Congress

The Biden administration’s latest $3.5 trillion spending proposal continues to attract attention. With a hodgepodge of Democratic priorities ranging from climate change to Medicare expansion, the bill is the more partisan companion of the administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan. Of course, another blockbuster story has been distracting attention from these packages — the difficult withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many in Congress continue to be critical of the administration’s handling of the pullout, and some are determined to use the crisis to their political advantage.

Nearly a week after the last American C-17 flew out of Kabul, the Biden administration remains in the middle of a firestorm. Lawmakers are shouting about what they consider a botched withdrawal and evacuation process from Afghanistan. Calls for oversight and accountability on Capitol Hill go beyond President Biden’s traditional opponents. Multiple Senate committees are planning to conduct investigations into why officials weren’t prepared for worst-case scenarios, why the administration believed the Afghan army could hold out longer than it did, and why tens of thousands of Afghans who assisted the US military during the war were unable to be airlifted out of the country.

Are you now or have you ever been a supporter of Donald Trump? I am wondering when we are going to have Congressional Committees grilling people about such matters. I suppose they could, in homage to a certain senator from Wisconsin, be called the House and Senate American Activities Committee. Nancy and Chuck should preside. They could share some of that expensive chocolate ice cream that the always well-coifed Nancy likes as they root out people who say things they don’t like and vote for people with whom they disagree. I’m sure they would get a lot of academic support. Just a week or so back, one professor suggested that criticizing St Anthony Fauci or other government officials should be a federal hate crime. Why not?

Underpaid and over-opinionated: Republican House staffers are not putting up with a new mask mandate. On Tuesday, the US House attending physician reinstated a draconian mask mandate amid the Delta variant's ‘rise’ — about 50 new cases per 100,000, scary stuff. The order follows the new CDC guidance which tells vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals to wear masks indoors and out. ‘For all House Office Buildings, the Hall of the House and House Committee Meetings, wearing of a well-fitted, medical grade, filtration face mask is required when an individual is in an interior space and other individuals are present,’ said Dr Brian Monahan in a memo released Tuesday. In order to enter the House chamber, lawmakers and their staff will be required to wear face coverings.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous. Consider the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That once-respected institution has been busy wiping (or, more to the point, not wiping) egg off its face at least since the moist tenure of James ‘higher loyalty’ Comey. For those wondering why it is that Comey is cashing fat royalty checks instead of stamping out license plates at Club Fed, the answer is part of my story. There is the Elect, of whom James Comey numbers himself, and there are the Serfs, among whose number, Dear Reader, you probably belong. But I am getting ahead of myself. James Comey was plenty ridiculous, as were his jesters and factota, the love birds Lisa Page and Peter ‘Dracula’ Strzok, Andrew McCabe and the rest of that unlovely Brady Bunch.

The Democratic party boasts so many heroes, it’s sometimes hard to keep up. Recently, Rep. Andy Kim revealed that he will be donating his J. Crew wool suit to the Smithsonian Institute. An AP photographer captured the congressman in the Rotunda picking up some trash after the January 6 riots. ‘So I found a roll of trash bags, got down on my knees, and just started trying to clean up a place I love.’ This kind of courage begs the question — can an Emmy award be far behind? After all, not all heroes wear capes, but one definitely wore a cobalt blue suit. Such acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty are nothing new in the modern Democratic party. Where were you on that snowy day in 2019 when you first saw that photo of Rep. Eric Swalwell?

Isn’t normality great? That’s been Joe Biden’s selling point from the beginning, ‘normality’. Back in March 2020, the former conservative Bill Kristol announced that Biden represented the ‘simple’ choice for the ‘normal American’. Biden wasn’t Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders — but especially, just between us, he wasn’t Donald Trump — ergo, etc. Achilles was the ‘swift-footed’. Ronald Reagan was ‘the Great Communicator’. Joe Biden is — what? People talk about ‘gaffes’, but that is unfair. A ‘gaffe’ is a clumsy social error, a faux pas. Emitting gibberish when you can’t remember the most famous line of the Declaration of Independence is not the same thing as committing a gaffe.

Will January 6 go down as another 'day of infamy,' an assault against America akin in its seriousness to December 7, which commemorates Pearl Harbor? Maybe, but not for the reasons that comparison suggests. Sure, many irresponsible commentators — but here I repeat myself — and Democratic politicians compared the January 6 protest at the Capitol to December 7, to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, even (thank you Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer) to the Civil War. Back in February, I noted here that there were a few differences between these two sets of events.

Who wants bipartisanship? The short answer is: neither side, so neither is getting it. Activists in both parties have been clear about that. There was a moment, last spring, when it seemed Democrats might opt for centrism. It came when Rep. James Clyburn endorsed Joe Biden, who went on to defeat Bernie Sanders and capture his party’s nomination. Biden promised general election voters a center-left agenda and extensive bipartisanship, though he did bow occasionally to his party’s left-wing. Biden may have been promising moderation and bipartisanship, but Donald Trump was not. Quite the contrary. He was a populist candidate who actually governed like one.

Before the bombs and bullets of World War One reshaped life as we know it, for 'the vast majority of Americans, from east to west, north to south, the principal, if not sole, link with the national government was the postal system,' Robert Nisbet wrote. It’s hard to imagine life without the megastate now. Frustration with it will occasionally spark the call for a return to limited government, but there is no going back. The vast majority of Americans are dependent on it to some extent or another, from the loans they use to purchase homes, farm subsidies, and the regulations with which they try to tame corporations and protect small businesses.

The last thing anyone would accuse Joe Biden of is being overstimulated. But the Senate’s rapid approval of his pandemic aid plan, or American Rescue Plan, as it’s officially called, should be more than enough to put a spring in his step. It’s a victory that may even power the Democrats to victory in the midterms. Captious progressive Democrats will complain that the bill isn’t generous enough. They already are. But House Democrats will dutifully line up next week to pass it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi isn’t going to blow this. After four years of the Trump era, sensible Democrats know that this is their chance to spend big even if it isn’t as bigly as the Squad would prefer.

On Wednesday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi dragooned all but one Democrat into voting for her total rewrite of the nation’s election laws: House of Representatives Bill 1, or HR 1. The final vote was 220 to 210. The bill now goes to the Senate. Republicans promise a filibuster there to stop it. Every American should hope they succeed. HR 1 would cement all of the worst changes in election law made in blue states in 2020 and nationalize them. Federal control of elections would be the norm, with states relegated to being colonial outposts that carry out Washington DC’s mandates.  Two amendments to impose yet more federal controls failed before final passage.

It has been months since Congress passed the last COVID-19 relief package, and as DC hurtles toward its Christmas holiday, the prospect of another legislative effort is still bedeviling Capitol Hill.That we are here at all reflects a divergence from the lawmaking consensus that saw three phases of major COVID-19 legislation pass in March — including the $2.2 trillion CARES Act, which constitutes the largest economic response legislation passed in US history. At that time, there was general bipartisan agreement that it was necessary; that the lives of Americans were being consumed by a crisis not of their own making, and one that was putting the livelihoods of small businesses and families at risk. (That didn’t stop the bill from being stuffed with unrelated pork, however.

Republicans are currently on track to end up with 214 seats in the House of Representatives in January. As of this writing, they’ve already netted seven gains, are leading in an additional nine races, and will pick up one more with two Republicans in a runoff for Louisiana’s 5th District.If it all holds, it would amount to an astonishing 17-seat gain for the GOP and the Democrats holding the smallest House majority in two decades. Cook Political Report predicted Democrats would expand their 232-seat majority by 10 to 15.

Democratic joy at defeating Donald Trump was partially dulled by the simultaneous diminishment of the party’s House majority. As of Sunday at least 11 Democratic-held House seats have been lost to Republicans (while Democrats have flipped three others). That’s the biggest net loss in a presidential election year by the winning presidential candidate’s party in 60 years. The unexpected divergence in the two results sparked a round of reciprocal recriminations between the House Democratic caucus’ moderate and left-wing factions. Moderates blamed the 'defund the police' sloganeering and 'socialist' branding from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her supporters, which Republicans deployed in swing district attack ads.

Attorney General William Barr’s seemingly interminable testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday demonstrated two things. First, AG Barr is the most patient and unflappable man in Alpha Centauri. Second, his would-be inquisitors in the Democratic party have succumbed to a virus far more toxic than the Wuhan flu. Political epidemiologists who identify the virus as Trump Derangement Syndrome are not quite right in their diagnosis. To be sure, TDS is a common comorbidity that renders this new infection more virulent and debilitating. But the nervous disorder on view yesterday, while it presupposes tertiary Trump Derangement Syndrome, is actually distinct from that malady. I am not sure that public health officials have yet settled on a name for the sickness.

When House Democrats passed their $3 trillion coronavirus ‘relief’ package late last week, they also jammed through a rules change on proxy voting that fundamentally transforms the nature of the House of Representatives and junks centuries of tradition. Because of a change to House rules, members will now be able to submit their votes from afar. They will not have to travel back to DC to vote: they can instead send their ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ to a colleague, who will submit it on their behalf. One member can submit up to 10 votes at a time, meaning that the will of the House, which normally takes 218 members in the chamber, could be determined with only 21 members physically present.

Who is the proposed new $3 trillion stimulus package designed to help? If enacted, the bill — which narrowly passed through the House yesterday, with a break in both party lines — would follow from the $2 trillion package passed in March. But it’s not getting past the Senate, at least not in its current form. Despite broad consensus that the first stimulus wave for businesses and families was a necessary emergency measure to help get America’s economy through the COVID crisis, this next round has become increasingly political, looking more like election postering than a thorough plan for the next phase of the pandemic.