Posted by Congress Watcher on June 25, 2008 at 4:21 pm · Filed under Ideas
In 2006, Nancy Pelosi, eager to become Speaker of the House, made a terrible promise: “Impeachment is off the table,” she said.
The signal could not have been more clear to George W. Bush: It didn’t matter what he did. He would not be held accountable to the law. Since that time, George W. Bush has acted as if Congress had no authority other than to pass laws - no oversight, and no investigation.
Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich spoke before the House of Representatives yesterday, reminding the body of the consequences of allowing a President to be unaccountable to Congress:
“When the leadership of this House said back in October of 2006 that impeachment is off the table, what they did is they set the stage for the administration ignoring the subpoenas of the Congress for information. Once the administration understood that they did not have to comply with the law and that Congress essentially took away the one power that Congress has to compel the administration to respect Congress as a coequal branch of government, once that was taken away, the administration basically just decided it wasn’t going to appear in front of Congress to answer questions, they wouldn’t produce documents or papers that were relevant to congressional investigations.
Congress is a coequal branch of government. It is urgent that we reestablish our coequality, that we create conditions of a check and balance of administrative abuse of power. This isn’t a Republican matter, it is not a Democratic matter, it is a matter for our country. We need to have the Congress be strong. We need to hold this administration accountable.”
Posted by Congress Watcher on May 12, 2008 at 10:52 am · Filed under All Articles, House legislation, Ideas
With Democrat Henry Waxman as the chair of the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, the committee has been dealing with some of the following issues recently:
- national energy policy
- hospital capacity during emergencies
- the upcoming 2010 census
- corruption at the EPA and Department of Defense
- marine habitat conservation
- tax fraud
- global warming
- military recruitment
- White House coverup and interference with criminal investigations
There is a Republican minority in the House Committee of Government Oversight and Reform, of course. The Republican minority in the committee has a different idea of what kind of oversight and reform needs to take place.
Instead of dealing with the issues listed above, the Republicans are trying to use the oversight commitee to get the federal government to officially recognize 2008 as the Year of the Bible.
Led by Missouri Republican Todd Akin, a group of 30 members of the House of Resolution have cosponsored the effort to get H. CON. RES. 284 to be approved by the House Committee of Government Oversight and Reform. The resolution reads,
“Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That the President is encouraged –
(1) to designate an appropriate year as `The National Year of the Bible’; and
(2) to issue a proclamation calling upon citizens of all faiths to rediscover and apply the priceless, timeless message of the Holy Scriptures which has profoundly influenced and shaped the United States and its great democratic form of self government, as well as its rich spiritual heritage, and which has unified, healed, and strengthened its people for over 200 years.”
Not only does the resolution call for a National Year of the Bible, to apply for non-Christians as well as Christians, but it has the government call upon citizens to spread the Christian religion - the “timeless message of the Holy Scriptures”.
Apparently, the people supporting this resolution have let the Bill of Rights slip their minds. The Bill of Rights clearly forbids the government establishment of religion, yet the resolution encourages people to rediscover the Bible as “Holy Scriptures”, and provides special recognition to the Christian religion for an entire year that other religions have not received. If that isn’t government establishment of religion, nothing is.
Of course, there is another explanation: That the members of the U.S. House who have sponsored this legislation know about the Bill of Rights, but just don’t approve of the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. If that’s the case, this resolution is a fairly transparent attempt to establish a precedent for special government recognition and privileges for Christianity over other religions, and over non-religious ways of life.
Even from within the Christian tradition, this resolution seems insulting. Do Christians really believe that the Bible is such an anemic piece of literature that it needs the support of a nanny government to coddle it and protect it from competing ideas? If you are among those who believe in the Christian God, do you really believe that God is weaker than the Congress of the United States of America? A religion that needs congressional resolutions in order to thrive may not be a religion worth belonging to.
If we really are to believe that God wants the support of the federal government of the United States of America in order for the Christian Bible to be successful, then we must conclude that God is far from omnipotent when it comes to Congress. God needs to get some new lobbyists, because only a small percentage of members of the U.S. House have come to the support of this bill. H. CON. RES. 284 doesn’t seem to have the support of either God or the population of this supposedly “Christian nation”.
The following are the cosponsors of the resolution to officially establish the Christian Bible as the federal government’s religious scripture this year:
Michelle Bachmann
Gresham Barrett
Brian Bilbray
John Boozman
Kevin Brady
Paul Broun
Donna Christensen
Emanuel Cleaver
Howard Coble
Michael Conaway
David Davis
Tom Feeney
Trent Franks
Phil Gingrey
Robin Hayes
Sam Johnson
Jim Jordan
Steve King
Doug Lamborn
Kenny Marchant
Thaddeus McCotter
Marilyn Musgrave
Charles Pickering
Joseph Pitts
Bill Sali
Heath Shuler
Tom Tancredo
Gene Taylor
Tim Walberg
Note that the problem of this profoundly flawed resolution isn’t just a Republican one. There are Democrats in this group: Gene Taylor, Heath Shuler, Donna Christensen and Emanuel Cleaver. Their constituents ought to give them a call (Ring the capitol switchboard at 202 224-3121) and remind them that being a Democrat is supposed to include support for the Constitution and its separation of church and state, established in the Bill of Rights.
Posted by Congressional Aid on April 30, 2008 at 3:24 pm · Filed under Ideas, Senate legislation
Irregular Times reports today on the sponsorship (offering a bill for consideration) and cosponsorship (promoting a bill by signing one’s name) activity by members of the United States Senate in the years 2007-2008, offering figures for 98 Senators that range from a low of 22 bill (co)sponsorships to a high of 469 bill (co)sponsorships. See if you can guess who ranked lowest and who ranked highest in the Senate before you go see for yourself.
The article mentioned that “74.5% of Democratic Senators are located in the top half of the activity rankings, and 76.6% of Republican Senators are located in the bottom half of the activity rankings.” Looking at the figures, another way of expressing the relationship between party and sponsorship/cosponsorship bill activity is to say that being a Democrat is positively correlated (at a level of +0.46) with bill activity. Democrats on average tend to sponsor or cosponsor 89.7 more bills than Republicans. That’s a large substantive difference, but is the explanation of party telling the whole story? No: squaring the correlation tells us that variation in party accounts for only 21.6% of the variation in bill activity.
A 21.6% explanation isn’t awful when trying to predict the thoroughly chaotic behavior of people in groups, but we can do better. I’ve looked at ratings of Senators on an progressive political index at Progressive Patriots, and the correlation between Senators’ progressive action score and Senators’ level of bill activity is higher (+0.69). Just by itself, Senators’ progressivism accounts for 48.0% of the variation in bill activity.
When these two explanatory variables are combined into a single model so we can take a simultaneous look at the separate effects of party and progressivism, a record of progressive action trumps party in explaining the extent of a Senator’s bill activity. The scale of the progressive action score runs from 0 to 100, and the slope of the effect of that score on bill activity is 2.94. Substantively, this means that we can expect a Senator earning a progressive score of 100 to sponsor or cosponsor 294 more bills (2.94 * 100) than a Senator from the same party who earns a progressive score of 0 (2.94 * 0). What about the effect of party, controlling for progressivism? Such effect is very small (and would be considered statistically insignificant if we were making an estimation about a sample rather than the whole population of the Senate). Substantively, the effect of party on bill activity actually runs in the negative direction, meaning that if you compare two senators who are have the same progressive score, the Democrat will tend to have a slightly lower level of bill activity than the Republican (with 24 fewer bills to the Democratic Senator’s credit).
The bottom line is that if you’re wanting to understand why some members of the U.S. Senate are more active in bill sponsorship and promotion than other members, ditch party as an explanation. A much better explanation of that variation is the progressivism that a Senator maintains in his or her legislative conduct.
Lieberman Bushs Poodle Bumper Sticker
Posted by Congress Watcher on April 15, 2008 at 10:39 pm · Filed under All Articles, Ideas, Senate legislation
The energy crisis may be about to get even more desperate, thanks to John McCain. The price of gasoline has gone up by almost two dollars since the 2004 presidential election. Half of that increase has been over just the last year, and gasoline prices are going even higher by the time we reach summer.
What’s John McCain’s bright idea for dealing with this crisis? He thinks he can solve the problem by reducing the price of gasoline by 18.4 cents per gall. 18.4 measly little cents.
Who does McCain think he’s kidding? He thinks he can get people to agree to this plan by calling it a “tax cut”. McCain is proposing legislation to cut federal gasoline taxes, which are, in fact, already the lowest among all the industrial nations on Earth.
It gets worse. Guess where that 18.4 cents per gallon is going to go? It’s not going to go into your pocket. That’s because, as economists explain, a temporary reduction in the price of gasoline will stimulate purchases of gasoline, which will actually drive the price of gasoline up, not down, over the long term. ”
That price increase, without any taxes paid on it, will funnel huge amounts of money into the pockets of big oil corporations. “Higher demand just pushes the world price a bit higher, giving a sizable share of the tax refund to oil producers,” explains Lee Schipper, an energy expert from the University of California.
But where does that money come from? Not out of thin air. It will come from the 10 billion dollar increase in the federal budget deficit that will result from John McCain’s dirty scheme. American taxpayers will have to pay that 10 billion dollars back, plus interest.
A summary of the results of John McCain’s oil scheme:
- You don’t actually pay less for a gallon of gasoline
- The federal budget deficit increases by 10 billion dollars
- Oil companies take the money
- There’s even less gasoline available than before
If this is John McCain’s vision of leadership, American voters need to run away from him as possible, screaming out a warning to anyone who will listen. John McCain promises to take America out of the frying pan, into the fire, and then pour gasoline on it all.
Posted by Congress Watcher on December 16, 2007 at 1:24 pm · Filed under All Articles, House legislation, Ideas, Senate legislation
It’s popular among presidential candidates these days to say that there is no difference between blue states and red states, and that Americans all really want the same thing - to elect the candidate who is speaking. Barack Obama pioneered the message in his 2004 speech at the Democratic presidential convention, but since then, it’s used as a truism by candidates of both political parties.
Of course, a just because something is a truism doesn’t mean it’s true. Often, a truism is just something that seems obviously true because it’s something that people want to believe. The underlying unity of red states and blue states is one of these untrue truisms.
The environmental scorecard by the League of Conservation Voters gives one strong example. The League of Conservation Voters is not a partisan organization, exactly. However, the organization does promote environmental policies, and in doing so, it ends up promoting an agenda that is more often associated with Democrats than Republicans.
This trend is seen quite easily in looking at the state delegation scores in the LCV National Environmental Scorecard, which tracks how members of Congress vote on environmental legislation. Blue state delegations to the House of Representatives get an average LCV legislative score of 74.05 percent. Blue state delegations to the U.S. Senate do even better, getting an average legislative score of 78.31 percent.
Red state delegations to Congress don’t do nearly as well. Red state delegations to the House average only a score of 28.96 percent. Red state delegations to the Senate do even worse averaging only 26.8 percent.
That’s a gap in the LCV legislative score of 45 percent in the House, and 51.5 percent in the Senate. No difference between red states and blue states? That’s not what the record in Congress shows.
Blue states are progressive states, and they chose the Democratic candidate in 2008. If you care about the environment, you can trust blue state judgment much more than you can trust the judgment of red states.
For right now, the best option for voting Green is voting Blue.
(Source: League of Conservation Voters, National Environmental Scorecard, 2006)
Posted by Congressional Aid on August 10, 2006 at 1:25 pm · Filed under All Articles, House legislation, Ideas
Backgrounder on Cosponsorship
:
Part I: What is Cosponsorship?
Part II: Do Political Players Believe Cosponsorship Matters?
Part III: Is Cosponsorship A Consequential Congressional Activity?
Cosponsorship is not only important by reputation; the act has also been demonstrated to have a consistent legislative impact (Campbell 1982; Wilson and Young 1997). The number of cosponsors for bills passing the House is greater than the number of cosponsors for bills that were voted down (Wilson and Young 1997: 32). This should not be taken as an indication that cosponsorship leads directly to bill success. Rather, cosponsorship seems to help grab the attention of fellow legislators at a particular stage of the legislative process. The number of cosponsorships of a bill is positively and significantly associated with the probability that a bill gains some consideration by a committee rather than simply being “killed” (taken out of consideration). However, the number of cosponsorships is not significantly associated with the probability of a bill’s passage out of the House when the passage of a bill out of committee is controlled for (Wilson and Young 1997: 35-39).
There are two implications of these findings about cosponsorship. First, such findings are not surprising when considering that cosponsorships occur during committee consideration but are not allowed during consideration by the entire House. If cosponsorships represent the pattern of growing support during the period of committee consideration, they should be more associated with committee decisions than full decisions of the House. Second, in conjunction with the finding that cosponsorship activity decreases with House seniority (Campbell 1982; Krehbiel 1995), this finding suggests that the ultimate importance of cosponsorship may be as an exercise in coalition-building to produce change outside the traditional power structure of party and committee leadership. By this definition, cosponsorship efforts are analogous to social movements, even though these efforts occur in the very halls of power from which traditional social movements are often excluded.
As David Mayhew has pointed out, the coalitions represented by cosponsorships could conceivably be simple “paper” coalitions, in which the addition of support is a costless activity requiring little follow-up (Mayhew 1974). To the contrary, however, cosponsorship often seems involve the dedication of time and effort by cosponsors to the passage of the bill of focus. During one hearing alone, six cosponsors of the Marriage Tax Elimination Act rose to speak in its favor (Hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee, 1/28/98). Although it has been said that talk is cheap, the energy spent on the writing and delivery of speeches and on other communications by legislators or their staffs is taken from a limited reserve that could be expended elsewhere. That multiple sponsorship was a common occurrence (especially in an age before easy photocopies, when its practice meant the drafting of an entirely new bill) also suggests that cosponsorship has some importance worthy of effort. The sacrifice of this energy for the cause of a bill indicates the existence of a meaningful coalition.
In sum, evidence of cosponsorship’s substantive importance in congressional politics takes a number of forms. Before the legalization of cosponsorship, legislators devised elaborate and expensive forms of multiple sponsorship that fulfilled cosponsorship’s function. Cosponsorship is an activity that occurs rather often, although the frequency of cosponsorship varies widely from bill to bill and legislator to legislator. Both members of Congress and those that petition them regularly express their belief in the importance of cosponsorship to the legislative process. Finally, the number of cosponsorships of a bill has been shown to be positively and significantly related to the probability of a bill’s passage out of committee. It is fair to conclude that cosponsorship is a significant political event.
References:
Campbell, James. 1982. “Cosponsoring Legislation in the U.S. Congress.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 3: 415-422.
Krehibel, Keith. 1995. “Cosponsors and Wafflers from A to Z.” American Journal of Political Science 39: 906-923.
Mayhew, David. 1974. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Wilson, Rick K. and Cheryl D. Young. 1997. “Cosponsorship in the U.S. Congress.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 12: 25-43
Colorado Red State Blue Voter Button
Posted by Congressional Aid on August 1, 2006 at 3:53 pm · Filed under All Articles, House legislation, Ideas, Personalities, Senate legislation
Last week, I started a “Backgrounder” series on one of the most often ignored, but crucially telling, legislative practices: cosponsorship. Cosponsorship, the voluntary addition of a congressperson’s name to a bill before the Congress, provides everyday citizens like us a way of tracking the spread and extent of congressional coalitions on an issue.
To continue the cosponsorship backgrounder, this week I’ll consider the question, “Do political players believe cosponsorship matters?”
Do political players believe cosponsorship matters? Let’s look at some recent history, going back a bit to the 1960s and up to the 1990s. In the 1950s and 1960s, cosponsorship in the House of Representatives was prohibited in its modern sense. And yet, House members found it to be so important that they would develop a procedure to make an end run around the prohibition: multiple sponsorship, or the introduction of identical bills by different members of Congress as a way of demonstrating support for a legislative initiative (Congressional Record 1967: 10712). The willingness of legislators to wholly reintroduce legislation in order to register their support for it indicates that cosponsorship, or its equivalent, has long played an important role in the legislative process.
Cosponsorship has a strong reputation on and around Capital Hill for its supposed impact on legislative outcomes. Comments made by Rep. William Colmer of Mississippi in support of the bill that formalized cosponsorship reflect that reputation:
The cosponsorship of a bill adds prestige and strength to proposed legislation. For there is strength in unity. The proposal is given status by numbers (Congressional Record 1967: 10710).
Legislators themselves regularly cite cosponsors attached to their bill when appealing for action on the measure. In a typical appeal, Rep. Brian Flaherty of Connecticut made a mention of cosponsorship regarding his bill H.R. 4179, which dealt with the “federalization of state drivers’ licenses”:
We need quick enactment of H.R. 4179, sponsored by Mr. [Robert] Barr, who sits on this subcommittee, and a bipartisan group of cosponsors. While I realize that you are in the waning days of this session, this section of the law is so egregious that it merits an expeditious appeal. (Hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on National Economic Growth, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs, 9/17/98).
Rep. Michael Oxley of Ohio made sure on the same day to mention the support of 59 cosponsoring members of the House when appealing for the passage of H.R. 3783, which would have required screening of adult content on the Internet (Hearing of the House Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection, 9/17/98). Like most bill authors, Rep. Joseph Kennedy of Massachusetts sent out a “Dear Colleague” letter to explicitly solicit the cosponsorship of a bill that would shut down the controversial School of the Americas:
This is a familiar pattern: a story comes out about violence or oppression in Latin America, and the names of the School of the Americas graduates emerges. Once again the US is shamed. It is time we dissociate ourselves with the School of the Americas once and for all. Join 129 of your colleagues in closing down the School by becoming a cosponsor of H.R. 611. To cosponsor, call Robert Gerber at 5-5111 (Dear Colleague Letter, Rep. Joseph Kennedy, 1/12/98).
Like his colleagues mentioned above, Rep. Wally Herger mentioned his collection of 155 cosponsors for H.R. 2593, the Marriage Penalty Relief Act. Herger further noted the numbers of Democratic and Republican cosponsors as an indication of bipartisanship. He also mentioned his cosponsorship of Rep. Weller’s Marriage Tax Elimination Act (H.R. 3734) as a way to “make clear for the record” his support for Weller’s alternative bill (Hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee, 1/28/98).
Petitioners for policy relief from outside the Congress also seem to cite cosponsorship as a way of bolstering their appeals to lawmakers. Charles Kruse, President of the Missouri Farm Bureau, made his feelings about cosponsorship clear when asking for the institution of tax-exempt FAARM accounts through H.R. 3659:
I ask each and every member of the Small Business Committee to get behind FAARM accounts. They aren’t a substitute for the short-term help needed by farmers this year, but they are just as important. Please cosponsor H.R. 3659 if you haven’t already (Hearing of the House Small Business Committee, 9/16/98).
At their web site, the Gun Owners of America maintain a Legislative Action Center. In this center, the GOA staff uses the Capitol Advantage service to keep a current list of House and Senate bills related to the second amendment, with complete rosters of cosponsors attached. This has been a longtime service that GOA has offered in some form for years. Before they subscribed to Capitol Advantage (when they maintained their vigilance over cosponsorship themselves), the GOA described cosponsorship thusly to their members:
Gaining cosponsors is an important part of the legislative process. Bills with cosponsors are more likely to be passed from committee to a floor vote. If your Representative has not cosponsored the important legislation below, please call, write, fax or e-mail and ask him or her to do so (Gun Owners of America 1999).
For each bill, the GOA also offers a sample letter that ends with the words “Please cosponsor this important legislation.” Web sites similarly urging cosponsorship are maintained by organizations as varied as Americans for Democratic Action, the American Iron and Steel Institute, the Arkansas Hospital Association, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Community Action Foundation, and Peace Action.
In short, the guarded and unguarded expressions of political operators inside and outside the Congress indicate the centrality of cosponsorship to the legislative process. To them, cosponsorship does matter.
Posted by Congressional Aid on July 6, 2006 at 6:29 am · Filed under All Articles, House campaigns, Ideas, Personalities, Power Plays, Senate campaigns
Jeff Zeleny in the Chicago Tribune wrote yet another piece yesterday in the Chicago Tribune on Rahm Emanuel’s attempt to nix Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy. Dean, head of the Democratic Party as chair of the Democratic National Committee, has decided that in order to pursue long-term success, the Democratic Party should strive to compete in all fifty states, and eventually in every district — in other words, to run a viable House candidate in every district and a viable Senate candidate in every state.
Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? Well, the Republicans certainly think so. For decades, starting when they were in a teensy minority, the Republican Party put energy into races and candidates in all fifty states, including races in regions that everybody “knew” were solidly Democratic — like, oh, the South, which everybody “knows” now is solidly Republican. Campaigns start productive debates in localities, even when the Democrat loses. By running viable candidates for office in places where the Republicans are strong, the Democrats also force the Republicans to devote their resources to combat such candidates. As it stands now, the Republicans don’t even have to worry about congressional races in a huge number of places, and so are free to spend their money elsewhere in races that are important to them.
Why in the name of good sense would Rahm Emanuel oppose Howard Dean’s move to take the fight to all states and districts? “Oppose” is actually a kind word: Emanuel’s throwing a veritable hissy fit over the Dean plan. To figure out why, you have to know Emanuel’s position. While Howard Dean is leader of the entire Democratic Party and therefore has an interest in its overall success, Rahm Emanuel is leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which oversees campaigns in the House of Representatives alone. Emanuel’s power comes from getting money to successful candidates for the House, who then are indebted to him when they come to Capitol Hill. It does no good for Emanuel if money goes to unsuccessful candidates, since losing candidates won’t help him win races. The best bet for Emanuel, if he’s thinking of himself and his own power, is for money to go to candidates who he already knows will win, or who he thinks have a really good chance of winning. Hence, Emanuel tries to undercut the 50-state strategy and get money more focused on the races of use to him.
Circumstantial evidence to support this notion lies in Zeleny’s reporting: he has found that support for Rahm Emanuel’s strategy lies mainly within the DC beltway, where incumbents of course want more campaign money to flow to them. Support for Howard Dean’s strategy lies outside the DC beltway, where hundreds of Democratic Party candidates are looking for help in their attempts to unseat entrenched Republican party politicians.
Rahm Emanuel’s done a good job of placing himself near the center of power. But that’s not the same as saying he’s doing a good job in looking out for the interests of the Democratic party. For the good of the Democratic Party, I hope that Howard Dean’s vision prevails.
Posted by Congressional Aid on June 26, 2006 at 7:08 am · Filed under All Articles, Ideas, Personalities, Senate legislation
After two months of waiting, I finally received a letter back from the office of North Carolina Senator Elizabeth Dole regarding George W. Bush’s program at the National Security Agency to engage in wiretapping of Americans’ phones without warrants. In that letter, she excuses Bush’s behavior with a variety of weasel words.
Dole starts out by using the moniker “terrorist surveillance program,” as if the only people being spied upon are actual terrorists. But the people being spied on are those suspected — without enough evidence to warrant a warrant — of being terrorists, not proven terrorists. What’s more, people who are associated with suspects are spied upon, too, and people who talk to associates of suspects…. Expand this web outward, and pretty these “terrorists” start to look like you and me.
Dole moves on to say that
The U.S. Constitution, however, makes protecting our nation from foreign attack the president’s most solemn duty.
No, no it doesn’t. Go ahead and read the Constitution itself. Article II, Section I — the part of the Constitution most particularly regarding the president — says nothing about defense from foreign attack. Instead, it refers to the President’s Oath of Office: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The U.S. Constitution makes protecting our nation’s Constitution the president’s most solemn duty.
This matters for Senator Elizabeth Dole’s last set of weasel words: “the civil liberties of law-abiding citizens have not been diminished.” She very carefully avoids writing that “the civil liberties of citizens have not been diminished,” and the determination of whether an object of surveillance has broken a law is suspended, since there is no involvement of a criminal court — and as much as Dole would like us to forget this, in the United States of America a person is innocent until proven guilty. The Constitution of the United States of America, and its associated liberties, apply to all people within the borders of the United States, not just people who George W. Bush has decided are law-abiding, and not just citizens.
Taken together, these weasel words (or, if they are meant sincerely, betrayals of profound ignorance) indicate that the state of North Carolina has in office a dangerously anti-constitutional Senator. It will be a test of the integrity of North Carolina to see whether its residents remove Dole from office at the next available opportunity.
Tammy Baldwin for Congress Bumper Sticker
Posted by Congress Watcher on June 19, 2006 at 2:07 pm · Filed under All Articles, Ideas
It’s a strange and sometimes ugly thing to watch old pro-war Democrats in Congress finally come around full circle to oppose the war, only to find that they are now opposing themselves. Back in 2002, these Democrats made the political calculation that they needed to vote in favor of authorizing Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Now, these same Democrats are regretting that decision, but finding it next to impossible to put it in the past.
That doesn’t stop them from trying, of course, but the results are sometimes a little awkward.
Take Democrat Nita Lowey, a generally progressive member of the House of Representatives who really should have known better than to vote in favor of starting the Iraq War. But she did it, and now she can never take it back. It’s a black mark on her permanent letter.
That doesn’t stop Lowey from trying to place the blame for her mistake elsewhere. In her book, the problem was all with George W. Bush. On her re-election campaign web site, Lowey writes, “The President rushed to war based on false and faulty intelligence against the protests of the vast majority of our allies. Warnings from U.S. commanders about troop levels and equipment went unheeded.”
Oh, there was a rush to war alright, and Representative Lowey is right that warnings went unheeded. The problem is that Lowey was part of the problem. Lowey helped with the rush to war. Lowey did not heed the warnings.
George W. Bush is to blame for the Iraq War, but so is Nita Lowey. It is time that she, and other pro-war Democrats who helped to start the war, admit responsibility and apologize.
Senator John Kerry has led the way in offering such a mea culpa. Last week, Kerry said, “It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake - to say the simple words that contain more truth than pride … It was wrong and I was wrong to vote for that Iraqi war resolution.”
That’s a welcome admission from Senator Kerry that helps to make up for the damage that Kerry and other Democrats inflicted upon America in 2002 with their pro-war votes. Let’s hope that other members of the House and Senate, like Nita Lowey and Hillary Clinton, see the error of their ways and offer similar apologies.
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