Today in Washington D. C. - July 18, 2008

On The Floor: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has indicated the Senate has a lot to do in the next week, including passing a tax extenders bill, voting on several energy proposals, potentially considering a second stimulus package sent from the House, and passing a continuing resolution to fund the government. Yet Reid is apparently looking to return to an omnibus bill (S. 3297) he put together back in July consisting of measures Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) has objected to, mostly over spending concerns.

Yesterday, the Senate passed the fiscal 2009 Defense authorization bill (S. 3001). Last night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed cloture on the motion to proceed to his omnibus bill and on the motion to proceed to a shell (H.R. 6049) for the Senate’s tax extenders compromise. If no agreement is reached between Reid and Coburn, a vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to the omnibus bill is likely Friday.

The House yesterday passed Representative Childers' D.C. gun ban repeal verses the anti-gun bill sponsored by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton -- which would have allowed D.C. to continue enacting gun control. But The Washington Post reports that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is vowing to block the legislation from moving in the Senate. A seperate Gun Owners of America call to action follows this post.

From Senate & News Sources: Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said today that “Americans are reading stories about our economy and they are looking for answers. They are looking for leadership.” It’s unfortunate that the Democrat leadership in Congress hasn’t shown much.

After starting yesterday comparing President Bush and Sen. John McCain to “the ghost of Herbert Hoover,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spent time in the afternoon castigating Bush for his handling of the economy and blaming his administration for the current financial crisis. However, even casual reviews of the facts are already reveiling that Democrats were behind the policies and were the primary financial beneficiaries of the banking, lending, and investment practices that are presently assaulting our economy. While Reid points a finger, in realty, four fingers are pointing back at both he and his cronies.

ABC News reports that when Reid was asked yesterday about what Congress could do in this situation and Reid replied, “No one knows what to do. We are in new territory here. This is a different game.” Indeed, Bloomberg reports that “[t]he Democratic-controlled Congress, acknowledging that it isn’t equipped to lead the way to a solution for the financial crisis and can’t agree on a path to follow, is likely to just get out of the way” and adjourn until after the elections. So apparently Reid knows what the president should have done, but not Congress.

Democrats in the Senate have spent a lot of time complaining about a lack of leadership from Republicans when they hold up questionable legislation they claim is bipartisan. Yet this week we find Democrat senators blocking important legislation with bipartisan support. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill to bring Washington, D.C.’s gun laws into compliance with this year’s Supreme Court ruling that they were unconstitutionally restrictive. The Heritage Foundation’s James Jay Carafano notes that E-Verify, “a system that allows employers to verify electronically whether their newly hired employees are legally authorized to work in the United States” expires at the end of November unless Congress reauthorizes it. But the bill to reauthorize the program, which passed with over 400 votes in the House, is stuck in the Senate, because of demands by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) that could derail the bill.

Democrats took over Congress in 2007 boasting of their judgment on Iraq and proceeded to criticize and attempt to hobble the troop surge. They repeatedly cited surveys showing the public disapproved of how the war was being handled and disagreed with the decision to boost troop levels to allow for a revamped counterinsurgency strategy. Today, there is a very interesting New York Times/CBS News poll showing for the first time that a majority of respondents said the surge “is making the situation in Iraq better.” Not only that, for the first time since February 2005, a majority also said that U.S. efforts “to bring stability and order to Iraq” were going very well or somewhat well. This is only the second time that a majority responded this way since the first year of the war. But if Democrats had their way, it’s unlikely we’d have seen such progress towards stability in Iraq. Americans are looking for leadership, but they might want to consider Democrats’ track record if they’re looking towards Congress.

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