Salon.com > House of Representatives

How much did Anthony Weiner get done in Congress?

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:16:00 +0000

In a new profile of Anthony Weiner, who is running in New York City's mayoral race this year, the New York Times took a look at the former Congressman's legislative record and found that it was mostly about "intensity, publicity and limited results." According to the Times' analysis, in Weiner's 12.5 years as a Congressman, he only sponsored one bill, which was being pushed by a friend of his family, who also happened to be a big donor to Weiner's campaign.

From the Times:

When President Obama needed every Democrat in Congress to back his health care plan in 2009, Representative Anthony D. Weiner threatened behind the scenes to torpedo the package in favor of a more sweeping measure. He backed off after he was promised a bigger share of the spotlight during the highly watched debate.

Senate passes farm bill

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 12:07:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — The last time Congress passed a farm bill, Democrats had control of the House and the food stamp program was about half the size it is today.

That was five years ago.

Conservatives calling for an overhaul of the domestic food aid program will try to trim the nation's nearly $80 billion grocery bill when the House weighs in on farm legislation in a few weeks. The Senate overwhelmingly voted Monday to expand farm subsidies and make small cuts to food stamps in a five-year, half-trillion dollar measure. But passage in the House isn't expected to be so easy — or so bipartisan.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Monday that his chamber will take up its version of the farm bill later this month. He made clear his own dislike for generous farm subsidies included in the bill, saying his "concerns about our country's farm programs are well-known." But Boehner acknowledged that the rest of the chamber might not agree with him.

"If you have ideas on how to make the bill better, bring them forward," Boehner said in a statement directed to his colleagues. "Let's have the debate, and let's vote on them."

Mad about NSA’s overreach? Blame Congress

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 10:30:00 +0000

If you don’t like the revelations this week about what the NSA has been up to regarding your phone and Internet data, whom should you blame?

The NSA? Sure. But the nature of intelligence agencies is to gather intelligence. Yes, they should know and observe limits, but realistically don’t expect any more from them than staying within the law, which appears to have been the case here.

The courts? Judges approved what’s been going on. Did they stretch the law in favor of the government? Perhaps. And, generally, the courts could have found the entire process unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court hasn’t been interested in aggressively expanding the Fourth Amendment any time recently. Feel free to assign them some blame, and watch the reporting to discover how much.

George W. Bush? PRISM began while he was in the White House, and his overall record on civil liberties was abysmal. Barack Obama? He, at least as far as we know, stayed within the law. But, yes, if you don’t approve of what NSA has been doing, both Bush and Obama deserve some of the blame. The private companies that cooperated? Yeah, them too. The law pushed them, but they seem to have had options.

House GOPers: God told us to stop Boehner coup

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 16:21:00 +0000

A Washington Post report about in-fighting among House Republicans reveals a tidbit about the vote to reconfirm John Boehner as House speaker, and how a group of conservative members of the caucus abruptly abandoned a plan to try to oust the speaker because, as they tell it, God told them not to do it.

Back in January, reports surfaced that a group of conservative Republicans were plotting to remove Boehner from his post over his handling of the "fiscal cliff" deal, which many Republicans opposed. Though conservatives needed 17 defectors to get rid of Boehner, in the end they were short by five.

Rep. Steve Southerland, R-Fla., was one of the potential defectors, but he, like several others among his would-be co-conspirators, told the Post that God told him not to:

House supporters of KXL received $56m from fossil fuel industry

Thu, 23 May 2013 12:17:00 +0000

On Wednesday the house voted 241-175 to pass a bill that declares a presidential permit is not needed to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline extension currently under consideration. The Northern Route Approval Act is unlikely to garner enough votes in the Senate to overcome a presidential veto, so the decision on the pipeline -- which would carry crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast -- will likely remain in the president's hands.

Meanwhile, environmental groups have decried Wednesday's House vote as further evidence that Congress has been bought by Big Oil. Oil Change International calculated that supporters of the bill had taken a combined $56 million from the fossil fuel industry, and that individual representatives in support of the bill had on average received six times from oil industry interests than pipeline opponents. Oil Change International highlighted the following findings:

GOP quits public policy

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 18:07:00 +0000

Are Republicans even trying? There's good evidence to suggest they are not.

While I’ve been saying that the GOP is broken and hopelessly dysfunctional, Rachel Maddow has come up with a new name for part of that dysfunction: Republicans are “post-policy.” To some extent, that’s because they’ll simply oppose whatever Barack Obama proposes, but there’s also an even more interesting aspect of it that they simply have given up on and lost the capacity for developing policy ideas.

And, no, it’s not just because they are conservatives and conservatives are inherently less likely to have policy ideas. A look at the evidence will demonstrate this.

Here’s the story: Over the last couple of decades, majority parties in the House of Representatives have taken to reserving the very first bill numbers for their party’s agenda. Normally, bills are just numbered in order, when they are introduced: H.R. 637 is usually the bill introduced just after H.R. 636 and just before H.R. 638. But that’s just custom, and at some point a new custom evolved to save H.R. 1 through H.R. 5, and then through H.R. 10, for important party agenda bills.

House members finalizing sweeping immigration bill

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:15:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — A group of Republicans and Democrats in the House is finalizing a sweeping immigration bill that offers work permits and the eventual prospect of citizenship to millions of people living illegally in the United States, aides say. That path to citizenship, however, is likely to take at least 15 years for many, longer than envisioned by Senate immigration negotiators or by President Barack Obama.

The secretive House effort, which also aims to further tighten the border against foreigners crossing illegally into the U.S. and crack down on employers who hire them, has been overshadowed by the bipartisan negotiations in the Senate, which is expected to act first on immigration legislation. But it's an important indication that a number of lawmakers, including Republicans, in the conservative-dominated House want to have a say in crafting a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration law.

"We have legislative language that we'll be ready to go forward on, not concepts but actual language," Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, a leader of the group, said this week on "Capital Tonight," a program on cable news channel YNN in Central Texas.

In fight for House, is Obama his own worst enemy?

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 12:40:00 +0000

President Obama's new belief that most Republicans don't want to work with him, and that to pass much of his agenda he'll need to fight to win a Democratic congress in 2014, presents a critical question: Will declining to get involved in House races last year come back to bite him?

The president's plan to stump for his party’s congressional candidates in 2014 is a good idea. While some measures have managed to get passed, he's mostly suffered through the first two months of his second term – and far more of his first – frustrated by Republican filibusters, fake crises, fiscal cliffs, debt ceilings, sequesters, and reflexive opposition (to say nothing of a potential government shutdown later this month).

How the right will demagogue the Violence Against Women Act

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:24:00 +0000

Though the Senate is expected to pass the Violence Against Women Act after deliberating on it today, its grim purgatory is far from over. It still has to pass the recalcitrant House. But in both chambers, some Republicans have issued a series of complaints to explain their "no" votes, all of which sound better, at least on the surface, than being for violence against women Here's a primer to the main objections -- and what they really mean.

The tribal court provisions. Currently, non-Native men who abuse Native American women on reservations can — and do — get away with it, since federal prosecutors can’t and don’t prosecute all such cases. The expanded VAWA would give tribal courts jurisdiction, something that has met with remarkably vehement opposition by some Republicans, who seem to fear that the mostly white men it would affect would have their rights violated. Notably, not all Republicans: congressmen Tom Cole and Darrell Issa have proposed a compromise that would allow those men to appeal to the feds if they objected to their treatment by the tribal courts, and Cole met with Eric Cantor about it yesterday.

A déjà vu Congress targets reproductive rights, again

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 17:32:00 +0000

Last year, Republicans spouted off on women lying about rape and our bodies shutting down pregnancy. Republican state legislators contemplated draconian abortion restrictions, and the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives kicked off the legislative session by trying to defund Planned Parenthood.

This year, only a few days into 2013, a Republican has spouted off about women lying about rape and our bodies shutting down pregnancy. States are at it again, and the House has kicked off the legislative session by trying to defund Planned Parenthood.

Happy new year, everyone: The GOP soul-searching is over, and Republicans are back to square one on reproductive rights.

Today's congressman seeing to add his name to the illustrious rape-explaining pantheon is Georgia Republican Phil Gingrey, one of several antiabortion gynecologists serving in the House. “Part of the reason the Dems still control the Senate is because of comments made in Missouri by Todd Akin and Indiana by Mourdock were considered a little bit over the top,” Gingrey explained at a recent breakfast.

GOP candidates put their moms to work

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 22:39:00 +0000

The political conventions were not the high water mark of family marshaled for political theatrics. You may have thought that the peak of pandering was Ann Romney shouting, "I love you women!" and Michelle Obama's repeated self-designation as "mom-in-chief." In fact, if you're a Republican, it's enlisting your mother or grandmother to promise that nothing is going to happen to your Medicare -- unless it's Obama looting it.

It's not easy being a down-ticket Republican with Paul Ryan a notch below the top. Democrats got plenty of leverage early in the fall pointing out Ryan's plans to voucherize Medicare and past designs on Social Security. As compiled in a roundup by the National Journal, the senate and House candidates who trot out their mothers (and to a far lesser extent, their fathers) to, well, vouch for them respond using the same discredited line that Romney-Ryan have: That it's Obamacare, not the Republicans, that are a real danger to Medicare. And who is more credible than a sweet, white-haired lady who conveniently might double as a salve to the gender gap?

Record number of gays seeking seats in Congress

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 18:03:00 +0000

NEW YORK (AP) — Of the four openly gay members of Congress, the two longest-serving stalwarts are vacating their seats. Instead of fretting, their activist admirers are excited about a record number of gays vying to win seats in the next Congress — and to make history in the process.

When Congress reconvenes in January, it could have its first openly gay Asian-American, Mark Takano of California; its first openly bisexual member, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona; and its first openly gay senator, Wisconsin's Tammy Baldwin.

In all, eight openly gay candidates are running as major-party nominees for the House of Representatives, including the two incumbents — Democrats Jared Polis of Colorado and David Cicilline (sihs-ihl-EE'-nee) of Rhode Island.

Among them, there's one gay Republican, Richard Tisei (tih-SAY'), seeking a House seat from Massachusetts.

For the GOP, taxes are optional

Fri, 28 Sep 2012 18:40:00 +0000

Last October, President Obama introduced the so-called “Buffett Rule,” a tax provision that would require multimillionaires to pay a minimum 30 percent effective tax rate. It was named for the Oracle of Omaha himself, Warren Buffett, who famously complained about paying a lower tax rate than his own secretary. The idea garnered a great deal of public support, with one CNN poll from April 2012 finding as many as 76 percent of Americans in favor. Last week, bowing to popular demand, House Republicans passed the Buffett Rule Act of 2012, which naturally has nothing to do with any of that. Instead of establishing a baseline of fairness, it encapsulates the conservative notion that wealthy Americans shouldn’t be asked to contribute any more to society than they’re willing to volunteer.