the case that Democrats are focused on settling past political scores.

There's been lots of talk from leaders of both parties about the importance of working together to enact a 'stimulus package' quickly. The early impression is that there's enough common ground to move quickly on a package centered on a one-time tax rebate for individuals. Democrats are pushing for inclusion of an extension of unemployment benefits, or increased spending on food stamps. These policy disagreements notwithstanding, it seems likely that some sort of compromise can be reached relatively quickly.

Even as negotiations on the stimulus package are ongoing however, Democrats are already planning a second package -- one that will serve as a political issue, rather than a serious policy proposal. It will likely contain any ideas rejected by the White House, as well as raft of spending on public works. According to Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn, that package will be helpful in winning his home state of South Carolina for the Democrats.

Roll Call reports:

Clyburn gave the answer in response to a question about whether South Carolina could realistically be in play for Democrats in the presidential election, a strong indication that party leaders may be looking to use debate over a second package as an issue in the fall campaigns...

“If [the stimulus legislation] does not happen between now and the elections in November, then I could see South Carolina coming back to the Democratic Party,” he said...

In the same piece, Barney Frank says that there will be a 'major infrastructure stimulus' in the second bill, and Congressional Quarterly reports that Representative Jim Oberstar is pushing for a package of $15 billion in transportation and water projects. That figure may be low, since Oberstar proposed more than $50 billion in infrastructure spending to boost a slow economy in both 2001 and 2003. You have to wonder if Democrats will suddenly decide that a mere $15 billion is enough.

The reality is that any time the economy is perceived as slowing, Democrats propose more pork-barrel infrastructure spending. It was true when Bill Clinton took office in 1993; it's true today. But the deeper truth is that Democrats always favor more spending on pork-barrel projects. They just use the perceived sluggishness of the economy as a selling point.

There may be a revolution brewing among House Republicans.

For several years outside groups such as Porkbusters, the Club for Growth, the National Taxpayers' Union and others have lobbied for a real crackdown on pork-barrel earmarks. When Representative Roger Wicker was recently appointed to the Senate to replace Trent Lott, that fight suddenly became more prominent. That's because Wicker left behind a seat on the House Appropriations Committee, and the House's fiercest opponent of earmarks has petitioned for the seat. Under normal circumstances, Flake wouldn't have a chance. The Appropriations Commttee is the quintessential 'Old Boys Club,' and an old Washington saying tells us that there are three parties in Congress: Republicans, Democrats, and appropriators.

The life of the appropriator is pretty simple: secure funds for your projects, look out for your friends on and off the committee, and raise campaign cash based on your position of influence. You'd no more invite Jeff Flake to join the club than you'd invite a monk to the Kennedy compound. But there are some indications that Republican Leader John Boehner may be ready to break with tradition:

Yesterday, House Minority Leader John Boehner told his House Republican colleagues that they were destined to remain in the political wilderness if they couldn’t kick their spending habits. Today, he took that debate one step further, announcing that the Steering Committee will not make an appointment to the vacant Appropriations Committee seat until after the House Republican retreat, where the GOP Leader has urged that a conference-wide discussion take place on earmarks.

Boehner is also expected to follow up later today at an RNC briefing, where he is expected to say, “We need to get serious about eliminating wasteful spending. Earmarks are a symptom of a much larger problem in Washington with runaway spending. We need to bring an end to wasteful earmarks, and we need to do it now.” Boehner is expected to add, “The Democratic candidates all talk as if America has failed -- that if only we’d raise taxes, put our faith in government bureaucracies, and withdraw from the world stage, we’d be better off. Well I don’t buy it. And the more Americans hear that message, the more I think they’ll reject it.”

This doesn't mean that Flake is headed to the Appropriations Committee. But it would take a tone-deaf politician to raise the hopes of his base, only to crush them later on. Ed Morrissey recently identified this as a 'brilliant opportunity' for House Republicans. He's right. But there's another simple truth at play here: you can't beat something with nothing. For House Republicans to convince voters to toss out the current leadership, they have to offer something better. Setting a monk to police the Kennedys may be part of the solution.

Aren't we supposed to be increasing our focus on 'soft power?'

The Bush administration is fighting congressional efforts to slash the amount of emergency food aid the United States provides around the world, saying the cuts could hurt as many as 8 million people in dire need.

Members of Congress argue that the reductions in aid, which are included in both the House-passed and Senate-passed versions of a new five-year farm bill, are necessary to ensure there are enough dollars for longer-term projects that they say are equally, if not more, important because they can prevent drought, famine and other catastrophes in developing countries....

As it has in previous years, Congress has allocated $1.2 billion for the "Food for Peace" program through spending legislation that provides the two types of aid. Congress in the past has set aside $850 million for emergency aid and $350 million for non-emergency aid, but has allowed the administration to transfer cash between the accounts.

The administration frequently has used that waiver authority to move money from the non-emergency category to the emergency category to respond to urgent crises like the Indian Ocean tsunami, and it wants to keep such authority. However, the farm legislation headed to conference negotiations between the two chambers would eliminate that authority...

The farm bills under consideration in the House and Senate authorize more than $280 billion in expenditures over the next 5 years. Is Congress unable to find $250 million per year (the total amount in dispute) to ensure that we can continue to respond to humanitarian crises overseas?

It seems that Congressional Democrats really have decided to completely change their approach to Iraq. For now at least, the operating principle seems to be to ignore it:

As Congress opens the 2008 session, it’s hard to find Iraq anywhere on the official agenda.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has no Iraq hearings scheduled, while the House Foreign Affairs Committee is focusing on Pakistan.

The Senate Armed Services Committee also has yet to schedule any Iraq-related hearings, although Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is tentatively scheduled to appear on Feb. 6...

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden (D-Del.) chaired 12 Iraq hearings in the first month of 2007, while his counterpart in the House, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), used hearings to call administration officials to account for the lack of progress in Iraq.

The two Armed Services committees were engulfed by the issue as well — the House panel chaired by Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) held seven hearings in the first month of 2007.

There's an old saying that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. This seems to be the rare case where that isn't true. Instead, it seems that for Congressional Democrats, success in Iraq is the redheaded stepchild.

The August collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis (the result of design error according to an investigation) has drawn attention to the state of America's infrastructure. Reports about the need to address crumbling roads and bridges abound and will increase the attention given to the recommendations of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission:

A bipartisan commission created under the 2005 highway law released its long-awaited report Tuesday, recommending an increase of up to 40 cents per gallon in the federal gasoline tax and renewing a contentious debate in Congress...

The 12-member commission, called the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission, recommended almost doubling the federal gasoline tax over the next five years, boosting it in increments of 5 cents to 8 cents per year. The rate would be indexed thereafter to the rate of change in construction costs, according to an executive summary of the report.

The federal gas tax is currently 18 cents per gallon, and Congressional Democratic leaders have called for an increase. But calling for something and actually scheduling a vote are two different things. And this being an election year, no vote on a gas tax increase is forthcoming--that will wait until next year, when a Democratic president may be more open-minded than President Bush has been.

But in evaluating the need for additional funds, it's worth reviewing the Commission's final report, as well as the good points made by commission members who dissented from the majority views. Wasteful spending on low priority projects is cited as a significant problem, as well as an overly-broad definition of projects that merit funding. The dissenters say that the current system is broken and doesn't warrant expansion.

Whether the financing system is fatally flawed or not, it's good to remember that many of the elected officials now calling for tax increases don't think that our infrastructure needs are important enough to reduce pork-barrel spending. Their actions make pretty clear that many in Congress are more interested in raising taxes than in actually addressing infrastructure needs. Keep that in mind when you read the scare stories.

Roll Call carries an interesting article today about an earmark requested by Indiana's Grace College and the Ventura County Office of Education (VCOE). The interesting thing about the earmark is that neither institution thought of the project; it was dreamed up by the lobbying firm that both institutions had hired to represent them. The firm then essentially convinced both Grace and VCOE to agree to accept the money and take charge of the initiative that the lobbyists had come up with:

At the [VCOE] board meeting — a recording of which is available here — Wilk [the lobbyist] outlined the firm’s approach, which lobbying experts say is probably not unique, though it is rare that the public hears about it. Rather than the client coming to the lobbyist for help in obtaining funding for a project, the lobbyist creates ways to deliver federal money for the client, even for projects the client had no plan to pursue...

He described another client, a California arts school that needed money to replace its outdated air conditioning system. Instead, Wilk said, Anchor conceived a project for the school to partner with the UCLA School of Medicine to produce AIDS-education videos for use in Africa, and got $12 million in federal money to launch the project. “They came looking for an air conditioner, now they are doing an AIDS program in Africa,” Wilk said.

In this case, it sounds like both Grace and VCOE endorsed a 'fishing expedition' by the lobbyists: you come up with some federal dollars that we can use, and we'll pay you for the trouble. Roll Call is right: the arrangement is not unique (although in my experience in Congress, it's unusual). If you think about it, it makes a great deal of sense for the client--they don't know the earmarking process as well as the lobbyist; they might be spending their own money on something that Congress can be convinced to fund. If so, why pass up the chance for 'free' money? All you need to do is contact a lobbyist who knows the system, and make sure you'll get a return greater than your financial commitment.

If you think about it, the lobbyist is a lot like Matthew Lesko. He knows where the free money is, and all you have to do is call him up to get it for you.

It's so simple, it makes you wonder why some people think the process ought to be done away with.

Roll Call reports that the White House is considering a bold move to cancel billions in wasteful pork-barrel spending in order to boost the economy:

The White House may link a possible executive order eliminating thousands of earmarks with a call for reprogramming the funding, perhaps through a direct rebate to taxpayers or by putting the savings into children’s health care or bridge repair programs, according to House and Senate Republicans close to the issue.

Although no final decision has been made on whether President Bush will in fact sign an executive order, Republicans said it is increasingly likely and that discussions of linking it to a taxpayer rebate or funding reprogramming indicate Bush may be looking to make fiscal responsibility a centerpiece of his domestic legacy.

Canceling about $20 billion in pork-barrel spending might help restore the party's 'brand' on fiscal responsibility. That can only be a good thing. But the reason to disregard the suggestions of Congressional committees is that those suggestions are wasteful. If the White House can redirect those funds to spur economic growth and job creation, so much the better. If not, it's still better either to rescind the money and commit it to deficit reduction, or to spend it on more important priorities through the agency process.

However, the value of the idea outlined here is that it will put Congress on the spot about their spending priorities. If the White House proposes to save billions, and channel that money instead toward tax breaks for investment, or individual rebates, or some other meritorious effort, Congress will be forced to address the question. They can either defend their earmarks in the light of day, or give them up and spend the money on other initiatives. The taxpayers are better served with an honest debate.

There's more on the status of the debate over economic stimulus today at the Wall Street Journal, and Senator Jim DeMint also penned a recent op-ed on Congress' addiction to earmarks; be sure to check it out. Lastly, for some of the horror stories about how Congress has elected to spend your money, check out omnibusting.org.

The inability and/or unwillingness of Congressional Democrats to end U.S. involvement in Iraq has been frustrating for the antiwar left, to say they least. They've threatened and pleaded, and sent out thousands of 'action alerts,' all designed to force Democrats in Washington to do something to end the war.

But after all the cajoling, not much was accomplished. The Democratic leadership ultimately decided that it would be too politically damaging to cut off funds for troops in the field. Angry at the loss on Iraq, as well as a FISA vote that many liberals considered a betrayal, they began to organize primary challenges to sitting House Democrats.

The blog OpenLeft has been one of the leaders in promoting primary challenges to 'Bush Dog' Democrats, and the site Democrats.com has been tracking them as they materialize. So far, there seems to be relatively little real activity.

Congressional Quarterly profiles what may be the most serious challenge to a sitting Democrat so far:

Liberal activists, disgruntled that the Democratic Party takeover of Congress has not expedited an end to the Iraq war, have threatened to sponsor 2008 primary challenges to House Democrats who they believe haven’t been tough enough in standing up to President Bush.

And while this threat has not materialized widely, there are a small handful of such challenges under way--the latest in the central Iowa district represented by six-term Democrat Leonard L. Boswell .

Boswell has drawn opposition in the 3rd District, located in and around the state capital of Des Moines, from Ed Fallon, a former state legislator with a populist approach. An unsuccessful contender in the 2006 Democratic primary for governor, Fallon strongly opposes the U.S. military involvement in Iraq and is hoping to channel the frustrations of the anti-war left in the June 3 House primary.

Boswell's seat is the second-best Republican seat currently represented by a Democrat. If Boswell were denied renomination, the seat becomes a genuine Republican pickup opportunity. A more liberal candidate would likely improve GOP prospects further.

Two other incumbents facing netroots-backed challenges from the left are Congressmen Dan Lipinski and Albert Wynn. Their opponents have each earned the highly prized endorsement of the Daily Kos. (Wynn is a curious addition to this list. While he's cast some votes that have angered the left, he has a strong liberal voting record--with a 9.9 lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union.) There seem to be a few other incumbents who may break a sweat, but at most just 2 or 3 will be denied renomination.

It's hard to believe that so much effort will be put into such a small result. Did the behavior of Democrats in Washington really change all that much when Ned Lamont beat Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary? The proof of the pudding is in the tasting: despite beating Lieberman, Democratic Senators humored the antiwar left and then did what they thought was in their best interest. No matter what the outcome of primary challenges this year, the netroots are unlikely to be any happier in 2009.

The Politico reports this morning that the 'Abramoff Effect' is still hammering the GOP. The occasion for the piece is the announcement by Representative John Doolittle that he will not seek re-election, largely due to the 'ethical cloud' brought on by the investigation, which has been going on for approximately four years (his wife was reportedly subpoenaed in April, 2004).

It's hard to see how this constitutes 'hammering' the GOP. It's main effect is ensure that a safe Republican seat remains Republican, and to take away one of the Democrats' prime takeover opportunities in 2008. If that's getting hammered, then bring it on.

But beyond that, this might be a good time to consider where the Abramoff investigation currently stands. With the FBI investigation now years old, how many Members of Congress have been convicted? One -- former Representative Bob Ney. How many have been charged? So far, only one.

I am unaware of any comprehensive list of Members of Congress who have been investigated by the Department of Justice over their receipt of donations from Abramoff, but press reports mention investigations into Doolittle, former Representatives Richard Pombo and Tom DeLay, and representatives Tom Feeney and Jerry Lewis. Yet the list of recipients of Abramoff donations includes about 300 elected officials and party committees.

It's clear that Ney, Abramoff, and a few others are real criminals, deserving of their penalties. But it's starting to seem that there's been a lot more ink spilled over Abramoff than may be justified. Indeed, there have already been more Members of Congress cleared than convicted. The Politico mentions Conrad Burns' exoneration, but fails to note that the FBI cleared former Representative J.D. Hayworth, as well.

Actually, let me revise that statement: I'm sure liberals will point out that just because a Member of Congress isn't charged or convicted, doesn't mean he isn't a criminal. And I have to admit: that's very true.

(Just for fun, be sure to check out Flip Pidot's comparison of the Abramoff and Norman Hsu scandals. It's quite enlightening.)

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Federal Trade Commission is starting to examine whether buyers of carbon offsets may be getting a bill of goods:

The offsets are said to represent emissions avoided through projects such as installing wind turbines or planting trees, often in the developing world. Consumers are buying the offsets from a bevy of online sellers to counteract the emissions produced by daily activities.

But Federal Trade Commission officials said at a workshop on the issue that they are concerned that consumers who buy carbon offsets aren't able to verify whether they are environmentally legitimate.

The Financial Times recently did its own investigation of carbon offsets, and found that millions are being spent with no environmental benefits. The central findings:

• Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.

• Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.

• Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.

• A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.

• Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.

There's not really any way to know how much environmental good--if any--is being done through the purchase of carbon offsets. Trees planted in different climates have different value. In some cases, rainforest is cleared and new trees subsequently planted. In others, carbon offset buyers pay for trees that would have been planted anyway.

If carbon offsets were nothing more than a chance for tree huggers to pay a few dollars to feel good about their conspicuous consumption, none of this would matter. But as the Journal points out, firms are purchasing carbon offsets with the expectation that they will count toward future cleanup obligations:

Voluntary carbon offsets typically sell for as little as $5. Each offset represents one ton of carbon dioxide said to be kept out of the atmosphere. The businesses are betting that the relatively cheap voluntary offsets they buy up now will count toward their cleanup obligation under any eventual rule. That is far cheaper for most companies than retooling their operations to curb their own emissions.

Hopefully Al Gore and the Hollywood crowd can be counted on to help in the FTC's investigation, as well as any subsequent crackdown on fraudulent offset sales. They have always been strong proponents of government regulation generally, and it appears that this may be one area where environmental protection is being sacrificed to corporate greed.

Faced with the possibility of an economic slowdown or outright recession, Congressional leaders are considering legislation to spur economic growth. There's no specific plan yet, but Representative Barney Frank is leading the effort to come up with a proposal:

"We're looking at a variety of things, but it's got to have some reach," Sen. Charles Schumer of New York said yesterday, in discussing the Senate's effort for the first time. He called for steps that will give lower- and middle-income consumers more confidence and more money to spend. He declined to discuss details.

House Democrats may be more constrained by budget rules that require tax cuts to be offset by tax increases or spending cuts, a barrier to crafting a package. But there, too, leading lawmakers are considering both tax cuts and new spending.

"If you are going to do something -- and you may very well have to -- some tax relief may be a useful part of this, but aimed at middle-income and working people," said Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, who is helping to assemble the House package. He also is weighing new federal programs to help states and local governments reduce the large inventories of unsold real estate that are hurting prices.

As chair of the committee of jurisdiction, Frank has his expertise in this area. He's shown a strong interest in housing this term, with a number of bills introduced to address the slow housing market. It's interesting to hear Democrats talk about a solution that features tax cuts, given their demonstrated preference for raising taxes.

The Democratic budget calls for higher marginal rates on single middle-income Americans, higher taxes on capital gains and dividends, elimination of state and local sales tax deduction, reduction of the child tax credit, a return of the marriage penalty, reimposition of the death tax, and numerous other tax increases. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rangel--who probably speaks for a majority of House Democrats--wants to raise taxes by another trillion or so.

Rather than propose some targeted tax that's more likely to help some Democratic donor or small interest group, perhaps Congress can simply refrain from increasing taxes. After all, the first rule is 'do no harm.'

Across the Bay, an excellent blog covering events in Syria, points to this report from AFP:

Syrian official media poured scorn late on Tuesday on comments by a visiting US Congressman that he had secured an undertaking from President Bashar al-Assad to free seven jailed dissidents.

Syria "denies the statement by House of Represenatives member Patrick Kennedy that he raised the issue of certain detainees during his meetings with Syrian officials," the state SANA news agency cited an "official source" as saying.

"Syria refuses categorically to discuss its internal affairs with any foreign official. All that a foreign official can do is to be briefed about the situation in Syria in general and to listen to answers.

"No one has the right to interfere in Syria's internal affairs," the official source said.

After talks with Assad on Sunday, Kennedy told a news conference that he had secured an undertaking that Syria would free the seven dissidents, whose arrest last month drew strong criticism from the White House.

"The president said that they would be released," Kennedy told reporters.

It was bad enough when Pelosi went to Syria, but now the Dems have sent Patrick Kennedy? Seriously? Across the Bay headlines the item " Visit Assad, Get Egg on Your Face," but Patrick Kennedy hardly needs help getting egg on his face.

This week the Census Bureau released new data on population shifts from the 2000 census through today. The New York Times reports that while the subprime mortgage crisis has slowed the population shift away from states such as California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, the trend for the decade is clear: the red states are gaining people and electoral votes while the blue states are losing them:

If nearly decade-long trends endure, Texas will gain as many as four Congressional seats and Florida’s delegation will grow by two, while New York and Ohio will lose two seats each, said Andrew A. Beveridge of Queens College of the City University of New York.

“Seventy percent of the decade has passed,” Dr. Beveridge said, “and there would have to be massive reversal of population trends for this not to happen.”

There are several different projections available, based on the census data. A political data consulting firm known as Polidata is consistent with Beveridge, projecting a very challenging scenario for Democrats:

• The biggest gainers are: Texas, up 4 to 36 seats*; Florida, up 2 to 27; and Arizona, up 2 to 10.

• Other gainers are: North Carolina, up 1 to 14 (new); South Carolina, up 1 to 7(new); Georgia, up 1 to 14; Utah, up 1 to 4; Nevada, up 1 to 4; Oregon, up 1 to 6.

• The losing states losing the most would be New York, down 2 to 27 and Ohio, down 2 to 16.

• Other losers are: Massachusetts, down 1 to 9; New Jersey, down 1 to 12; Pennsylvania, down 1 to 18; Michigan, down 1 to 14; Illinois, down 1 to 18; Minnesota, down 1 to 7; Iowa, down 1 to 4; Missouri, down 1 to 8; Louisiana, down 1 to 6; and California, down 1 to 52(new).

This would represent a shift of eight seats from Kerry states to Bush states. A Democratic candidate who held all of Kerry's states would also need to win Florida, or a similar combination of smaller states, to gain the presidency.

Judicial Watch has named its ten most corrupt political figures of 2007, and the list may surprise. It includes a number of very well-known politicians who have received little attention for their questionable business deals. Among them are:

• Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA): ...Feinstein reviewed military construction government contracts, some of which were ultimately awarded to URS Corporation and Perini, companies then owned by Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum...

• Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR): ...“[Huckabee’s] career has also been colored by 14 ethics complaints and a volley of questions about his integrity, ranging from his management of campaign cash to his use of a nonprofit organization to subsidize his income to his destruction of state computer files on his way out of the governor’s office...”

• Senator Barack Obama (D-IL): ...n 2007, more reports surfaced of deeper and suspicious business and political connections It was reported that just two months after he joined the Senate, Obama purchased $50,000 worth of stock in speculative companies whose major investors were his biggest campaign contributors. One of the companies was a biotech concern that benefited from legislation Obama pushed...

• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): ...snuck a $25 million gift to her husband, Paul Pelosi, in a $15 billion Water Resources Development Act recently passed by Congress. The pet project involved renovating ports in Speaker Pelosi's home base of San Francisco. Pelosi just happens to own apartment buildings near the areas targeted for improvement, and will almost certainly experience a significant boost in property value as a result of his wife's earmark...

• Senator Harry Reid (D-NV): ...over the last four years, Reid has used his influence in Washington to help a developer, Havey Whittemore, clear obstacles for a profitable real estate deal. As the project advanced, the Times reported, “Reid received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Whittemore.” Whittemore also hired one of Reid’s sons (Leif) as his personal lawyer...

Don't draw conclusions before reading the whole list. I've highlighted Huckabee and Obama (among presidential candidates) because their cases have received less scrutiny to date. It's worth noting however, that Mayor Giuliani and Senator Clinton earned places on the list as well. What's notable to me is that most Americans are quite familiar with the accusations against Scooter Libby, Rudy Giuliani, and Larry Craig (for example), but are unlikely to have read anything about the cases of Speaker Pelosi, Senator Feinstein, Senator Obama, or Senator Reid. I wonder why that is?

The accusations against Mayor Giuliani have been well-aired at this point. Judicial Watch's summary of the charges against Giuliani is relatively brief -- centering on alleged misuse of city resources to hide his affair, and on the misdeeds of friend and confidante Bernie Kerik. (One wonders if Judicial Watch has considered this rowback from the New York Times.)

Lisa Myers of NBC news looked at the Huckabee accusations here. In general, they involve a failure to disclose otherwise legal gifts; the receipt by Huckabee of a large number of gifts (valued at twice his annual salary one year), and Huckabee's appointing of some gift givers to unpaid state commissions. Huckabee's defense -- both on his site and to Fox News -- is that he was being hounded by Democrats upset at having a Republican finally win a statewide office in Arkansas. One conservative critic characterized Huckabee's actions as 'Clintonesque.'

The voters of Iowa and New Hampshire will let us know soon enough whether they take these accusations seriously--on either side of the aisle.

Approaching the end of the year, there have been a number of stories about the edge Democrats have had in fundraising for 2007. There's no question that they have had the advantage of a base motivated to end the war, and of lobbyists eager to curry favor with new leaders they had ignored for years. (Although given the disappointment with the performance of Democrats in Congress so far, it's unclear whether either of those will help them in 2008.)

Under the circumstances, it's no surprise that the Democrats have a fundraising advantage. But at least for the formal partisan campaign committees, it's not as large as some believe. For purposes of this piece, I'm going to look at how much money those committees have on hand -- rather than how much they have raised or spent to date. The cash on hand figure (net of outstanding debt), gives a better sense of where the committees stand today.

Going into this month, the Republican National Committee had an edge of $15.7 million to $1.3 (after subtracting the debt still held by the DNC). That's a Republican advantage of $14.4 million. The DCCC had an edge over the Republican House campaign committee of almost exactly $30 million -- again, after accounting for debt currently held by each committee. The Democratic Senate committee has an edge over its Republican counterpart of just about $13 million.

All told, the three Democratic campaign committees have an advantage of about $26 million over their Republican opponents.

Republicans in the House however, are taking steps to ensure that their candidates will have the resources to compete in 2008. A number of incumbents recently came together to donate $3 million from their own campaign accounts to the NRCC. Those funds will be targeted to defeat Democratic incumbents -- and more such donations are expected. The primary focus is likely to be on the Freshman House Democrats, many of whom were elected in marginal or Republican-leaning districts. As I've pointed out before, Republicans will have more targets in the House next year than Democrats, if only because there are currently 61 Democrats sitting in seats carried by George Bush in 2004, against just 8 Republicans in districts carried by John Kerry.

Further, House Republicans will also look to their retirees to contribute to the 2008 campaign. Much has been made of the fact that significantly more Republicans are retiring from the House than Democrats. The flip side is that most of those retirees do not intend to seek other offices, leaving them largely free to donate their cash reserves to other Republican candidates and committees. Republican sources expect that this will ultimately yield millions more to spend on promising candidates.

Jim Saxton for example, reported having approximately $1.4 million in cash on hand at the end of September. Mike Ferguson had $760,000. Dave Hobson had just short of $1 million. Jim Ramstad (who may be running for re-election after all) reported more than $830,000 to spend. Terry Everett had just about the same.

In the months ahead, many Republican retirees will make donations to the NRCC or to Republican candidates. Republican sources expect such transfers to total in the millions -- moving House Republicans into a far better competitive position than they are in today. Combined with expected improvement in NRCC fundraising, House Republicans will see their financial condition improve dramatically in advance of the 2008 elections.

Roll Call reports that the House Ethics Committee has quietly issued a new interpretation of the house gift "ban" which allows lobbyists to throw lavish parties for Members of Congress at national party conventions:

The ethics committee's guidance last week said that while lobbyists or lobbying groups cannot host events that honor individual Members at convention parties, it's OK to throw events that honor a state delegation or caucus. In other words: Party on.

The Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Democracy 21, League of Women Voters and Public Citizen signed on to a letter Tuesday saying they believe it is “incumbent” for the committee “to immediately withdraw this guidance and to issue new guidance that properly reflects the meaning, purpose and spirit” of the new ethics legislation...

"Look, here’s where we are now,” [Wertheimer] said. “Lobbyists can’t spend $25 to buy a Member of Congress a meal, but under this interpretation lobbying organizations can spend $100,000, or more, at the national conventions to pay for lavish parties.”

Anyone who has attended a political convention knows the type of party being addressed here. Firms and lobbyists pay for expensive bashes to honor a member of Congress. The lobbyists and the member determine who's invited (sometimes thousands are). The lobbyists get the chance to do something for a member of Congress, and to rub elbows with others who attend the party (or parties).

USA Today reported on a bevy of such events at the Democratic convention in 2004, honoring Harry Reid, Max Baucus, Steny Hoyer, Charlie Rangel, and many others. The problem with the new guidance by the Ethics Committee is that it will allow such parties to continue with little or no change. That's in direct conflict with the claim of Speaker Pelosi that Democrats have banned gifts and severed the ties between lobbyists and lawmakers.

The reform coalition identifies the problem with this interpretation in their letter here. Specifically:

• The rule prohibits parties that honor a specific member, but allow tributes to a delegation or caucus. Thus, a party in honor of John Dingell is prohibited, but a party honoring members of the Energy and Commerce Committee is A-OK. The same is true of a party for the House Blue Dogs or Hispanic Caucus.

• The new ethics guidance allows lobbyists to circumvent even this mild restriction by setting up a shell entity that they fund, strictly for the purpose of throwing an otherwise prohibited tribute bash.

• A Member of the House can be listed as a host of the party, as long as there is at least on other host who is not a Member of Congress. So lobbyists can pay for a party hosted by Chairman Conyers (for example), as long one other person (probably the lobbyist who donates the most) is listed as a host as well.

• The House Ethics Committee -- which has advised members that the gift ban is written 'broadly' adopted a narrow interpretation that differs from the one adopted by both the Senate and the clerk of the House of Representatives.

The cumulative effect is that there's essentially no restriction of lobbyist-funded parties at the Democratic and Republican conventions.

Is this how Congress drains the swamp?

The Politico reports that rank and file Congressional Democrats recognize that a relentless focus on retreat in Iraq hasn't helped the party in 2007, and would hurt them more if it continues in 2008:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, despite their pledges to continue pushing to end the war in Iraq, face growing pressure from their rank-and-file Democrats to focus more attention on domestic, “pocketbook” issues in the upcoming election year.

Junior Democrats describe an “Iraq fatigue” setting in among some members after dozens of successful withdrawal votes failed to drive a wedge between Republicans and President Bush on the war strategy...

"Iraq fatigue” is a real possibility facing Democrats, however. Recent polls indicate public concern over the war has waned, as the economy, health care and other domestic issues grow in importance. Even many Democrats have tired of the constant focus on the war, noting that party leaders will have even less leverage to force Bush to change direction in his final months in office.

“The reality is that, as the weeks slip by for this president, we all know that Iraq policy is going to change in ’09 anyway,” said Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), arguing that 2007, not 2008, was the year for the Iraq policy struggle and that Congress should move onto other “kitchen table issues.”

“Trying to do it [change Iraq policy] in ’07 makes more sense then trying to do it in ’08,” he said.

As has been pointed out here before, Congressional Democrats have for some time been pitching different messages to different audiences on Iraq. They've told the antiwar base that they're holding the president's feet to the fire, and that they are committed to doing whatever it takes to end the war. At the same time, Democratic leaders have promised that they would never fail to fund the troops. They gave the Defense Department flexibility to shift among defense accounts so that the war could continue, in the hopes of putting off a vote on specific funding. Expect the hypocrite shuffle to continue.

It's been clear for some time that Democrats concerned about victories at the polls have wanted to turn away from Iraq. People close to the party's presidential candidates, as well as strategists like Rahm Emanuel are eagerly talking about the move to issues that help Democrats. Iraq by contrast, has crippled Democrats in Congress.

And if the situation on the ground in Iraq continues to improve, look for Democrats to try out more 'nuanced' messages. Some Democrats will emulate Steny Hoyer, and say that they always believed we needed more troops to prevail in Iraq. Others will point to the Democratic win in 2006 and the new pressure they brought on the administration as the cause for adoption of the surge. They will argue in fact, that victory could not be achieved without them.

Also be sure to check out Ed Morrissey's take on the Democrats' dilemma.

Does President Bush intend to stick the knife in with a smile? He complimented Congress today on passage of an end-of-year spending bill with some funding for U.S. troops in Iraq, as well as an energy bill and legislation to address the subprime mortgage problem. Regarding the omnibus spending bill, this is what he had to say (in part):

Congress reached agreement on a spending bill to fund the day-to-day operations of the federal government. They passed this bill without raising taxes. They eliminated many of the worst policy riders that would have never been approved through the ordinary legislative process. I appreciate that they included a down payment on the funding request for our troops on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq without an artificial timetable of withdrawal. These brave men and women are risking their lives to protect us and they deserve the full support of the U.S. government.

But Andrew Roth of the Club for Growth notes some surprising comments regarding pork-barrel projects in the bill, which have attracted so much attention in the last days of the session just ended. Roth puts two and two together and comes up with...

This is president-ese for "through an executive order, I might tell the respective agencies to ignore the earmarks and to spend the money on higher priorities."

This is a HUGE deal. With his signature, Bush could effectively wipe away almost all of this year's earmarks. It would easily be the biggest achievement on wasteful spending of all time. And it would set a wonderful precedent for the future that would deter the abuse of earmarks by members of Congress.

This is certainly a plausible interpretation of the president's remarks. The vast majority of all pork-barrel projects are contained in committee reports, which do not have the force of law. The executive branch is not bound to accept them.

But while such a move would be completely legal, most members of the House and Senate would regard it as dirty pool if the president elected to disregard earmarks with little or no warning. While few Republicans would complain publicly about such a move, many still regard earmarks as one of the perks of office, and as an almost essential part of moving legislation on Capitol Hill. It is one of the Congress's fundamental "unwritten laws."

At the same time, eliminating earmarks with one bold stroke would earn the president great praise from fiscal conservatives -- including more than a few on Capitol Hill. It also might dramatically improve the damaged republican "brand," at least as far as spending goes.

President Bush has shown a willingness to gamble. I wonder if he's feeling lucky.

Unable to enact any meaningful legislative accomplishments, Congressional Democrats are eschewing substance in favor of a new slogan:

...the majority party signaled that they would shift their top focus from trying to cut off funding for the Iraq War to the economy and health care in the new year, acknowledging that Senate Republicans and President Bush likely will continue to prevent them from forcing any real changes in troop levels or war strategy.

Saying "Faith in the Future” will be their theme going forward, House and Senate Democrats began pushing full-force their new message that they have accomplished a lot this year, but they still need voters to elect more Democrats in order to achieve the lasting change the party believes Americans voted for in November 2006 when they handed Democrats a majority in Congress for the first time in 12 years...

"Faith in the Future." How does that grab you? If it doesn't work, Democrats may try such maxims as "Progressive Policy: Oh What a Relief It Is," "Democratic Leaders are Mmm, Mmm, Good," and "Congress Freakout." Like Dilbert's pointy-haired boss, Congressional leaders seem to think that a good slogan is as effective as a record of accomplishment. Dilbert helpfully provides a new mission statement as well:

Our mission is to continue to synergistically integrate progressive paradigms and competently customize high-quality sources

If that phrase isn't sufficiently vacuous to run a Congress on, simply click again for a new one.

But even as they shift their focus to health care, the environment, and the economy, Democrats insist that they won't lose sight of Iraq:

Despite shifting their focus, Democratic leaders insisted they would not move the Iraq War to a secondary status in the next session.

"We’re not going to back off,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said, adding that he would bring the issue back up in his chamber again and again in 2008 as he did this year.

There's no reason to think that repeatedly bringing up Iraq will help Democrats next year any more than it did this year, when a ceaseless focus on retreat has driven Congressional ratings to historic lows. Rahm Emanuel says that the Democratic effort on Iraq is a "qualified success," because "this is the first time the president made a request for the war and didn’t get full funding." It's pretty clear that absent a significant change however, it's only a matter of time before Congress does precisely that.

As for the focus on new issues, Congressional Republicans claim to be prepared to engage on health care and the economy. Will 2008 bring another rude awakening for Democrats in Washington, as they find that their leaders are unprepared to deal with the shifting electoral terrain?

The New York Times paints a disturbing picture of Senator Harry Reid's view of President Bush:

In private conversations about Mr. Bush with friends and Senate colleagues, Mr. Reid has even used the word “hate,” though he clarifies that it is political not personal hatred that he feels...

“I fear that the Bush years will be known as a rare, even dark time,” he said Friday on the Senate floor.

Washington, of course, can be a blustery, hot-tempered town. But not since 1919, when Henry Cabot Lodge called Woodrow Wilson “the most sinister figure that ever crossed the country’s path,” has a Senate majority leader appeared to harbor such deep and utter disdain, even loathing, for a president, as Mr. Reid does for Mr. Bush...

With Senate Democrats holding a razor-thin majority, Mr. Reid’s sour feelings for Mr. Bush are more a symptom than a cause of Congressional gridlock. No bill has stalled solely because they do not get along.

Instead, the relationship is emblematic of the profound partisanship and distrust at each end of Pennsylvania Avenue and the latest fight over separation of powers, a tug of war nearly as old as the Constitution.

Still, Mr. Reid faults the president as making it almost impossible to pass legislation, recently accusing him of “pulling the strings on the 49 puppets he has here in the Senate...”

Senator Reid sees the president as stubborn and uncompromising. To an extent, that's certainly true. Senator Reid of course, has been just as inflexible as the president:

• He refused to compromise on an expansion of children's health insurance, instead passing the same expansion twice--and having it vetoed twice. He now refuses to discuss an expansion, insisting that it must wait until 2009.

• On the Alternative Minimum Tax, Reid refused to allow a vote on a fix that did not include a tax increase until after Thanksgiving. The refusal of Reid and House leaders to budge will force delays in the tax refunds of millions of taxpayers.

• Reid has consistently refused to budge on Iraq--calling the war lost, and pushing for troop withdrawals regardless of the situation on the ground. When the president changed course--first implementing the surge, and then starting a drawdown once the surge had succeeded in tamping down violence--Reid was a constant drumbeat for retreat.

The New York Times reassures us that no bill was stalled because of Reid's hatred for the president. The assertion is silly. There has been no expansion of SCHIP because Reid refused to allow consideration of a compromise--even though Senate sources are confident that there was a bipartisan majority for such a move. What other compromises might have been possible if not for Reid's enmity toward the duly elected president of the United States?

USA Today reports on the latest Gallup poll:

As President Bush and Congress battle on the budget, homeland security and the war in Iraq, Americans blame both Republicans and Democrats for the impasse.

By more than 2-to-1 margins, they give the president, congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans unfavorable ratings in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll released Monday. While Bush's ratings have been poor for most of the past two years, the two parties in Congress hit new lows in the poll.

"The American people just decided that Washington is either incompetent or irrelevant," said Frank Luntz, who has conducted polls for Republicans. "Republicans made promises they didn't keep, and Democrats made promises they couldn't keep. And now it's a pox on all their houses."

A look at the actual poll data offers bad news for both parties--but more for the Democrats. That's because while Americans disapprove of the job done by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the approval for Democrats is in free-fall. In February, voters disapproved of Congressional Democrats by a margin of 9 points (41%-50%); now the margin is 34 points (30%-64%). That's comparable to the rating for Republicans, who've lost much less ground.

In effect, Congressional Republicans and Democrats are starting from zero again. That's a huge loss for Democrats in comparison to where they started the year.

Whichever party does a better job of rehabilitating its image will strengthen its hand significantly for 2008.

Democratic leaders in the House have decided to take a vote today on a one-year fix for the alternative minimum tax. In a nod to reality, they have at last decided not to use this legislation as a pretext for raising taxes, instead electing to take up the legislation that passed the Senate by a strong bipartisan majority. That bill does not include a tax increase.

But it simply wouldn't be the Democratic party didn't concede this while looking to raise other taxes instead. So with that in mind, it seems that Congress will trade this fix for a tax increase to be named later:

“I think it’s a pipe dream,” said Cooper of his leaders proposal to add revenue-raising measures to a future package of tax relief extensions in exchange for Blue Dog support on the AMT.

At a closed-door meeting earlier on Tuesday, Democratic leaders made a peace offering to the centrists by proposing to pay for a $53 billion AMT relief bill with tax increases next year. Democratic leaders proposed adding revenue-raising measures to a package anticipated in 2008 that would extend various expiring tax cuts.

I discussed yesterday why the Blue Dog argument on this is full of holes. Democrats are grasping at the AMT as a flimsy excuse for raising taxes. Even today, when the united opposition of Congressional Republicans is forcing them to simply correct an error, they're still promising to return next year to attempt to raise taxes again.

The Hill reports:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) hinted Tuesday that Congress may not be able to stop a big tax increase from hitting 23 million Americans.

Hoyer, pressed on whether Congress would resolve disputes over the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), said, “Maybe.”

His remark came as a surprise, since it has widely been assumed that Democrats will give up their effort to “pay for” the AMT patch and go with the Senate plan to load the cost onto the deficit.

Hoyer's comments may be nothing more than a warning to his fellow Democrats. It's long been assumed that the House would eventually yield and approve the AMT fix that passed the Senate. This public comment from Hoyer may be no more than a signal to House Democrats that the stubbornness of the Blue Dogs may spur a huge tax increase that will be laid solely at the feet of the Democrats.

The Alternative Minimum Tax will raise taxes about $51 billion in 2008, if it is not 'fixed.' The crux of the argument comes down to this: Republicans oppose a tax increase to 'pay' for the AMT fix because the AMT has only expanded due to an error when it was created. Republicans and Democrats universally agree that it was never meant to hit the millions of taxpayer it is slated to affect next year. And if the Treasury never intended or expected to collect the money, why do Democrats consider the revenue to be 'lost?'

In effect, the question is whom to hold harmless: the taxpayers or the treasury.

Count Code Pink among the former Democratic supporters who seem disillusioned enough with the new Congress to call for 'regime change.' According to a recent piece in the Washington Times:

"We see that the people who advise the leadership of the Democratic Party have been saying to them, 'Let this be Bush's war. ... Let's keep this going until the presidential elections, and then we'll win the White House and then we'll change things,' " she said.

"We find that totally immoral and we say, 'We are not really interested in who is in the White House and who's taking what seats in Congress,' " Ms. Benjamin said. "We are interested in ending the war..."

But in a shift of strategy, Code Pink plans to rally its 180,000 members nationwide to make the war a campaign issue and challenge Democratic leaders, who Ms. Benjamin said lack the "fighting spirit" to stop the war.

Medea Benjamin talks about the effort at regime change here, saying that she's 'disgusted with all of them.'

Code Pink has changed gears in its effort to end the war. Now they are advocating lawbreaking:

It’s time for taxpayers who oppose this war to join together in nonviolent civil disobedience and show Congress how to cut off the funds for this war and redirect resources to the pressing needs of people. There is a great tradition of war tax resistance in the United States. When our political leaders have not listened to the will of the people, individuals have engaged in civil disobedience.

The good news for Code Pink is that there appears to be a 2008 candidate who accurately reflects their views:

Roll Call reports that one year after they took office promising to curb the corrupting influence of special interests in Washington, Congressional Democrats are seen by some lobbyists as more pliable than their Republican counterparts:

But after 12 months of Democratic rule, lobbyists for business interests big and small say their worst fears have not materialized. And some say the Democratic Congress has courted their clients for not only campaign money but also for their suggestions on myriad legislative issues...

One Republican business lobbyist who did not want his name used said that, in a complete reversal of expectations, some Democrats have made for a tuned-in audience — without the baggage GOPers carry from socially conservative groups, which can be at odds with corporate lobbyists.

“This Congress has been far more receptive to engaging in conversation and learning about issues that are important to business and trying to work with us than the Republican Congress ever was,” said one Republican business lobbyist. “The Republican Congress became very arrogant, and they ignored business for at least the last two years. ... It was a huge surprise that Democrats were willing to reach out and talk to nontraditional allies.”

Corporate interests tend to lobby against regulation and taxes, and in favor of federal support for their companies and sectors when possible. The return of Democrats to a position of power in Washington has in some some cases led to nothing more than a change of playbooks for business interests. Rather than lobby for tax cuts and regulatory reform, they started to push for federal financial support and restrictions on competitors. Democrats have won some fans in the corporate sector through measures like the farm bill and their reluctance to consider new trade agreements.

And while Democrats have sought to dramatically increase taxes, and impose costly new mandates and regulations on business, that agenda has largely failed. As a result, many business lobbyists have expanded their giving to Democrats, leading the party and its candidates to establish a strong lead in fundraising heading into the 2008 election.

Not all business lobbyists regard the new leaders in Congress as friends and allies, however:

“The business community’s fears of this Congress were absolutely well-founded,” said Jade West, senior vice president of government relations for the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and manager of the Tax Relief Coalition. “The rhetoric from the Democrats as they took control was kind of gotcha rhetoric,” West said. “The only thing that has saved the business community from really bad policy appears to be Democratic ineptitude. They haven’t gotten done what they threatened — or promised...”

In 2009, if Congress does not act, many of the Bush administration tax cuts will expire. “The business community is going to have to fight to make Congress do something, otherwise they’ll have the biggest tax increase in the history of the world.”

Many companies will regret their pattern of giving if Democrats win Congress and the presidency in 2008.

Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid took office with high hopes and plans, but their overreaching agenda has run aground. Today even the New York Times is airing its disappointment with Democratic leaders in Congress and their inability to deliver on even small promises.

Resolving these issues will require leadership, political courage and candor--from Congress and the president. The country has had enough acquiescence, excuse-making and obfuscation.

While it's no surprise that the editorial board of the New York Times is significantly to the left of the majority in Congress, it seems to be quite close to the Democratic base. The 2008 election still seems likely to be the high-turnout affair that most analysts expect, but the Democratic base is clearly a lot more dispirited than it was a year ago. The lack of intensity could be a challenge for Democrats in 2008--a possibility few would have suggested a few months ago.

Why have Democrats failed so miserably? John Feehery--a former senior staffer for both Tom DeLay and Speaker Dennis Hastert--outlines the rules that Democrats failed to follow when they seized control of Congress:

• Finish your work in a timely fashion.

• Learn about the Senate.

• The president is always relevant.

• Keep your promises.

• Understand who makes your majority.

• Big change is hard, small change is easy.

Speaker Pelosi has told people to expect a new change and new approach in 2008. Look for her to apply Feehery's rules.

The headlines today indicate that Congressional Democrats caved to the president's position on spending for 2008. The Washington Post says 'Democrats Bow to Bush's Demands.' The Hill reads 'Dems Cave on Spending.' And the headline from the Los Angeles Times declares 'Democrats Bow to Bush Spending Limit.' But according to the conservative members of the House Republican Study Committee, that's not quite true:

In short, as described and reported, the latest Democrat omnibus package—described as meeting the President’s top-line spending amount—is roughly $23 billion above the President’s comparable request for domestic spending.

The omnibus bill would also fund only up to $30 billion in supplemental funding for Afghanistan—not for Iraq and without any transfer authority to allow the President to shift a portion to Iraq. This would have the perverse result of treating our troops in Afghanistan differently than our troops in Iraq.

As the Club for Growth points out, the total spending level the Democrats are calling for is quite close to their initial proposal at the start of the process. Will the White House call the Democrats on this?

Roll Call provides additional detail:

Democrats also appeared poised to accept a $70 billion package of spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with no strings attached, although no Iraq money would appear in the initial House version. Democrats had been considering a trade of war funding for $11 billion in domestic spending and $7 billion in emergency spending, but Bush’s veto threat now has Democrats on the verge of approving another fat check for the war that they have repeatedly sought and failed to end with little in return except the ability to go home for Christmas.

The Democratic leadership plan is convoluted. It calls for the House to approve a spending bill with no funding for Iraq, and which is well over the agreed-upon level of overall spending. Many Republicans will vote against the bill, which would be passed with Democratic support.

Next, the Senate will pass the same bill--after approving an additional $70 billion of the president's $200 billion request for the war on terror. That Senate product must subsequently pass the House again.

But dozens of anti-war Democrats in the House will oppose the Senate version because of the additional funding provided for the war on terror. House Republicans who seek full funding for the war on terror and who oppose the added spending would seem to have little incentive to vote for this flawed compromise. Can Democratic leaders cobble together a majority to pass the bill? If they do, will the president sign it?

Republican Study Committee spokesman Brad Dayspring sums the situation up this way:

"Stating the obvious, thus far Republicans have successfully protected taxpayers from a Democrat spending spree. Stating the even more obvious, I don't think that the Democrat leadership woke up, picked up the morning papers and smiled. With that in mind, it doesn't seem as though they are negotiating from a position of strength."

It seems Democrats may find themselves heading back to the drawing board.

Amidst the many reasons that Republicans lost control of the House and Senate last year was a concern about the House page program. Congressman Mark Foley behaved reprehensibly toward the pages, and House leaders were unable to convince voters that they had responded to Foley's transgressions quickly and properly. Because the pages are High School students who've traveled far from home and put themselves under the 'protection' of the House of Representatives, voters have a high standard for how they should be treated.

With that in mind, it's surprising that House Democrats have allowed a mini-page scandal to arise on their watch. And their handling of it led first to the resignation of several Republicans on the page board, and now an internal investigation:

The House Inspector General and an independent panel will conduct separate investigations of the page program after two Republican Members said they were not kept up to date on page expulsions and resigned from the House Page Board last week.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) met Wednesday evening and came to the mutual agreement...

Reps. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) resigned from the Page Board last week, claiming that Clerk of the House Lorraine Miller failed to keep the oversight board aware of the expulsion of several pages.

Brown-Waite and Capito’s complaints stem from the expulsion of at least four pages this fall. Two were sent home for shoplifting, while the other two recently were expelled for having oral sex on a dorm elevator, according to several sources. Both Republicans say they weren’t told of the first two, but they also admit that Miller told them immediately about the recent sexual misconduct.

Representatives Ginny Brown Waite and Shelley Moore Capito are the two Republicans who have resigned from the board. Ms. Brown Waite seems particularly concerned about the way the program has been handled this year:

"I had a continuous feeling of the lack of supervision of the pages this year," Brown-Waite said, adding: "I just wasn't comfortable with what was going on in the page dorms. I resigned to send a loud and clear message to Nancy Pelosi: It's broken and she needs to fix it."

She said that others in the page program did not feel comfortable talking to the dorm director about problems there, and "They had to be shocked; they absolutely had to be shocked."

Brown-Waite also warned others about sending their children to the program in its current shape.

"I today would not allow my children if they were of age to come up and be a page," she said.

How the House protects and oversees the young people in the page program ought not be a political issue. Both Republicans and Democrats ought to agree that the interest of the pages come first. For that reason, it's heartening to see that Speaker Pelosi and Republican Leader Boehner are in agreement on how the investigation should be conducted. Still, it's troubling that even after the extraordinary attention to the program last year and the effort to fix it this year, those responsible for the program still seem unable to communicate effectively about it. There's already been talk of shutting down the program; incidents like this may make that the only real option.

Less than two weeks before Christmas, Congressional Democrats have no idea how they're going to finish up this legislative session. The new fiscal year began on October 1, and the current temporary funding measure that keeps the government running expires on Friday. If additional funding is not soon provided for the war on terror, the Pentagon will begin issuing thousands of furlough notices next week.

It now seems that Democratic leaders are floating trial balloons on an hourly basis, trying to come up with some way to avoid providing additional funds for Iraq and/or permitting an increase in domestic spending to accommodate pork-barrel spending projects that they refuse to disclose.

While it's likely that Congress will be able to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open, it's now difficult to imagine that it can quickly approve the billions needed for the Pentagon to continue with ongoing military operations. That means it's very likely that civilian employees of the Department of Defense will start to get those furlough notices.

The Hill now reports that Speaker Pelosi has retreated from her support of the Obey plan. (She called it 'great' yesterday; now it's history.) Instead, Democratic leaders are calling for a package that meets the overall spending target set by the administration:

Pelosi told the Democratic chairmen of the House Appropriations subcommittees, the so-called appropriations cardinals, that earmarks would stay in the omnibus and that Democratic leaders would accede to cut spending to levels demanded by President Bush in order to save 11 spending bills from a veto, said sources familiar with a meeting that took place in Pelosi’s office early Wednesday morning.

The House Democrats’ tentative plan is to finalize the package for passage in the next day or so, said sources.

By leaving earmarks largely untouched and agreeing to Bush’s budget ceiling, Democrats have capitulated in their spending battle with Republicans. In the end, Democrats realized they would not be able to muster enough Republican votes to override Bush’s veto. The president vowed to reject any spending package that exceeded the $933 billion limit he set.

Of course, this is only one small (if important) concession. There's no word yet on where the cuts will come to meet the spending target. There's also no mention of funding for the troops--which House Democrats now seem unwilling to provide. It's unlikely that moderate Democrats and Blue Dogs will accept a final package that leaves them on the hook for failing to support the troops. Many are likely to oppose this legislation unless they have assurances that more funds will be forthcoming.

Senator Reid seems unsure about how to go forward, but apparently he has one demand that's non-negotiable:

How are Democratic leaders handling the stress of trying to make sure the trains run--very late? Not all that well. Even David Obey doesn't seem to think much of the way Harry Reid is running the Senate:

Obey refused to make any predictions late Tuesday on when Democrats would opt for a long-term continuing resolution keeping the government open for the rest of the year.

“I’ll tell you how soon I will make a decision when I know how soon the Senate will sell us out,” Obey said after meetings among Democratic leaders in both chambers ended without any announcement of a new plan.

Asked by a reporter what he meant, he said, “You know what I mean, and the Senate knows what I mean.”

Of course, if Chairman Obey doesn't buy Senator Reid's defense that the Senate is virtually unmanageable, why should the rest of us?

Kudos to the Pentagon for producing professional-looking news summaries for their own and other websites. Below is a piece on the plans of the Pentagon to issue 100,000 furlough notices next week unless Congress can get its act together and fund the troops:

Only one question: does it have to look so much like Fox news?

MoveOn supports our troops, they just want to make sure they don't get any funding:

"Americans elected a Democratic Congress in 2006 to end the war in Iraq. A blank check for billions in war funding moves us in the wrong direction," said Nita Chaudhary, Campaign Director on Iraq for MoveOn. "Majority Leader Reid and the Democratic leadership should hold the line they've drawn: no war funding without a timeline to end the war...”

MoveOn.org will deliver petitions Monday asking the Democratic senators running for president to filibuster the bill if it does not include a timetable for withdrawal. The petitions were signed by 15,000 veterans and military families and will be sent to the offices of Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware, Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Barack Obama of Illinois.

Thanks to the infinite wisdom of Democratic leaders in Congress, this funding fight comes at the ideal time for MoveOn. The primaries will begin in days and the Democratic presidential nomination now seems completely up in the air. They couldn't have scripted a better scenario for pressuring Senators Clinton and Obama, as well as the others seeking the presidency.

It would not be at all surprising if some Democratic Senators choose to filibuster the bill. Someone like Russ Feingold--a longtime and firm opponent of the war--may well choose to do so, particularly since it's clear that no one will allow a funding fight to lead to a government shutdown.

And what does Chris Dodd, for example, have to lose from a filibuster? With virtually no chance of winning the nomination, a demonstrated willingness to pander to the netroots, and having already called for Congress to stop funding the war, it is the logical position for him to take.

It will be interesting to see how Senator Clinton handles this. With her campaign clearly hitting a rough spot, will she consider pushing the panic button, and joining whoever else may choose to filibuster? Or will she continue to position herself for the general election?

It's not outside the realm of possibility that one or more Republicans joins a filibuster. If nothing else, some fiscal conservatives will be quietly rooting for it to succeed. That's because the omnibus bill favored by the Democratic leadership will include significant increases in domestic discretionary spending, as well as new emergency spending which doesn't count against the budget caps. If this omnibus bill is blocked, it will likely force Congress to adopt another continuing resolution--with significantly lower overall spending. It will also put the pressure on Senator Reid to work with Republicans on a measure to fund the troops.

A filibuster might lead to both a political victory and a policy victory for conservatives.

Perhaps in an attempt to balance out their criticisms of the war in Iraq and seem 'strong on defense,' Congressional Democrats have spoken a lot about military readiness. Two subcommittee chairs on the House Armed Services Committee recently introduced a resolution to address the impending 'national security crisis:'

“While the Congress has been unable to agree on policy related to Iraq in veto-proof numbers, we should all be able to agree on one thing: the U.S. military constitutes our first and last line of protection – and they are in a world of hurt,” Ortiz said in a joint statement accompanying the resolution.

“Our military’s ground forces are broken by the ongoing operations, particularly in Iraq, and we are watching the making of a full blown national security crisis,” Ortiz added.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO)--who commands more respect among Republicans than perhaps any other Democrat--has made readiness his top priority. John Murtha talks frequently about 'readiness,' even if he's largely trying to use it as a political weapon against the president.

All this talk about readiness makes it ironic that Congressional Democrats are forcing the Pentagon to spend readiness funds to fight the war on terror:

DoD is using its readiness funding, or operations and maintenance accounts, which typically pay for training, supplies, and maintenance of weapons and equipment.

Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates requested to shift $3.7 billion from Navy and Air Force payrolls and an $800 million excess in the working capital fund to Army and Marine Corps operations...

“In mid-February, the Army will run out of all of their O&M funding for the entire year, because they will have spent it on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. That will require some fairly significant and harsh actions by the department, specifically the Army. And the Marine Corps is only about a month behind them,” Whitman said.

Military installations soon will have to shut down operations and furlough civilian employees, terminate contracts, and move into what Whitman called a “warm” status.

If you want to get out of a hole, the first rule is stop digging. Democrats claim that readiness is an impeding crisis, yet at the same time require that the Defense Department eat the seed corn. Worse still: they complain that the Pentagon could be spending even more of it than they intend to. Once again: if Congressional Democrats say that they fully intend the Pentagon to spend money to fight the war, why don't they give DoD the money it needs.

The Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization has also run out of funds:

“We’re out of (funding) new stuff now; we’re going to have trouble sustaining current contracts after the first of December,” Meigs said...

“What I can’t fund today will not go into the field next summer or next fall,” Meigs said. “It’ll be delayed by the amount of time we wait for funding...”

In Afghanistan, Meigs said, the Taliban are making a full-fledged effort to get back into the game. IED attacks are up, and the number of effective attacks is up as well, he said. The attacks are more lethal, he explained, because soldiers conduct more dismounted patrols in Afghanistan. “A suicide bomber with a vest is more lethal in Afghanistan. It’s easier to get closer to the troops,” he said.

Just remember though: Congressional Democrats may be telling the Pentagon to spend readiness funds to fight the war, and they may have cut off money to fight the number one killer of our troops in Iraq, but they really support the troops.

The House Appropriations Committee seems to be concerned that Democrats are losing the debate over whether to fund the war on terror. To bolster the Democrats' argument, they've decided to 'set the record straight' with this one-page document. It says (in part):

Last week the House of Representatives passed a $50 billion supplemental to fund the war, but the President has threatened to veto it and his allies in the Senate are filibustering it.

This bill includes reasonable provisions to protect our troops.

• It requires that troops be fully trained and fully equipped.

• It requires all government employees to follow the Army Field Manual rules prohibiting torture.

• It requires the President have a plan for bringing our troops home by December of 2008.

The Department of Defense could have full access to these funds very quickly. All the President has to do is call his allies in the Senate and ask them to release the bill.

But the legislation doesn't require the president to 'have a plan for bringing our troops home.' It requires that he begin redeployment within 30 days, that he regularly update Congress on how the redeployment is proceeding, and that he implement a plan to bring stability to Iraq in conjunction with 'Iraq's neighbors and the international community.' It also dramatically limits the range of operations the U.S. may conduct in Iraq. Here's a portion of the relevant text:

...funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act are available immediately for obligation to plan and execute a safe and orderly redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq.

(b) Within 30 days after enactment of this Act, the President shall commence an immediate and orderly redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq...

(d) The goal for the completion of the transition of United States Armed Forces to a limited presence and missions as described in subsection (e) shall be a date that is not later than December 15, 2008.

(f) Not later than February 1, 2008, and every 90 days thereafter, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to the congressional defense committees a report setting forth the following:

(1) The current plan for and the status of the reduction of United States Armed Forces in Iraq and the transition of the Armed Forces in Iraq to a limited presence whose missions do not exceed the missions specified in subsection (e), including the associated force reductions and adjustments and expectations with respect to timelines and the force levels anticipated to perform those missions.

Congressional Democrats claim to be tremendously proud of their effort to end the war. Why are they suddenly trying to pretend that that's not what their controversial legislation does? And why are House leaders trying to convince people that they have not just passed a forced surrender bill?

It seems I've written on this plenty (here, here, and here, for example), but now it looks like Dingy Harry is starting to agree with me: it's silly for Democrats to not pass legislation to fund the Iraq war in 2008. Democrats have effectively conceded the fight already, and there are too many Democrats in marginal districts who might take political hits from civilian furloughs. If Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid attempted to leave for Christmas recess without providing the needed funding, they might face a rebellion from moderates. So why not simply do the right thing and fund the Iraq effort?

Yesterday it was Jim Webb (D-VA) who signaled the retreat; today even Senator Reid seems to realize that the time might have come to quit trying to force a surrender:

Reid said Monday that the Senate still might take up a war funding bill before Christmas, and Democrats were still trying to find a compromise so it doesn't look like they've caved in to the White House on troop funding. Democrats are considering tweaking troop withdrawal language to lure a few more GOP supporters so the Senate could achieve a 60-vote filibuster-proof margin.

"I think we'll address war funding this month," Reid said.

McConnell says negotiations on war funding, have heated up in recent days, and suggested that the $50 billion "bridge" funding could be rolled into one giant omnibus spending package before the end of the year.

Reid himself shows the silliness of the Democrats' position:

Reid also accused President Bush of bluffing about the potential layoffs of 100,000 Pentagon employees if the war funding doesn't come through immediately. Bush says civilian employees will be furloughed because the Pentagon will have to pull from regular accounts to fund the war due to the Democrats' intransigence on Iraq funding.

Reid says that's just not true, adding that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates assured the Senate that the Army and Marines have month through the end of February.

"He's not leveling with the American people," Reid said. "The Army has enough money until the first of March."

The Democrats say they refuse to fund the war because they won't give the president any more 'blank checks.' Yet now that the Defense Department begins to plan furloughs, they protest that they have already given the Pentagon the power to fund the war with no encumbrances through February, at least.

The position is inherently untenable. If Congress intended to fund the war through February, and resents the implication that they have not done so, the only recourse is to actually fund the war!

When Democrats seized the majority in Congress, t