Clock ticks on Congress' bold agenda - Arizona Republic

Clock ticks on Congress' bold agenda - Arizona Republic
Big issues still left to tackle before elections stall push

President Barack Obama
entered the White House one year ago Wednesday with everything going for him: Momentum from his historic election, high poll numbers and overwhelming Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.

But Obama and Congress took on an ambitious agenda that they couldn't finish in 2009.

Although Obama scored some big legislative victories such as the passage of the $787 billion economic-stimulus package, historic tobacco-industry regulations and credit-card reform, he found Capitol Hill something of a quagmire for his top domestic priorities such as health-care reform, climate-change legislation and financial-services regulation. The drawn-out and bruising health-care battle pushed other major issues such as immigration reform to the back burner.

With health-care reform likely in its precarious final stages - House and Senate leaders are ironing out differences between bills passed in each chamber - Congress this week resumes working toward the other major goals its leaders outlined in 2009, as well as on the still-sluggish economic recovery.

Lawmakers aim to tackle complicated issues, including job creation, immigration reform
and climate change. But they'll have less time than last year to do it because many face re-election and must devote time to their political campaigns at home.

Meanwhile, Obama's poll ratings continue to droop, and the Senate Democratic caucus faces the possibility of losing its filibuster-proof 60-member majority after November - or even after this week, if Republicans win an upset Tuesday in the unexpectedly tough fight for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts.

It's a lot of work, but some political experts believe the current Congress is up to the task, noting it already has made historic progress.

"Most Congresses would not be able to get this done," said Rodolfo Espino, an assistant professor of political science at Arizona State University. "But if you look at what this Congress has done in the last year, they've really charged forward on a lot of fronts more quickly than most observers of Congress would have thought was possible."

Some recent developments might make the Democratic Congress' job even tougher - while adding to its urgency to finish what it started while it can.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., came under fire this month after a new book about the 2008 campaign revealed he made clumsy racial comments about Obama. Reid, who is up for re-election this year, is reeling in the polls back home. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the embattled chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, announced he will retire rather than face voters again in November. Veteran Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., also has said he won't run again.

Election-year dynamics will complicate matters even further. Traditionally, lawmakers don't take on as heavy a workload - and are more reluctant to tackle hot-button, politically controversial topics - as during non-election years. By the summer, many members will start fixating on their races, a reality that leadership accepts and understands will affect Capitol Hill's work schedule.

"That will shorten the calendar quite a bit," said Rep. Ed Pastor, D-Ariz., the senior member of the state's House delegation. "You'll see us going in later in the week and probably leaving earlier in the week. The calendar is dictated a lot by what's happening in the different elections. We'll probably be done in October."

By contrast, the Senate last year didn't pass its version of the health-care bill until Christmas Eve.

Still, it's not impossible to get things done even during midterm-election years, particularly in the first six months or so. Although Congress tried and was unable to pass immigration reform in 2006, it did enact other legislation such as the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, a law cracking down on child predators and sex offenders. In 2002, the GOP-controlled House and Democratic-controlled Senate kept busy responding to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the looming Iraq war but also passed campaign-finance reform and enacted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, designed to minimize corporate accounting scandals like the one that led to the downfall of Enron.

Immigration reform

So far, the prospect of an abbreviated schedule amid election-year politics hasn't made Democratic leaders and Obama administration officials shy away from contentious issues such as comprehensive immigration reform.

During the presidential campaign, Obama promised Hispanic voters that he would try to fix the nation's broken immigration system early in his administration. But even some rank-and-file lawmakers who support the idea are skeptical that Congress can get it done this year.

"I think that the president is very intent on this being part of the 2010 agenda," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Obama's point-person on immigration reform and a former Arizona governor, recently told The Arizona Republic's Editorial Board. "It would have to go early in 2010, but as you can tell from the newspapers now, they are making real headway on health care, and as health care gets resolved, there will be time now opening up legislatively to look at immigration, to look at financial regulatory reform . . . to look at job creation."

The House will wait for the Senate to pass an immigration bill now in development by Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. The strategy, Pastor said, is for the House to quickly pass whatever measure makes it out of the upper chamber. House Democratic leaders don't intend to facilitate "a prolonged debate" on what they know is "a political hot potato," he said.

"If immigration reform isn't done by early spring, it's not going to happen. They'll take it off the table," Pastor said.

Jobs and banking

Obama will lay out his 2010 priorities in his State of the Union address to Congress, which has not yet been formally scheduled but could be as soon as Jan. 26. The White House had hoped that the House and Senate would reconcile differences in their competing versions of the health-care legislation before the speech, but that might not happen.

The economy is back on Obama's radar screen in a big way. The stimulus package was a major accomplishment of his first year in the Oval Office, but the national unemployment rate remains at 10 percent. Obama may call for some additional stimulus-style jobs spending.

"They have got to start focusing on jobs because the job situation is still bad, the economy is still in the tank, and we've been spending all this time talking about health care and the environment," said Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the No. 2 Senate GOP leader. "And my guess is, in his State of the Union, Obama is going to do nothing but talk about the deficit and jobs."

The House passed a jobs bill before recessing for the holidays, but the Senate has yet to act.

"With unemployment as it is, and jobs and the economy being an issue, obviously there will be something (done to address the problem)," Pastor said.

The Obama administration and Democratic leaders also aim to enact a battery of new regulations, including a possible fee on banks, to protect consumers and taxpayers and help rein in the financial-industry excesses that contributed to the 2008 economic meltdown.

Dodd's intention to retire might actually free him up to pursue even more aggressive changes, Espino said.

"They know that Americans are very angry at Wall Street profits while the American people on Main Street are suffering very badly," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

Much else still to do

Another holdover from last year is energy reform and climate change. The House narrowly passed a sweeping and in some quarters controversial cap-and-trade measure in June, but the legislation quickly ran into trouble in the Senate.

Democrats from some states, such as coal-friendly West Virginia, don't like the bill. McCain, who in the past has been sympathetic to fighting global warming, said he is disappointed the measure does not address nuclear power, which he supports, in any meaningful way. He called the legislation protectionist because it would put tariffs on goods from countries that don't meet U.S. environmental standards.

"As far as I'm concerned, what they've got now is a non-starter," McCain said.

In addition to such outstanding major issues, Congress also is responsible for passing a budget and a series of appropriations bills and must decide the fate of President George W. Bush's signature tax cuts, which are set to expire this year. The Senate may need to consider one or two international treaties, too, Kyl said. One is a new arms-reduction treaty. A comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty that the Senate rejected in 1999 also may return.

That raises questions about how much lawmakers can reasonably expect to accomplish given this year's election constraints on their time. Last year demonstrated how easy it is to underestimate how long it takes to pass complex, landmark pieces of legislation.

"Congress works a little bit slower than the president wants - that's always the case," Espino said.

Rep. Harry Mitchell, D-Ariz., said there is always a possibility that lawmakers might have to return to work after the November elections for a lame-duck session, as they did in 2008, when they bailed out the sinking U.S. auto industry, and in 2006.

"No one really likes them, but they end up happening anyway," he said.