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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Lame Duck Session Is Happening

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  August 5th, 2010 at 12:29 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

The Deficit Reduction Commission will have its proposals back as soon as the election is over. It is intentional. They don’t want to drop off a politically unpopular set of proposals before the election, lest voters reject people who support them.

Instead, they’ll have the package of tax increases out right after the election.

Congress will have a lame duck session to vote on them, banking on the high number of losers in this November’s election to get the recommendations passed.

How do I know?

I’ve received a copy of the congressional schedule. Here it is:

In session: September 13 to October 8

Out: October 11 to November 12

In session: November 15 – 19

Out: Week of November 22 (Thanksgiving week)

In session: November 29 – ?

There is no note that the November 29th meeting will be “as needed” or “if necessary.” It’s a done deal.

Members of Congress are being told to put it on their calendar.

Hello Lame Duck Session. Hello tax increases.

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  • deano64

    possible to win whose special elections for the US Senate. Hoepfully we can get enough new Republicans to hold together a filibuster.

  • http://wadingacross.wordpress.com logus

    Of course most every one of us already knew that there’d be lameduck rushing going on after the election, but now we have proof to back up our circumstantial evidence.

    Thanks Erick. Keep up the work, and I hope you’re thanking your contacts!

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    reminding people that the Dems LIE about everything. Oh, they “heard us” , yada, yada, or ducked town hall meetings, or talked down to us, and then went back to D.C. and did what they darn well pleased to do.

    Primaries today in TN and a few other states. I think the last of them are in September.

    Lots of fodder in a lame duck session for campaign ads.

    Do you trust (fill in the blank) to represent you, when (fill in the blank) hasn’t kept promises on any issue to date?

  • NeoKong

    ..just wait until they lose the House.
    They will be like the Germans retreating towards Berlin.
    They will burn down everything.

    They will be like Ricardo Montalban in The Wrath of Khan.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    We need to win the Senate special elections.

  • Thomas_Hauber

    I had read on a couple of previous posts that some of the senate seats up for election this November have state rules which seat those senators immediately. Is this true? Because if it is even despite luke warm northeast senators there will be a filibuster that should hold.

  • stopsocialism

    After the voters throw out the majority of lunatic-left d-crat socialists running in Nov, these reprobates will then show up for a lame-duck session of CONgress. With nothing further to lose, they will vote for CAP-AND-TAX, other massive TAX INCREASES (including possibly a VAT), “card check” to REQUIRE ALL American workers to join a d-crat party supporting union, and they will vote for a FULL AMNESTY for ILLEGALS bill that will provide ILLEGALS with full government benefits and voting rights for the 2012 presidential election.

    Count on it.

  • rdelbov

    since Scott Brown was elected on 01-19-2010?

    Strange topic for a lameduck session post. Please check at USsenate.gov
    and see all the bills signed and passed.

    Yup they cheated and reconciled through Obamacare. Yup Brown voted yes on part III of a four part stimulus plan. Plus Brown okayed Dodd-Frank, Collins and Snowe bailed out the teachers today

    but that’s it. No spending bills have passed and over 300 bills await approval that have passed the House. In addition there is a huge backlog of nominations.

    McConnell and the GOP has slowplayed the democrats. Are they mad? You bet.

    No budget bill-no estate tax fix-no extension of Bush tax cuts-several major treaties to vote-Cap/trade, several energy bills, immigration reform and numerous other matters need to be tackled.

    its hard to underestimate the huge legislative backlog in the US senate. Its historic.

    Not to downplay the lameduck stuff but the GOP come September 13(when they return from electioneering) will have a huge hammer over the democrats. There is a massive logjam and unless Reid gives in to McConnell its going to be a mess.

    Now Reid says the Bush Cuts will be addressed in September. No way. That’s your lame duck stuff. There is no will to raise taxes before Nov 2 and Pelosi will not keep tax cuts for those over 250K in place.

    So I hate the lameduck stuff but there will be some leverage for the GOP

  • http://www.visualcv.com/wingsairboss Robert Rupard

    What is a good strategy to stop the Dems from ruining us in the Lame Duck session?

  • ilgop24

    And he see if he can immediately be the fiscal conservative that he is campaigning as. He has stated he will not vote on the Cap and Trade legislation as a Senator

  • Richard Mullins

    When they have nothing to lose, they will do anything. I suspect that things will move much more to the left side of things from the Obama admin in Jan 2011. Losing the house and close to losing the Senate is not a good place to be.

  • acat
  • acat

    So, after the lame duck, we can watch as Former majority leader Reid (D-NV) squabbles about his rightful place in the Dem pecking order.

    At least, assuming Angle (R-Cand, NV) doesn’t pull out a win in Nevada. If that’s the case, we get to watch minority leader Durbin (D-IL) spin spin spin.

    (and, hopefully, stick his foot far enough in his mouth that Illinois voters finally toss Dick(head Durbin out…)

    Mew

  • http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

    …since we have the weapons in the next Congress to neuter these proposals, as well as ObamaCare, etc.

    The major question is whether the Republicans are willing pursue total war against Obama, the Democrats, and the MSM (assuming we win the House and/or the Senate) that will result form using these weapons.

    Congress has the power of the purse, so if we win one or both houses, our Republican officials would be able to defund in the next Session all these agencies that the Democrats enacted simply by refusing to fund them.

    Of course, since the President can veto such laws, this will create a deadlock between Congress and the President – which means that we can be expected to undergo withering fire from all the media acolytes (I’m being polite here) and will need to EXPLAIN and hold our ground as the federal government gets shut down.

    Especially when the media exaggerate the collateral damage.

    Thus far, our leaders have not indicated that they recognize the dire peril that our nation is facing, much like the French aristocracy prior to the French Revolution, or Venezuela facing Chavez, etc.

  • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

    What motivation would there be for lame duck legislators to vote for a bunch of unpopular bills? If they ever want to run again it would be in their best interest to vote in a popular manner.

    And if they are not returning for the next session, then the threats or perks offered by Pelosi and Reid are meaningless.

  • JSobieski

    How many of those losers could actually get a job in the private sector when things were good? They will need jobs involving political pull.

    Of course, if they thought about it, the would realize that a minority party has less pull than the majority party.

  • clintonformccain

    A lot of Democrats are going to wake up the morning after the November election and finally realize that Barack Hussein Obama destroys everyone he touches. Do you really think that Claire McCaskill is going to be looking to cast a bunch of lefty-loo Obama agenda items in a lame duck Congress as a way to kick off her own re-election campaign. Dems (really all congress-critters) are stupid, vain, egotists who don’t give a rat’s behind what their constituents think, but at a certain point self-preservation does kick in.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    There is at least 1 special election that would seat the new Senator immediately. I don’t know who, but several on this thread have referenced it.

  • Aaron Gardner

    I will let others decide which one of those two would be with the Senate R’s on a filibuster.

  • Brian Hibbert

    The alternative would be a disaster for our state and for our country.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    We already know they don’t fear ELECTORAL retribution,since they believe judges and bureaucratic fiats can accomplish much of what they want.

    But we can make them fear other retribution. I have already mentioned it, but not pitched it.

    20 Million American March

    When they call Lame Duck to order, we converge from every corner of America and meet at DC. We fill not only the mall but every park, road, parking lot there. It will scare them enough that they will not pass their agenda.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens
  • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

    don’t think the way that normal people do.

  • http://impudent.edublogs.org/ kyle8

    don’t think the way that normal people do.

  • msctex

    These people are working under the sway of a zeal which can only be termed religious. Everything they have been taught is Good and that Good people work to bring about has crashed and burned in a matter of months before their eyes. All they have left is rage, envy and confusion.

    There could be citizens united arm-in-arm across the entire District of Columbia while this Congress sits in its final session. And it would not matter. This was our flirtation with Socialism, and the aristocratic, half-educated fools who seek to bring it about will do all they can to leave their mark on the world, no matter its shape nor cost.

  • kchand

    I have dibs on the pitchfork concession.

  • E Pluribus Unum

    You don’t think that 20 million (or more realistically 5-8 million angry people in the nation’s capital will not have them in fear of being overrun? They will call the military, they will call their union thugs, and they will threaten to move on them.. And if they sic either one on the people, it really will become a riot and everybody knows it. So they won’t.

    They will be scared to death. They will be sequestered in the building for a full week, eating boxed lunches and wearing the same clothes.

    And they will not pass those bills.

  • fibgirl

    Surround their offices, and don’t let them out if they sign one spending bill or anything unconstitutional….they will not be going to posh gov’t or lobbying jobs, but put away for TREASON. We are not playing around, and if they want to keep ramming more crap down our throats, they can pay for it!!

  • dude

    where the financial crisis all started. Support his opponent for Congress. Here is his link to donate.
    http://seanbielat.org/meet-sean
    Send a money bomb to Sean. He is a Iraq vet and has strong business ethics.(unlike Franks who has NO ethics)
    Personally, I cant stand Franks and will gladly donate to anyone who runs against him. Does that make me a racist?

  • tomkinney

    I welcome this and all other shennanigans this hapless WH and these puerile Democrats can bring on in the next X number of months. This is the time for all Americans of sound mind and body to see the “naked lunch,” as William Burroughs called it: i.e., the moment when you see exactly what it is stuck to the fork you are about to shove into your mouth. When you are about to see what you are eating, or in this case, what we’re being fed.

    I’ve long felt that we need two parties; that the two party system, one that developed spontaneously in the very first administration, was key to our success and further that without this yin/yang, Socratic problem tackling system, we would veer too far one way or the other. That we would lose the virtues our bicamerally partisan Socratic method–so very different than the madcap European parlimentarian system, which gives everyone a voice but no one any rights other than patronage–has bestowed on us. a our Because of that, I’m fearful of the total disappearance of theDs. Fearful we’d lose our echo chamber. But they have gone so far over the top and are so out of control, that only the imminent threat of their dissipation as a political entity can shock the Ds back to their senses. Henceforth, bring it on.

    Let’s bless them to make every unsightly mistake of judgment, every insult– common or exotic–made against the average American, let them attempt every faux progressive usurpation they have in them. Let them dig the hole as deep as their deepest desire requires. Including that of lame duck shooting season.

    Maybe then, on the edge of the abyss of their extinction, they will see the light and come around.

  • msctex

    I’d bet they’d pass the bills, under any circumstances. I cannot overstate the fact that Progressive thought when fully embraced occupies the same place in the mind, heart, psyche — however you want to put it — as religion. And I honestly believe that martyrdom is not beyond the mindset of some of these people. Socialized Medicine was a Holy Grail for fifty years, and they made it happen. It happened in a slipshod, non-functional manner, but theirs is a slipshod, non-functional philosophy.

    Again: I hope you are right. But true zeal trumps fear.