One for the Books
This Congress will enter the history books for the magnitude of both its political losses and its legislative victories.
by Ronald Brownstein
National Journal
Thursday, December 23, 2010
This month’s final flurry of legislative successes for President Obama and the Democratic Congress underscores the difficulty of rendering a single verdict on their tumultuous two years in power.
In November, Democrats forfeited control of the House after suffering the largest midterm losses for either party since 1938. They absorbed stinging defeats in the Senate as well. But before that, and to an utterly unexpected extent after that as well, Obama and congressional Democrats passed into law an enormous agenda. This Congress will enter the history books for the magnitude of both its political losses and its legislative victories.
The program that Democrats implemented during Obama’s first two years doesn’t approach the Himalayan peaks of the first congressional sessions for Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. But probably not since Johnson has either party implemented as much of its agenda in a single legislative session as Democrats did in this one. “You probably have to go back to Johnson to see something as substantial as this,” says presidential historian Robert Dallek, a Johnson biographer. Historian Alan Brinkley of Columbia University agrees: “Legislatively, this Congress has probably done more than any Congress since the 1960s.”
Democrats had their legislative disappointments. Mostly because of Senate filibusters, they could not pass limits on carbon emissions, reform the labor laws or the immigration system, or establish a public competitor to private health insurers. Obama felt compelled to accept the extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. Nor could he persuade Congress to back his pledge to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
(More here.)
by Ronald Brownstein
National Journal
Thursday, December 23, 2010
This month’s final flurry of legislative successes for President Obama and the Democratic Congress underscores the difficulty of rendering a single verdict on their tumultuous two years in power.
In November, Democrats forfeited control of the House after suffering the largest midterm losses for either party since 1938. They absorbed stinging defeats in the Senate as well. But before that, and to an utterly unexpected extent after that as well, Obama and congressional Democrats passed into law an enormous agenda. This Congress will enter the history books for the magnitude of both its political losses and its legislative victories.
The program that Democrats implemented during Obama’s first two years doesn’t approach the Himalayan peaks of the first congressional sessions for Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. But probably not since Johnson has either party implemented as much of its agenda in a single legislative session as Democrats did in this one. “You probably have to go back to Johnson to see something as substantial as this,” says presidential historian Robert Dallek, a Johnson biographer. Historian Alan Brinkley of Columbia University agrees: “Legislatively, this Congress has probably done more than any Congress since the 1960s.”
Democrats had their legislative disappointments. Mostly because of Senate filibusters, they could not pass limits on carbon emissions, reform the labor laws or the immigration system, or establish a public competitor to private health insurers. Obama felt compelled to accept the extension of George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy. Nor could he persuade Congress to back his pledge to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Let us never again forget how dangerous unchecked liberalism can be that we as a nation may never, ever again give unchecked power to liberals and their progressive agenda. We have never witnessed such a disregard for the limits of power placed on the federal government by the Constitution with backroom deals, political favors, kick backs, bail outs, outright bribes and a complete abandonment of Constitutional principles in favor of the rule of men over the rule of law. And we have never seen such a reckless and profligate borrowing and spending on such a massive scale that more has been promised and borrowed than can ever be paid back. The fallout from which will last generations binding unborn Americans to a mountain of debt and servitude to the government for which they played no role.
Yes, the 111th Congress will go down in the record books as one of the most significant grabs of power at the expense of liberty the country will ever see. And that is why the 111th Congress was fired by the American people with such overwhelming significance that I can only hope the American people have learned the lesson of what unchecked, full-throttle, boot-on-the-throat liberalism is like and that we as a nation never, ever again hand over the reins of power to their ideology.
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