Tag: Congress

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Congress slow to authorize ISIS fight

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JUNE 28, 2015, 10:19 PM    LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2015, 10:21 PM
BY HERB JACKSON
RECORD COLUMNIST  |
THE RECORD

Swept into power by Tea Party-inspired crowds demanding stricter adherence to the Constitution, the Republican-controlled Congress has decided not to exercise one of the powers clearly given to the legislative branch by the Founding Fathers: the power to declare war.

Even when there is overwhelming support, resolutions authorizing military force are never simple, as members know they are making choices that history will prove to be right or wrong. Debates can last days, as nearly every lawmaker gets his or her say before voting.

But in the case of the battle against the group known as the Islamic State, ISIS or ISIL, congressional leaders seem to be content to let President Obama operate without a specific authorization.

Opinion appears divided, with some in Congress wanting a more aggressive response than Obama has provided to date, and others wanting to see a clear endgame before endorsing an extension of what has already been nearly 14 years of war in Iraq.

So far, the push for Congress to debate these questions, however, has come from a minority that includes strict adherents to the Constitution, like Republican Rep. Scott Garrett, and lawmakers who regret their votes to invade Iraq more than a decade ago, like Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/jackson-congress-slow-to-authorize-isis-fight-1.1364841

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Congress Bought and Paid For Passes Trade Promotion Authority bill

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Here’s how much corporations paid US senators to fast-track the TPP bill

Robert Gibson and Taylor Channing

*Out of the total $1,148,971 given, an average of $17,676.48 was donated to each of the 65 “yea” votes.
*The average Republican member received $19,673.28 from corporate TPP supporters.

*The average Democrat received $9,689.23 from those same donors.
*The amounts given rise dramatically when looking at how much each senator running for re-election received.

Critics of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership are unlikely to be silenced by an analysis of the flood of money it took to push the pact over its latest hurdle.
A decade in the making, the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is reaching its climax and as Congress hotly debates the biggest trade deal in a generation, its backers have turned on the cash spigot in the hopes of getting it passed.

Barack Obama given ‘fast-track’ authority over trade deal negotiations

“We’re very much in the endgame,” US trade representative Michael Froman told reporters over the weekend at a meeting of the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on the resort island of Boracay. His comments came days after TPP passed another crucial vote in the Senate.

That vote, to give Barack Obama the authority to speed the bill through Congress, comes as the president’s own supporters, senior economists and a host of activists have lobbied against a pact they argue will favor big business but harm US jobs, fail to secure better conditions for workers overseas and undermine free speech online.

Those critics are unlikely to be silenced by an analysis of the sudden flood of money it took to push the pact over its latest hurdle.

Fast-tracking the TPP, meaning its passage through Congress without having its contents available for debate or amendments, was only possible after lots of corporate money exchanged hands with senators. The US Senate passed Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) – the fast-tracking bill – by a 65-33 margin on 14 May. Last Thursday, the Senate voted 62-38 to bring the debate on TPA to a close.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/27/corporations-paid-us-senators-fast-track-tpp

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Donors start backing Josh Gottheimer of Wyckoff as potential Garrett challenger for Congress

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ABC News Photo

MAY 4, 2015, 5:37 PM    LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, MAY 4, 2015, 5:39 PM
BY HERB JACKSON
WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT |
THE RECORD

Top veterans of the Clinton and Obama administrations are lining up to help raise money for Josh Gottheimer of Wyckoff, a former speech writer for President Clinton who is preparing to run for Congress next year against Rep. Scott Garrett.

Gottheimer, 40, raised more than $219,000 in March and was set to add to that on Monday night at a fund-raiser at the Washington, D.C., home in of Patti Solis Doyle, a former adviser to then-first lady Hillary Clinton and to President Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

Other names among the 28 hosts for the fund-raiser include Mack McLarty, who was President Clinton’s chief of staff; Julius Genachowski, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission; Sandy Berger, former national security adviser to Clinton; Paul Begala, Clinton political strategist and media commentator; and Jennifer Palmieri, communications director of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

The outpouring of support for a challenger is unprecedented this early in the campaign cycle in the Republican-leaning 5th District, a place Democrats in North Jersey have repeatedly said they could win if a candidate could raise enough money to define Garrett on New York television.

Gottheimer is a North Caldwell native who moved back to North Jersey with his family three years ago. A corporate strategist for Microsoft, he previously worked for the FCC and on the presidential campaigns of John Kerry in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in 2008.

https://www.northjersey.com/news/donors-start-backing-wyckoff-man-as-potential-garrett-challenger-for-congress-1.1325275

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FCC Chair Refuses to Testify before Congress ahead of Net Neutrality Vote

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FCC Chair Refuses to Testify before Congress ahead of Net Neutrality Vote

by ANDREW JOHNSON

February 25, 2015 10:19 AM

Two prominent House committee chairs are “deeply disappointed” in Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler for refusing to testify before Congress as “the future of the Internet is at stake.” Wheeler’s refusal to go before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday comes on the eve of the FCC’s vote on new Internet regulations pertaining to net neutrality.

The committee’s chairman, Representative Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah), and Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton (R., Mich.) criticized Wheeler and the administration for lacking transparency on the issue.

Read more at: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/414380/fcc-chair-refuses-testify-congress-ahead-net-neutrality-vote-andrew-johnson

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Most diverse Congress in history with the largest black Republican class in Congress since the Reconstruction era

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Rep.-elect Mia Love (Utah)

Most diverse Congress in history with the largest black Republican class in Congress since the Reconstruction era
By Peter Sullivan – 01/05/15 05:35 PM EST

A wave of new lawmakers is arriving on Capitol Hill, with the most diverse Congress ever set to take power.

Republicans swell the ranks following their midterm gains, but there is more to members than just party affiliation. In that spirit, The Hill took a look at the composition, attributes and quirks of the voting members in the new 114th Congress.

There is a record number of female lawmakers at 104, alongside 430 men, following the departure of former Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.).

Rep.-elect Mia Love (Utah) is making history as the first black Republican woman in Congress. Love, fellow Rep.-elect Will Hurd (Texas) and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) also are part of the largest black Republican class in Congress since the Reconstruction era. There will be 46 black lawmakers in the new Congress.

Hispanic lawmakers will number 33, with 30 in the House and three senators. Twelve Asian-Americans will also serve, with 11 in the House and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) in the upper chamber. There are two lawmakers of Native American ancestry, both from Oklahoma, Reps. Tom Cole (R) and Markwayne Mullin (R).

Lawmakers have an average age of 57. The Senate is older than the House, with an average age of 61 to the lower chamber’s 57. Democrats on average are older than Republicans in both chambers, at 62 to 60 in the Senate and 59 to 54 in the House.

https://thehill.com/homenews/news/228534-114th-congress-by-the-numbers

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The Trouble with Getting Congress Working Again

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The Trouble with Getting Congress Working Again 

Having deprived Congress of regular order for nearly the entire tenure of the current administration, Harry Reid and his cohorts have milked every partisan advantage from this circumstance that they could possibly dream up. The same goes for his shamelessly executed plan to eliminate the Senate filibuster rule, so helpful in ushering committed statists and hardcore political progressives into important appointive federal government posts by depriving the political opposition of their only effective means of applying political leverage during the Senate confirmation process.

Senator Reid now stands ready to take full political advantage of his political opponent’s stated desire to restore Regular Order in the federal budgetary process, and to bring back the filibuster rule. Come January, leaders in the new majority party in the Senate will (or at least should) be torn between two different goals or aspirations, each with its own unique merits:

On the one hand, they will wish to repair the institutional damage done to the Senate and restore its potency as a strong and independent actor in our republican form of government under the U.S. Constitution. This means moving Congress out from underneath the dark cloud of executive branch dominance that has overspread all of Washington D.C. in recent year, as well as re-establishing the unique power of a single senator to stand in the way of ill-advised legislative measures, to the chagrin and consternation of reason-blind ideologues who rely on group-think and public shaming techniques to achieve their public policy goals.

On the other hand, they will wish to make of Congress an even greater and more insurmountable obstacle to the current administration’s stated goal of fundamentally transforming this country. Along the way, they will also be eager to cooperate freely with the House of Representatives to pass a series of clean bills for the president to sign or veto (most likely the latter) that will serve to draw into the starkest possible relief two competing and contrasting visions for how this country should move forward. To be the beneficiary of such an historic mid-term electoral landslide without then seizing and exploiting every available partisan advantage would be to appear naive and unwilling to engage in the largest and most momentous political struggle this country has seen since the Adams versus Jefferson ‘Clash of the Titans’ circa 1797-1800 (culminating, of course, with Jefferson’s historic inauguration, preceded that day by the remarkable scene of a humiliated but still office-holding John Adams emerging from the cavernous new executive mansion in the pre-dawn mist, hailing a ride in a passing public carriage like any other ordinary citizen, and high-tailing it back to New England to enjoy the rest of his life as America’s first one-term president).

So to say that Mitch McConnell could (or at least should) be experiencing mixed feelings about acting in good faith to restore the filibuster rule as it applies to Senate debates, or to plot a return to Regular Order in support of the Constitutionally-required process of preparing and passing an annual budget for federal governmental outlays, is the understatement of this rapidly ending but remarkable year.

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How to Rebuke a President

How to Rebuke a President

Censure-plus.

DEC 1, 2014, VOL. 20, NO. 12 • BY JAY COST


For responding to a president who defies his constitutional limits, Congress is said to possess four powers: to impeach, to defund, to investigate, and to withhold confirmation of nominees.

But there is a fifth recourse, which the new Republican Congress might consider in view of President Obama’s executive amnesty for illegal immigrants: the power to censure. In fact, censure could work in tandem with Congress’s other powers, helping the legislature make the moral case for responding to the president’s lawlessness.

Presidential censure is a rare occurrence. Most notably, in 1834, the Whig-controlled Senate censured President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, for moving federal deposits from the Second Bank of the United States to local banks, derisively called his “pets” because most were operated by loyal Democrats.

Jackson’s legal justification was dubious at best. Under the law, only the secretary of the Treasury could initiate such a transfer, and then only if the funds were deemed insecure. But the Bank had been impeccably run since Nicholas Biddle became its president in 1822. An investigation had ascertained that the funds were perfectly safe, and the House had voted overwhelmingly to affirm that fact. Treasury Secretary William Duane, moreover, refused to remove the money or to step down so Jackson could install somebody who would. Jackson fired Duane, replacing him with Roger Taney without Senate confirmation. Taney’s cronies would go on to grossly mismanage funds in Jackson’s pet bank in Baltimore.

https://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/how-rebuke-president_819709.html

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Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty

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Obama Pursuing Climate Accord in Lieu of Treaty

By CORAL DAVENPORTAUG. 26, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is working to forge a sweeping international climate change agreement to compel nations to cut their planet-warming fossil fuel emissions, but without ratification from Congress.

In preparation for this agreement, to be signed at a United Nations summit meeting in 2015 in Paris, the negotiators are meeting with diplomats from other countries to broker a deal to commit some of the world’s largest economies to enact laws to reduce their carbon pollution. But under the Constitution, a president may enter into a legally binding treaty only if it is approved by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.

To sidestep that requirement, President Obama’s climate negotiators are devising what they call a “politically binding” deal that would “name and shame” countries into cutting their emissions. The deal is likely to face strong objections from Republicans on Capitol Hill and from poor countries around the world, but negotiators say it may be the only realistic path.

“If you want a deal that includes all the major emitters, including the U.S., you cannot realistically pursue a legally binding treaty at this time,” said Paul Bledsoe, a top climate change official in the Clinton administration who works closely with the Obama White House on international climate change policy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/us/politics/obama-pursuing-climate-accord-in-lieu-of-treaty.html?_r=0