Mother of All Lame Duck&" Sessions a Consequential One?

Lott a Mississippi Republican acknowledges however that significant issues have been left for this years session. I cant remember a time when theres more left over than theres left over right now" he said. Lame-Duck sessions such as the one that begins this week are so short and fraught with post-election fissures that Congress usually musters the will to complete only a single piece of business if that. A mix of a desperate outgoing majority an obstinate incoming majority a gathering of dejected losers and an eight-weeks-short window from Election Day to the start of the new Congress often sets the stage for bad feelings and gridlock.  A host of additional expired or expiring tax policies could also wreak havoc on individuals and businesses financial plans. And the scheduled expiration of extended unemployment benefits could put out-of-work Americans further in the hole. Most of the Democrats to-do list was put together before the midterm elections gave Republicans a majority in the House and delivered Democrats heavy losses in the Senate although not enough to lose control:

1. Legislating an end to a ban on openly gay servicemembers in the military;
2. Securing a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants children;
3. Approving the New START agreement with Russia;
4. Adopting a range of incentives to reduce the nations dependence on oil; raising taxes on the wealthy;
5. Extending benefits for the unemployed;
6. Securing higher funding for a raft of domestic programs;
7. Beefing up sex discrimination laws; and
8. Tightening campaign finance restrictions

Look to Republicans to try to block Democrats efforts to use the final days of their House majority and their Senate margin to enact anything at all save a measure keeping the government running at last years spending levels and another extending current tax rates for all taxpayers.  David E. Bonior the former House Democratic whip from Michigan says lame-duck sessions are often dispirited times especially in a year such as this one in which party control of the House has shifted to Republicans from Democrats and more than 100 defeated or retiring lawmakers 14 in the Senate and at least 90 in the House return to Washington one last time. There are often the recriminations and the what-ifs of the elections some people are trying to figure out what theyre going to do with the next stages of their lives and its the holiday season so all of those things conspire to come up with a scenario for a not very productive session" Bonior said. But like Lott he noted the imperative facing the lame-duck session that starts this week with organizational and party leadership matters and turns to legislation in earnest the week after Thanksgiving. If you have to keep the government going and keep money in peoples pockets as is the case with the tax issue its definitely necessary" Bonior said. Youve got to do it or people are going to see their taxes go up." Despite this years list of consequential leftover issues history shows that such sessions more often than not flounder and produce no major legislation. In the 2008 lame-duck session for example the House passed a bill bailing out major automakers that then failed in the Senate. In 2002 though both chambers approved a bill creating the Homeland Security Department and in 2000 they cleared an omnibus appropriations bill. In 1998 the House reconvened to take up a difficult matter that many did not want to deal with a characteristic of the kind of issue that gets pushed into post-election sessions: The chamber impeached President Bill Clinton and went home; the Senate didnt bother to show up. This month and next the House will hold separate ethics trials of New York Democrat Charles B. Rangel and California Democrat Maxine Waters. The 1994 lame-duck session following the Republican takeover of the House allowed passage of a single bill approving global agreement that created the World Trade Organization only because Clinton requested it and most Republicans supported it. That year all the annual appropriations bills had been signed into law by the end of September. This year Congress has not sent President Obama a single appropriations bill and atop that it punted trillions of dollars of tax policy decisions into the session starting this week. Lawmakers also left undone a measure to renew defense programs that has passed each of the last 48 years a new nuclear arms agreement with Russia and a variety of second-tier measures such as food safety and child nutrition proposals with bipartisan support. Congressional leaders have also promised a vote on a set of recommendations for reducing burgeoning budget deficits and the national debt that a presidential commission may make by the beginning of December. Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar has nicknamed the coming session the mother of all lame ducks" because so much consequential work awaits resolution.