November 15, 2006
Wednesday

A good reason for voters to turn as they did on the old Congress is that it didn't work very much or very hard when it did. As a result, the lawmakers returned Monday to face a ton of unfinished business. A gracious ending to an otherwise sour session would be to finish it.

A strong focus on the task at hand is probably too much to expect. However, Democrats likely will be preoccupied with planning for their takeover in January, and the Republicans probably don't much care anymore.

Lame duck sessions are notoriously inefficient, and this Congress, still in Republican hands until the end of the year, is led by two lame ducks, Speaker Dennis Hastert who is leaving the House leadership and Sen. Bill Frist who is leaving the Senate altogether.

Bush left Tuesday for an Asian economic conference and it would be a useful gesture of support for the president, who, let us not forget, is still in charge of U.S. foreign policy for the next two years, if Congress passed a pending bill normalizing trade relations with Vietnam and a civil nuclear treaty with India.

The lawmakers should also extend a package of expiring tax breaks - R&D credits, deductions for tuition and sales taxes. There is little disagreement over the tax breaks but they never got passed because of partisan gamesmanship over the estate tax and minimum wage. Those issues can be put over to next year.

What should not be put over until next year, but sadly might be, are 11 of the 13 spending bills necessary to run the government for the current fiscal year that Congress couldn't bring itself to pass by the September deadline. The lawmakers did pass defense and homeland security funding measures but the bills that fund the entire rest of the government, $460 billion altogether, remain un-passed.

However, it is said that Republicans are considering a continuing resolution, which allows the government to continue spending at last year's levels, until January, effectively dumping the whole mess into the lap of the Democrats.

This really would be an abdication of responsibility. But the Republican-led Congress has done this kind of thing before and Tuesday paid the price for it. Democrats take note.

Publish A Letter on SitNews         Read Letters/Opinions
Submit A Letter to the Editor

Sitnews
Stories In The News
Ketchikan, Alaska