John Fund is reporting that congressional Democrats may be planning a very ambitious lame duck session after the November elections. The idea is that a liberal wish-list can be passed without fear of voter retaliation.
Considering predictions that the Democrats will lose at least the House, and perhaps the Senate as well, a last-gasp push to pass an ambitious agenda that would include card check and cap-and-trade would smack of defeated lawmakers giving the middle finger to the voters who had just gone to the polls to boot them out of office. According to John Fund:
“Other lame-duck possibilities? Senate ratification of the New Start nuclear treaty, a federally mandated universal voter registration system to override state laws, and a budget resolution to lock in increased agency spending.
“Then there is pork. A Senate aide told me that ‘some of the biggest porkers on both sides of the aisle are leaving office this year, and a lame-duck session would be their last hurrah for spending.’ Likely suspects include key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congress’s ‘favor factory,’ such as Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter and Utah Republican Bob Bennett.”
The whole idea of a political party on the verge of a historic defeat planning something like that smacks of a tenant having been evicting from his apartment, deciding to trash the place, steal everything he can, and generally take revenge of the landlord. It is not the behavior of people who intend to learn from their defeat, lick their wounds in the wilderness for awhile, and then plot a comeback. It is, rather, the behavior of people who do not expect to be back in power for at least a generation.
Or, on the other hand, there may not be anything resembling thought at all surrounding this idea, aside from the need for revenge. That is why some wags are calling the idea of a post-election legislative session a “Mad Duck session.”
Mind, if Republican members, especially in the Senate, where there are enough for a filibuster, hang together, most if not all an attempt to pass the liberal agenda should be blocked. There may even be a few Democrats remaining in Congress, but chastened enough to realize the error of their ways, to join in and block the liberal agenda outright, without recourse to a filibuster.
The person who stands to be most injured by a “mad duck” session is President Barack Obama. Voters are likely to be enraged by an attempt to stick a finger in their collective eye, and the next person upon whom they can inflict revenge will be the President.
Source:
The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy, John Fund, Wall Street Journal, July 9th, 2010
