Nancy Has a New Deal for You!

Nancy Pelosi is, once again, the Speaker of the House in the New Deal Obama Congress. When she became speaker back in January 2007, she had an agenda for the first 100 hours that included: enacting the 9/11 Commission's recommendations; increasing the minimum wage; allowing embryonic stem cell research; negotiating lower prescriptions prices; cutting interest rates on student loans; and investing in renewable energy. Speaker Pelosi also vowed to govern a fairer and more bipartisan House of Representatives.

By May, 2007 the most notable accomplishment Speaker Pelosi could actually put into her column was increasing the minimum wage. WOW!! In an attempt to minimize their lack of legislative productivity, the Democrat leadership underscored the fact that they had produced transformation of the policy debate and the reassertion of Congressional power, especially on the Iraq war. And what about the kinder, fairer House of Representatives...One of the biggest Republican complaints was that House Democrats, who promised to be fairer and more bipartisan in the conduct of floor debate after a decade of heavy-handed Republican rule, had not delivered. A truth that some top Democrats conceded was true. At the end of 2007, Congressional approval ratings were at a low of 27%.

In January 2008 the Farm bill looked like it might be the only big-ticket bill that Congress would pass to President Bush for signature. Republicans and Democrats alike predicted even less legislative agreement ahead than in 2007. And the song and dance from the Democrats was that operating on a thin majority it was soooo hard to get things done (Sob, sob).

At the end of the 110th Congressional session, the Democratic majority had managed to work out agreements with President Bush and the Republican minority on only a few big items, including a minimum-wage increase, a plan to raise auto fuel-efficiency standards, a free-trade pact with Peru, and student-loan relief. And the congressional approval rating had fallen to a year average of 19%.

So now that the inmates have free run of the asylum, what is on the agenda for 2009? San Fran Nan is now tweaking the rules to be sure that she is Dictator of the House. Rules changes already having been rapidly put into place include eliminating the term limits for Committee Chairmen that were enacted during the Contract with America, restrictions on the motion to recommit and sweeping changes hobbling the ability to propose tax or spending cuts to legislation.

The motion to recommit has been in place for about 100 years. It is a maneuver that the minority party can use to send bills that reach the floor back to committees, where they can be endlessly debated. There are few tools that the House of Representatives has at hand to stifle legislation from moving through the process and the motion to recommit was one of these. This was used 50 times last year by the GOP to stave off tax hikes hidden in other legislation. The Democrat leadership have their knickers in a knot because they didn't use this rule nearly as often as the Republicans, (not our fault that they didn't take advantage of the tools of the trade) so now they have put a hobble on its use. The new rules would give the minority the right to a vote on sending the bill back to committee WITHOUT instructions on policy changes, or to ask for those policy changes while the bill remains on the House floor.

The most problematic change in rules that Madam Nan has produced in her new ruthless House of Representatives is in the introduction of tax and spending cuts. While BHO is willing to throw money hand over fist at our economic woes without thought of the huge deficit this will amass, the House of Representatives is also making sure that spending and tax cuts are difficult to get into legislation. The new rules will ensure that tax increases will be easier to pass, because opponents will not be allowed to offer a simple motion to strike any increase without making up for the "lost revenue." In addition, tax cuts are made more difficult, because they cannot be offset with spending cuts. The new rules will mean that the only way to push for a tax cut will be to propose a tax increase elsewhere.

So hold onto your wallets guys and dolls, the Hope and Change mantra that BHO used to win an election seems to be envisioned by the Belle of San Francisco as "I HOPE that all you have left is loose CHANGE!"