Once Labor Day is over and Congress is reconvened, the president is going to unleash an ambitious economic program aimed at reducing unemployment. We don’t know what the details will be, yet, by Congress is going to have to react to it and take some kind of action. However, the Republican leadership of the House has already mapped out their agenda for the fall, and it’s filled with nothing but anti-labor and anti-environmental legislation that will never pass the Senate or escape the president’s veto-pen even if it did.
House Republicans are planning votes for almost every week this fall in an effort to repeal environmental and labor requirements on business that they say have hampered job growth.
With everyone from President Obama to his Republican challengers in the 2012 campaign focusing on ways to spur economic growth, House Republicans will roll out plans Monday to fight regulations from the National Labor Relations Board, pollution rules handed down by the Environmental Protection Agency and regulations that affect health plans for small businesses. In addition, the lawmakers plan to urge a 20 percent tax deduction for small businesses.
I don’t know how stupid the Republicans think the American people are, but no one reasonably expects a Democratic Senate or a Democratic administration to buy into a jobs program based on weakening unions and poisoning the environment. It’s more bad faith time-wasting, and it’s precisely why this is the most unpopular Congress in living memory.
The Republicans need to stop fostering the delusion among their base that owning the House means that you get to pass your agenda. It gives you a seat at the table, not an excuse to do absolutely nothing but pose and posture. There are some things that both sides should be able to agree to, including some compromises on orthodoxy, to create some damn jobs. Wasting weeks of debate on bills that are going nowhere and accomplishing nothing is going to push Congressional approval levels below ten percent.
The really interesting thing is that at the start of August, less than HALF of the population think their member of Congress deserves re-election.
First time ever.
I’d imagine that there’s 60 votes in the senate for all kinds of anti-environment and anti-labor bills, actually. Luckily, Harry Reid will just not let any of it come up for a vote.
The Senate leadership’s been doing nothing but saving blue dogs from themselves since the House flip last winter.
GOP is indeed playing a cynical game, but I’m not sure it won’t work. Sure their unpopularity is going to hurt them in 2012, but given the GOP friendly playing field in the Senate, help from voter disenfranchisement by GOP governors, and gains from redistricting, I’m not sure it won’t all be a wash, and one that could lead the GOP in charge of both houses of COngress in January 2013. Its a shamelessly bold strategy, but its a strategy and one that I believe is more thought out than what we’re serving up. Given the fact that there’s a 90% chance the GOP nominee will be a governor, the baggage from Congress’s unpopularity won’t be a drag on their nominee’s chances.
The 2012 election will settle the issue that’s McConnel thrusted on the nation in early 2009: will the GOP’s extremism weaken Obama more than it turns voters off? In 2010, that was a no-contest. As Dems we’ve been hoping that Obama is playing some sort of three dimensional chess/long con whereby come November 2012 the GOP will be so twisted in its own extremes, that independents will come back home to Obama. Maybe, but I’m really suspect of any strategy that banks on independents making rational, well-thought out decisions. All studies point to the fact that independents aren’t really independent, and they certainly aren’t well informed or rational.
If the GOP can turn off everyone but the hardcore supporters of both parties, they win because their hard core is bigger than the Democrats’.
Good point. I find the GOP approach much more grounded in reality, ironically. When it comes to politics, GOP live in reality, Dems in fantasy. When it comes to policy, Dems live in reality, GOP in fantasy.
There are some things that both sides should be able to agree to, including some compromises on orthodoxy, to create some damn jobs.
Where does this belief come from? This isn’t your great-grandfather’s GOP.
this is who they are, BooMan.
it’s not like you expected an actual JOBS bill from these mofos.
you’re way too smart for that.
Rep constituents are hungry for their leadership to ditch the ‘Party of No’ meme and arrive with ideas to bring their American Dream to fruition. They want to be proud again, and so one wonders whether Huntsman indeed made a smart move to come out with a jobs program tacked on to a rumbling of common sense before Obama makes his jobs program public or Congress comes back.
After all, for those few moderate but necessary Rep voters, who among them wants to admit to supporting the Bachmannisms, Paulisms or Perryisms. How embarassing it must be.
I thought that’s what Tea-Partyism is all about. They’re Republicans who don’t want to admit they’re Republicans.
The point I was ineptly trying to make was that with a 46% disapproval rating of the TParty nationally, that Huntsman may have made a good tactical maneuver by turning to common sense and away from the overcrowded room of radical candidates doing nothing but pandering to a base that is losing any credibility or leverage they once held.
Having the House and the Senate didn’t get the President’s agenda passed in 2009. The Republicans are betting on scaring Democrats into aligning with them. Has worked so well before.
In a normal world itwould have worked in 2009. However, thanks to the Republicnas (and the complicit media) people now believe that it takes 60 votes to pass something in the Senate, instead of 60 votes to be able to vote on passing something. There was a very small window where the Dems had 60 votyes. Unfortunately, there were a few of those dems who voted more like Republicans. If having the Senate meant being able to actually get things through with 51 votes, a whole lot more would have been passed.
And even more unfortunately, the Dems are complicit with this. They had the chance to rewrite the rules at the start of the congress but totally avoided any change. They did not even change something obvious, like the filibuster requirement for judges, the rules about anonymous holds on cabinet appointments, etc.
So, the Dems are perfectly happy with nothing getting done.
Wait, on this very blog we hear a constant “needs 60 votes!”
Are you telling me that ain’t how it is?!
That is how it is because the media did not punish Republicans for obstructing votes. All of the obstruction the Republicans did was through blocking having any vote at all. An all-time historical record. So in fact it did require 60 votes.
Except for the vote this year to change the rules. I guess Reid was afraid that enough renegade Democrats could join with Republicans to shove through some really horrid legislation. And that it would be helpful for the Senate majority to have the backup of a filibuster.
Plus the concern about 2012.
I think they care just as much about their approval ratings as Mohammed Atta did that he was destroying a perfectly good airplane on September 11. It’s all about the ultimate aim one has.
That’s a good analogy, except Mohammed Atta wasn’t running for public office.
The Gang of Four Governors (Walker, Snyder, Kasich, and Scott) are acting like political suicide bombers.
They were. Scott and Kasich may be having second thoughts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/us/22states.html?pagewanted=all
I’m not suggesting there’s been any change in their real values or goals, but there are signs that they at least realize the politics are not working out exactly the way they thought they would. This is just the beginning …
Of course, I meant Scott WALKER — but Snyder and Scott in Florida are facing massive opposition as well. It’s just that in their case, the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet.