The 109th Republican led Congress which is considered by most to have been a “do-nothing” Congress, prepares to conclude this week. The 2005-2006 Congress has been criticized on its lack of accomplishments, especially considering the pressing domestic issues, the war in Iraq, the continuing crisis in Afghanistan and the worldwide “war on terror.” Beginning in January of 2005, the United States Senate vowed to significantly contribute to President Bush’s ambitious conservative agenda. Unfortunately, the number of failures in Congress this year seems to have surpassed the number of victories, leaving much to be done in the upcoming year.
Members of Congress are now busy approving money for the prevention of a government services shutdown as well as seeking confirmation of Robert M. Gates as defense secretary. This week, Gates went before the Senate Armed Services Committee and is expected be easily confirmed. Despite the many issues that have been left unresolved, Congress will attempt to record some final accomplishments in the last “lame-duck session” including, the extension of a number of popular tax breaks, a symbolic anti-abortion vote and the push for an offshore oil drilling bill.
Congress will end, having failed to enact some of the White Houses’ top priorities. For example, not much has been accomplished in the recent battle over immigration issues. President Bush has pushed for a comprehensive renovation of immigration laws but only succeeded in producing a partially funded measure to build a border fence. The Senate initially followed the president’s wishes and approved a guest worker program, which would permit U.S. employers to sponsor non-U.S. citizens as laborers. Despite approval from the Senate, little was accomplished, since leaders of the House and Senate never carried out the measures necessary to obtain agreement on a final bill.
The house and senate have also failed to come together in order to approve a budget resolution either and to pass at least eight of the 11 annual spending bills, with the exception of those covering defense and homeland security. As the year comes to a close, the new democratic congress will be left to deal with the unfinished budget, as well as the many demands for spending on health, education, transportation and veterans benefits.
The SCHIP program, for example, provides health insurance to the children of many of America's working families. The funding shortage for state SCHIP programs for fiscal year 2007 has yet to be resolved by congress. If, by the end of the 109th Congress, it is left unresolved; the health care coverage of more than 600,000 children will be at risk. Also, the National Minority Health Month Foundation has recently called for the Senate to immediately pass the new three-year compromise of the Ryan White CARE Act.
Reauthorization of the three-year compromise will provide individuals with access to treatment and care in regions with a high incidence of HIV/AIDS. In addition, the geographical reclassification of some hospitals from rural to urban has become yet another pressing issue and must be passed for many to increase their Medicare reimbursements. This year, Congress also failed to increase Medicare reimbursements for rural home health agencies, as well as to relinquish the late enrollment penalty for the Medicare prescription drug benefit. Now at the close of the year these issues are among many in desperate need for resolution.
The pressing wartime concerns have often been used as an excuse for the neglect of domestic issues. "The post-9-11 world is a hugely different world, and the way the Congress functions has changed fundamentally," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H. "We're so overwhelmingly absorbed by the issue of our national security and keeping ourselves from being attacked again." In the last couple of years, though, the Senate has not produced much meaningful oversight on the Bush Administrations policies toward Iraq and Afghanistan either.
The issue of a raise in minimum wage has been another ongoing battle and, attempts to lift the federal minimum wage (currently $5.15) during the 109th Congress, have failed. President Bush had called on the Senate to approve the amendment to ban gay marriage as he and other conservatives believe the ban to be a necessary tool for the protection of the institute of marriage. In June of 2006, the Senate blocked the proposed amendment to ban gay-marriage with a vote of 49-48. Also, the call to, restructure social security, rewrite the tax code, and ease the cost of health insurance all went unheeded in the 109th Congress.
Warrantless wiretapping and extrajudicial military tribunals are two of President Bush’s most controversial national security programs. Congress has approved more lenient rules for interrogating and trying terrorism suspects but has failed to reach consensus on the Administrations warrantless wiretapping program, which is seen by Democrats and civil liberty advocates, as a violation of the privacy of American citizens. On September 28, 2006 the House of Representatives approved the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act, but the Senate was unable to reach agreement on the bill. Along with the endorsement of plans to create military commissions to prosecute terror suspects, a port security bill, that promises to establish a $400 million port security grant program and requires a plan for resuming trade after an attack, was also passed by the Senate in September.
In 2005-2006, ethics problems have plagued the 109th United States Congress. Corruption among leaders in both the House and Senate has led to several investigations by the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. In March of 2006, the United States Senate voted 90-8 for the first lobbying overhaul bill in a decade. The vote took place only hours after former lobbyist jack Abramoff, was sentenced to prison for conspiracy and wire fraud. Through the legislation, lawmakers would now be barred from accepting gifts or meals from lobbyists and would not be allowed to jump into lobbying jobs soon after retirement. In the recent mid term elections Democrats running for Senate were able to use the scandals to their advantage as they campaigned against this culture of corruption.
In March of 2006, the Patriot Act, originally passed after the September 11, 2001 attacks, was renewed with a vote of 89 to 11 in the Senate and 280 to 138 in the House. The bill was created for the purpose of fighting terrorism and allowed for dramatic expansion of United States law enforcement’s counterterrorism measures. Also, the pension overhaul bill, crafted over months of negotiation, was also passed by the House and the Senate this year with the goal of restoring the employer-based pension system that millions of Americans depend on for their retirement security.
Furthermore, members of both parties in Congress have excelled is in allowing government appropriations for massive amounts of “pork-barrel spending.” In politics, the term “pork-barrel” is used to describe government spending on local improvements, intended to ingratiate legislators with their constituents. According to the taxpayer watchdog group, Citizens Against Government Waste, the 9,963 pork-barrel projects that are included in the federal budget this year, are worth $29 billion all together.
July 18, 2006 the US Senate approved a bill to amend the stem cell research enhancement act of 2005, by a 63-37 vote. The bill, which permits federal funds to be used to support medical research into therapies derived from embryonic stem cells, resulted in President Bush’s first veto. Stem cell research has become a controversial issue due to the fact that although the medical research is promising, the procedure itself requires the destruction of human embryos to extract the cells.
Now, before closing, the 109th United States Congress is preparing to take another final step towards enabling legislation for the India-US civil nuclear deal. The House has approved of the legislation on the nuclear deal, and the Senate has been urged to do the same. The Senate has now announced that it will work with House leaders to reconcile their separate legislations which allow the U.S. to sell nuclear fuel and equipment to India for its nuclear development programs. The final version of the deal still needs to be put before the two chambers for approval and then signed by the president to become constitutional. This nuclear deal with India remains to be extremely controversial due to the concern that it is contradictory to the United States’ stance on nonproliferation.
