WASHINGTON – Congress returns from its August recess today vowing to rush through a bundle of important bills before the November election.
Measures to carry out recommendations from the Sept. 11 commission and increase domestic security are on the agenda. So is legislation on transportation, energy, education, health and jobs programs and extending President Bush’s tax cuts. There is also likely to be a huge omnibus spending bill laden with federal projects considered dear to the hearts of local voters.
After eight months of partisan gridlock earlier in the year, lawmakers say they are ready to make up for lost time.
But even though Republicans and Democrats alike feel pressure to show voters they can be productive, many privately concede it will be hard to accomplish in a brief election-eve session what could not be done earlier.
And some analysts warn that legislating under such pressure may not yield good results – especially in high profile but complex areas such as anti-terrorism and intelligence reform.
“They’re going to try to get more done in the next month than they’ve accomplished in the last year,” said Keith Ashdown, vice president of policy for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a watchdog group.
“If it is a rush in the eleventh hour of the legislative session to get a bill passed that’s very important, it definitely leads to opportunities for bad legislation,” he said.
That concern is particularly acute where domestic security and the Sept. 11 commission reforms are concerned.
“The political pressures on homeland security are going to be huge, and everyone will have the need at least to be seen to be doing something,” University of Pennsylvania political scientist Don Kettl said. The result could be action that “looks good in the short run and makes things worse in the long run.”
“This is precisely the wrong time, given the political pressures, to try to solve the long-term problems,” he said.
In fact, say some analysts, the coming session may end up being most of all about politically charged window dressing, regardless of the importance of some of the pending bills.
Already, House Republicans are planning to bring up the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, according to Stuart Roy, spokesman for House Majority leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.
If the coming session does not go beyond such political gestures, the 108th Congress will have a slender record to show for this year. And polls show voters have noticed: A recent Gallup survey found that only 42 percent of respondents approve of the way Congress is doing its job, while 52 percent disapprove.
Thus far, Congress has passed only one of 13 spending bills – to fund Pentagon programs – for the 2005 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.
President Bush has signed into law legislation toughening penalties for identity theft and making it a separate crime to harm an embryo or fetus during the commission of a violent federal crime against a woman. A number of trade agreements also have been approved.
So has legislation protecting turtles, a slew of bills renaming post offices, and scores of other uncontroversial measures.
Meantime, Congress has yet to pass the overall budget resolution for fiscal 2005, and few think it will do so now, relying instead on continuing resolutions to keep the government operating.
The House, where Republicans command a solid majority and the rules give the controlling party greater freedom to act, has approved more bills. But many of the measures had such a partisan cast that they had little chance of winning Senate approval.
The subjects most likely to get serious attention in coming weeks are domestic security and the reform recommendations of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission.
In fact, the first order of business is expected to be funding of domestic security programs. The House has approved a $32 billion bill; the Senate Appropriations Committee also has recommended $32 billion, which still must be approved by the full Senate.
“There will be great pressure to pass the Homeland Security appropriations bill so that members can assure voters they have done their duty in keeping America safe,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, an Arlington, Va.-based budget watchdog group.
But Bixby expressed concern that Congress will use “legitimate concerns about domestic security as a cover for dispensing election-year goodies.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., plan to introduce a bill today that would put virtually all the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission – which both men fought hard to create – into legislative language.
Many of the proposed reforms are politically sensitive, however, and involve complex policy issues as well – especially the restructuring of the intelligence community to meet the needs of the post-Cold War world, most notably counterterrorism.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
