Forget about landmark legislation or even a budget deal. And all those votes on the floor? Most will be meant to influence the November elections.
Welcome to the second session of the 112th Congress, when a divided and unpopular group seems poised to ignore the basic aspects of governing and turn the House and Senate chambers into full-time campaign stumps.
Continue ReadingThe bar is so low that ?even a hard-charging fast-digging mole? couldn?t find it, as Sen. Joe Manchin puts it.
?The gridlock we?ve seen is because of the election cycle, so just think of the election year,? the West Virginia Democrat said grimly. ?If you think this is bad, you ain?t seen nothing yet.?
After all of last year?s drama ? the near government shutdowns, the debt default crisis, the failed supercommittee ? few expect substantive legislation to land on President Barack Obama?s desk in the middle of a polarizing election campaign.
?I?m not optimistic,? said Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Senate Democrats are already talking about scheduling votes to put the eventual GOP nominee in an awkward spot, forcing him to choose between the unpopular congressional wing of his party and more moderate, independent voters. Mitt Romney, for instance, could be forced to take positions on immigration measures backed by Hispanic voters but opposed by his conservative base, as well as populist-tinged economic proposals spending federal dollars to create jobs for first responders and teachers, Democrats say.
House Republicans, in the meantime, want to push proposals to expand energy production and other issues that resonate with wide swaths of the public but divide Obama and his base. They say there is no shortage of anti-regulatory proposals aimed at portraying the Obama administration as harmful to the business community.
?The more you get into the presidential campaigns, the more the Senate becomes an echo chamber for the presidential race, it seems,? said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). ?So that is a negative factor.?
There is a brief window to pass legislation this year ? in order to clean up the mess left over from last year. And the major deal-cutting may wait until the elections are over and for the end-of-the-year lame-duck session, since both the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts to defense and other programs will take place in January 2013 if Congress doesn?t act.
But Congress faces much more immediate deadlines.
Before the end of this month, Congress will have to deal with an extension of Federal Aviation Administration programs in order to avoid a partial shutdown of that agency. Before the end of February, Congress expects to pass an extension of the payroll tax break to avoid seeing taxes go up for 160 million workers, as well as seeing unemployment benefits lapse and reimbursement rates increase for physicians who service Medicare patients. And by the end of March, it?ll be time to extend funding for transportation programs or risk seeing the highway trust fund go bankrupt.
Beyond the other housekeeping items ? a symbolic vote to raise the debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion and extend expiring business and individual tax breaks ? both sides will quickly shift to election-year footing in an attempt to bolster their chances at the polls in November.
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