Right seeks to kill the lame duck
Conservative lawmakers and advocacy groups are fighting to prevent a lame-duck session after the elections, arguing that members of Congress who have been booted from office shouldn't be responsible for major policy decisions.
Opponents of a post-election session are primarily wary of lawmakers passing another catchall omnibus government spending package that would likely include a slew of policy riders.
“It’s the least accountable time for Congress,” Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told The Hill. “We let people who have either quit or been fired or retired vote on spending billions and billions of taxpayer dollars after their period of accountability has ended.”
“This is something that is supposed to be Republican orthodoxy. That the least accountable government is the worst government,” he said. The last two lame-duck sessions in 2014 and 2012 featured difficult negotiations over an omnibus spending package and expired tax breaks.
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http://thehill.com/homenews/house/294361-right-seeks-to-kill-the-lame-duck
= new reply since forum marked as read
have been working on this for at least a couple years, now coming up to the final push. If I knew nothing else about this, the list of those pushing to strip our lawmakers of the power to do their job for two months every two years would be enough.
But here's the big reason, from The Atlantic last spring:
... “We know nothing good is ever going to come from a lame duck,” Republican Representative Thomas Massie tells me. ... Indeed, some conservatives have abandoned “lame duck” for the more fear-inspiring term “Zombie Congress.”
Former Senator Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation, has been railing against zombie legislators for a couple of years now, explaining their threat this way: “With no electorate to appease, the newly politically ‘deceased’ members have no incentive to restrain their more base urges to feast upon the hard-earned tax dollars of the living.” (
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Now, the image of undead, unaccountable lawmakers shambling about, shoveling favors out the door at the expense of the public good is a wee bit unfair. A couple of years ago, researchers at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center crunched the data and found that, historically speaking, lame-duck sessions don’t differ much from regular ones in terms of what gets done. There is a slight loosening of party unity and maybe even a decrease in the inclination to preference special interests over the general welfare. The biggest difference is that members are more likely to skip votes altogether.
So, as this very good article points out, already, according to the GOP leadership:
1. Congressional conservatives won't consider most legislation during regular sessions.
2. In election years, bills politically risky to conservative members should be avoided.
3. SCOTUS confirmations should not be allowed in the entire fourth year of a president's term.
Now they want
4. To do away with Congress's post-election session, or at very least not allow members
to actually, you know...work.
this may not be in their best interest.
