Pelosi and the rest of the congressional leadership figure to focus more on investigations than charting a new courseALAN BOCK
Sr. editorial writer
The Orange County RegisterBefore the election, Nancy Pelosi, in line to be the first speaker of the House from California, was asked about how things might change if the Democrats gained a majority in the House, She quickly ticked off a list of measures she promised to bring to the floor within the first 100 hours of her ascension to the speakership in January.
- Increase the federal minimum wage.
- Tinker with prescription drug coverage under Medicare.
- Approve all the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
- Pass new ethics rules to make the 110th Congress "the most honest, ethical and open" in history.
- Dump the ban on federal funding for research involving new lines of stem cells.
- Do something about energy prices and oil-company profits.
- Enforce fiscal discipline by pairing new proposals with higher taxes to pay for them or cuts in other programs.
It sounds like an ambitious agenda, but in terms of legislative substance, let alone a larger policy agenda, it is rather modest. The Democrats will control both houses of Congress in January, but they will not have a veto-proof majority on most issues.
THE IRAQ WAR QUESTIONDiscontent with the war in Iraq was uppermost in many voters' minds last Tuesday. But foreign policy is still almost exclusively the domain of the executive branch, and even after replacing Donald Rumsfeld as Defense secretary, President Bush has signaled that he is not open to anything like a timetable for withdrawal, though he could make some tactical changes following the report of a bipartisan commission headed by James Baker, his father's secretary of State, and former Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton. Congress could affect policy by controlling the purse strings.
Despite enthusiasm for a pullout from some in the base, congressional Democrats are likely to be cautious on Iraq. They recognize that the perception of their party's ability to handle national security has suffered since Vietnam, and they're afraid that chaos in Iraq following an American pullout could tarnish their image further. And, as Cato Institute scholar John Samples told me, they might well prefer for this war to continue to be Bush's issue rather than trying to set policy and thereby assuming responsibility.
On the other hand, the Republicans would just as soon have this issue off the table by the presidential election in 2008, so they may find ways to let the Bush administration know it would be helpful to find a way to spin withdrawal as a victory. Given the president's record of defining victory only in the vaguest of terms, that just might be possible.
IMMIGRATION COMES BACKThe president mentioned immigration as one issue on which he and the new Democratic majority might find common ground. The president supported a "comprehensive" immigration bill passed by the Senate earlier this year that included a guest-worker program and a path to citizenship (or amnesty, as many see it) for the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country. However, he signed a bill passed by the House that emphasized enforcement and building a 700-mile wall along the Mexican border. He might just see revisiting and enacting the Senate version as a positive legacy, and Democrats just might go along.
On the other hand, Democrats might prefer to have the issue still unresolved when the 2008 elections roll around.
While many Democrats might like to phase out the tax cuts the president got enacted at the start of his first term before their scheduled 2010 expiration dates, it could reinforce their image as tax raisers, and the president might well find his veto pen.
'INVESTIGATIVE ZEAL'The most significant thing the Democrats are likely to be able to do is to use their control of all congressional committees to launch investigations into numerous aspects of the Bush administration's conduct of the war, as well as corporate conduct.
Rep. Henry Waxman of Beverly Hills will be chairman of the House Reform Committee and has already promised investigations into Halliburton and other Iraq war and Katrina contractors. Tobacco company executives would also do well to have their lawyers ready.
George Miller of Richmond will take over the Education and Workforce Committee. He is likely to press more aggressive hearings on convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
John Dingell of Michigan, in line to head the House Commerce Committee, is a veteran Great Society liberal who seldom met a business transaction of which he wasn't skeptical. He has promised hearings on Medicare and energy policies, and perhaps a push to regulate vitamins and nutrients as drugs.
It is uncertain whether Jane Harman of El Segundo, Alcee Hastings of Florida or somebody else will head the House Intelligence Committee. Whoever heads it will press more aggressive investigations into pre-9/11 and pre-Iraq war intelligence failures. Who didn't connect the dots? What uncertainty about Saddam having WMDs was ignored? Who forged the Niger documents?
In the Senate, Vermont's Patrick Leahy is slated to head the Judiciary Committee, Michigan's Carl Levin is the likely head of the Armed Services Committee, Delaware's Joe Biden should head Foreign Relations, Massachusetts' Ted Kennedy should head Health, Education and Labor, while Connecticut's Chris Dodd should be in charge of Rules.
The Democrats could very well overdo this investigative zeal and begin to alienate most Americans, even as most Americans were eventually alienated by the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton during his lame-duck term. But they will be in a position to grab headlines from the White House and to some extent determine the issues dominating the national agenda. And the flurry of subpoenas will demand attention in the executive branch and could put the administration in a "hunker down" mode for much of the next two years.
NEW MAJORITY, MINORITY LEADERSBefore the action, both parties will choose other leaders. Current Speaker Dennis Hastert will not seek reelection and the race for minority leader between Ohio's John Boehner and Indiana's more ideologically conservative Mike Pence will tell us something about how the GOP conceives its role as a minority in the House. On the Democratic side, Maryland's Steny Hoyer, a traditional liberal, will face off against more conservative but strongly anti-war John Murtha from Pennsylvania for majority leader.
Buckle your seat belts. It could be a wild ride.
(What happened to Impeachment?)
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/columns/article_1351019.php
