GOVERNMENT
A Congress That Acts
The 110th Congress has now been in power for nearly six months. Despite
facing critical challenges -- namely, a closely divided Senate and an
obstinate, ideological president now eager to use his veto pen -- the
new progressive Congress has
achieved real, concrete results. The House of Representatives has
passed all 10 bills it promised during the 2006 campaign, including
enacting the 9/11 Commission recommendations, landmark lobbying and
ethics reform, the first minimum wage increase in a decade, and a stem
cell research expansion. The Senate has passed six of the 10; three
others are currently being considered. (The White House has signed just
two of the bills. It has vetoed or threatened to veto five.) Polls this
week showed approval ratings for Congress sharply down after last
month's controversial Iraq spending legislation. The country is
undoubtedly frustrated that President Bush's conservative allies have
blocked a major change in Iraq strategy. But on a wide array of
issues, the 110th Congress is proving extremely effective at
outmaneuvering conservatives, holding the Bush administration
accountable, and winning
key legislative victories.
PROGRESSIVES
GETTING RESULTS: From tough new congressional ethics rules,
bans on gifts from lobbyists, and the most transparent earmarking
system ever established, Congress has honored its pledge
for more openness and accountability. Both the House and Senate
have voted to implement the critical recommendations of the 9/11
Commission, which Bush and Congress selectively
ignored for five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and to expand federal funding
for embryonic stem cell research, a cause that Bush has stubbornly
vowed to veto
for a second time. Congress is cleaning up the system in other ways
-- creating new protections for government whistleblowers, requiring
greater disclosure of presidential records, and more responsiveness
from Freedom of Information Act requests. After a decade of delay,
Congress approved a raise in the federal minimum wage from $5.15/hour
to $7.25/hour, benefiting millions of Americans, and Bush signed
the legislation last month. After the administration's mishandling
of veterans care was exposed, Congress included billions
more than the President requested for military health care and
research in the 2007 Emergency Supplemental, which he also signed. The
110th Congress has restored necessary checks and balances, in
contrast to the dangerous
expansion of executive authority granted by previous Congresses.
Just yesterday, Congress drove Bush to sign the Preserving United
States Attorney Independence Act, which repeals an obscure PATRIOT
Act provision permitting the appointment of interim U.S. attorneys
without Senate approval, a provision which is at the heart of
the U.S. attorney scandal. Congress is also examining new ways to
curb Bush's warrantless wiretapping system, which even FBI Director
Robert Mueller acknowledges is laden with "abuses and
violations" of authority.
AGGRESSIVE OVERSIGHT: "You must ask the
questions. You must
do oversight if we're going to keep people honest, if we're going
to provide the checks and balances that our Constitution envisions,"
House oversight committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said in a recent
interview with The Progress Report. In the previous Congress, oversight
of the executive branch was woefully neglected by Bush's conservative
allies. For example, in the 108th Congress, the House Government Reform
Committee held just
37 hearings described as "oversight," including "only 12 hours of
sworn testimony about the abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib
prison." In the first five and a half months of 2007 alone, the
committee has already held 33 hearings on previously ignored subjects such as, waste, fraud, and
abuse in Iraq Reconstruction; political
influence on government climate change scientists; and the reliance on
private military contractors. Overall, Congress has held more than
200 oversight hearings on issues related to the Iraq war alone.
Aggressive efforts by the 110th Congress have already resulted in a
bevy of resignations by scandal-plagued members of the executive
branch. At the Justice Department, three top aides to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have resigned as part of the
ongoing U.S. attorney scandal investigation. A week before an oversight
hearing, Julie MacDonald of the Interior Department resigned
amidst allegations that she had censored scientists. Following the
revelations of neglect and abuse at Walter Reed Medical Center, the new
Congress swept into action with hearings and oversight, resulting in
the resignations of the
Center's commander, the Army
Surgeon General, and the Secretary of the Army -- accountability that was unlikely to
happen in the previous Congress.
THE IMPACT OF IRAQ: Six
weeks ago, the congressional leadership had a 54 percent approval
rating; that rating has now
dropped to 44 percent. Conservatives have been gloating over these
numbers, stating that they show large-scale disapproval of Congress's
priorities. "Democrats who control this floundering
and roundly disapproved Congress are paying a painful price for the
pleasure of defeating everything that could be construed as in any way
an achievement by the president," wrote conservative pundit George
Will. But the public's dissatisfaction with Congress is bipartisan; the
approval rating for Republicans in Congress is just 36
percent. And as ABC News notes, the recent decline is almost
entirely among people who "strongly oppose the war in Iraq." Congress's
approval rating began
to drop only after May 1, when Bush vetoed the Iraq war funding bill that set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
Congress's approval rating fell the most dramatically when it sent a new war funding bill to the President that did not
contain a withdrawal timetable, a reality that congressional leaders
now acknowledge. "It's
the war, I believe so, it's the war," said House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-CA), who voted
against the bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) noted, "I
understand their disappointment. We raised the bar too high."
Earlier this week, Pelosi and Reid recommitted Congress to changing
course in Iraq in a letter to Bush. "In light of the additional
evidence since your veto that your plan is not working, it is
clear that a course correction in Iraq is needed," they wrote. "The
American people cannot and should not have to wait until later this
year for changes in your flawed Iraq policy. There is an obligation to
act now."
IRAQ -- SNOW: INTENSE NEW
LEVELS OF VIOLENCE IN IRAQ ARE 'SIGNS OF SUCCESS': The Pentagon
this week released its first quarterly report assessing President
Bush's escalation strategy, confirming that overall levels of violence
in the country actually "increased
throughout much of Iraq in recent months," as attacks "shifted away
from Baghdad and Anbar" and into "cities and provinces that had been
relatively peaceful before the Bush administration's troop buildup."
Political reconciliation has almost entirely stalled, suicide bombings "more
than doubled" from January to April, sectarian deaths have
increased beyond
pre-escalation levels, and U.S. troop deaths are
spiking. During his press briefing yesterday, White House
spokesman Tony Snow said the increasing chaos was a positive sign. The
new levels of attacks "fit a pattern that we see throughout the
region," he said, "which is that when you see things moving towards
success, or when you see signs of success, that there are acts of
violence." Also yesterday, Snow downplayed the importance of the
September Iraq report from top U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. David
Petraeus. Just last month, Bush said September would be an "important
moment" in the war because "Petraeus says that's when he'll have a
pretty good assessment as to what the effects of the surge has
been." Yesterday, Snow described Petraeus's report as merely a
"first opportunity" to "have a little bit of a metric" to "see what
happens when you have all the forces in place for the Baghdad security
plan."
ADMINISTRATION -- LIBBY MUST REPORT TO PRISON PENDING APPEAL: Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ordered Vice President
Dick Cheney's former chief of staff Scooter Libby to "surrender
in six to eight weeks to begin serving his 30-month prison term,"
rejecting "Libby's request to remain free while appealing his
conviction." Walton, who received threatening
letters and phone calls from Libby's supporters in the case, said
that "clearly,
under the statute, I'm required to detain him. ... And I just think
blue-collar criminals are entitled to the same kind of justice as
white-collar criminals." "A
dozen prominent constitutional scholars," most of them outspoken
conservatives, filed a brief last week "urging that Libby remain free
pending appeal." Walton dismissed the brief as "not
something I would expect from a first-year law student" and said
that "it appeared to be produced...for the sole purpose of throwing
their names out there so somehow I'd feel pressure." Libby's last hope
for a get-out-of-jail-free card is President Bush. While the White
House yesterday released a statement stating that "the
president will continue not to intervene in the judicial process,"
Walton's ruling to send Libby to jail increases "the pressure for
President Bush to decide
soon whether he will pardon Libby."
IRAQ -- BUSH IGNORES 28,500 ADDITIONAL TROOPS IN IRAQ, SAYS 'SURGE'
HASN'T STARTED YET: Early this week, the Pentagon delivered to
Congress its "first
comprehensive statistical overview of the new U.S. military strategy in
Iraq." Citing "uneven cooperation" and little "concrete progress,"
the report concluded that "reconciliation between Shiite, Kurdish and
Sunni factions" remains "a serious unfulfilled objective." Furthermore,
the report found that suicide bombings across Iraq have doubled
since January, overall violence "has increased in most provinces,"
and "civilian casualties rose slightly, to more
than 100 a day." Yesterday, however, the President attempted to
dismiss the report's conclusions, saying that it is still "too early to
judge the results of this new strategy" by repeating the myth that U.S.
forces "haven't
even started the full surge yet." The President is wrong -- it is
not "too early to judge" the results of his escalation in Iraq. As
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates explained nearly six months ago at
the start of the escalation plan, "we'll
have pretty good early indications of their performance" before
"very many American soldiers have been sent to Iraq": "Well, as I
indicated, we're going to know pretty early on whether the Iraqis are
meeting their military commitments, in terms of being able to go into
all neighborhoods, in terms of the Iraqis being in the lead and
carrying out the leadership and the fighting, and for there not to be
political interference in the military operations that are going
forward," Gates said. Furthermore, the President's assertion that U.S. forces
"haven't started" the surge yet becomes almost laughable as the
Washington Post reports today that with an additional 28,500 U.S.
troops "now
posted in the country," a military spokesman said yesterday that
the "Iraq
troop surge [is] complete."
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A controversial Sept. 2005 government memo suggests that in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA authorized private insurance companies to overbill
the taxpayer-funded federal flood program "while shorting
people on their wind damage payments."
The escalation is now complete. "The full
contingent of new U.S. forces being sent to Iraq...was completed by
Friday, with 28,500
additional troops now posted in the country." Five U.S. soldiers died
yesterday.
"Senate leaders agreed on Thursday to revive a stalled
immigration overhaul," announcing an effort "to
overcome conservatives' objections" by immediately setting aside
"more than $4 billion to beef
up enforcement of immigration laws."
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), "dogged by a federal probe
of political corruption in Alaska, disclosed Thursday that he has asked
the Senate Ethics Committee to review his latest financial disclosure report." Ethics reviews of lawmakers'
financial reports "are
unusual unless they are under a legal cloud."
The Supreme Court struck a blow against unions yesterday, ruling that states may "force public sector labor unions to
get consent from workers before using their fees for political
activities." Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, said a
Washington state law requiring such consent "does
not violate the union's First Amendment rights."
"The increased demand for 'green' vehicles is
spilling over to the rental car counter," as Hertz and Avis rental
companies announced plans to add
thousands more hybrid vehicles to their fleets.
"The Justice Department is investigating whether British
defense giant BAE Systems, which supplies Bradley fighting
vehicles to the U.S. military and is becoming a major player in the
U.S. defense industry, paid
bribes to win contracts in Saudi Arabia, Chile and elsewhere."
"The military's mental health system has 'fallen
significantly short' of meeting the needs of troops and their families, according to a
year-long task force study released Thursday." The report also notes
that the "Pentagon
must immediately start recruiting to fill a mental health staff
'woefully inadequate' to deal with conditions such as post-traumatic
stress disorder."
And finally: Yeeeaaaarrrrrggghhh!!: The Musical. An
"unlikely subject may be headed for Broadway this fall: Howard Dean's
2004 presidential campaign. Last week, Oscar-nominated actor Jake
Gyllenhaal did a private reading of 'Farragut North' (written by
playwright and former Dean campaigner Beau Willimon) about the presidential
hopes of a charismatic, unorthodox candidate and his staff."
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In a "stunning
victory for gay marriage advocates," Massachusetts lawmakers
"blocked a proposed constitutional amendment Thursday that would have
let voters decide whether to ban gay marriage in the only state in
which same-sex marriages are legal."
NEW
JERSEY: Legislature approves bill requiring pharmacists to dispense
birth-control pills regardless of personal beliefs.
CALIFORNIA: Twenty-one of 23 environmental bills recently pass in
the state legislature.
FLORIDA: Pollution, warming waters, shipping, and oceanic
development threaten Florida's "gorgeous" coral reefs.
THINK
PROGRESS: While promoting escalation in Iraq, U.S.-backed Ahmad
Chalabi blocked U.S.-led political reforms.
THINK
PROGRESS: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) hypocritically attacks Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) for criticizing Gen. Peter Pace.
RAW
STORY: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales again uses U.S. Attorney
appointment power that Congress voted to repeal.
DANGER
ROOM: 2003 Army booklet on Iraq: "Arabs are reluctant to accept
responsibility."
Q: Are there any members of the Bush family or this administration in
this war?
SNOW: Yeah, the President. The President is in the war every day. [...]
Q: On the frontlines, where ever…
SNOW: The President.
-- White House Press Briefing with spokesman Tony Snow, 6/14/07
VERSUS
"I can only tell you what people on the ground, whose judgment -- it's
hard for me, living in this beautiful White House, to give you an
assessment, firsthand assessment. I haven't been there; you have, I
haven't."
-- President Bush, 2/14/07
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