Inside D.C.
Congress to work just 110 days in 2016 – a blessing or a curse?
As we launch into the second session of the 114th Congress, the public approval rating of Congress and the job it does – or doesn’t do – is a mere 13.4%, so we have to ask ourselves is the fact Congress will be in session just 110 days – a mere 3.6 months – in all of 2016 a blessing or a curse?
If you were Rip Van Winkle awaking from a long nap, you’d know it was a presidential/congressional election year by just scanning the formal schedules for the House and Senate for 2016. Not only will Congress observe its regular list of federal holidays and various religious recesses, it will be out session the entire month of July – that’s when both national party conventions are held – and October, the last crucial weeks running up to the November election. All of this time off is listed formally as “district/state work period,” meaning the entire House, one third of the Senate and all of those folks running for president will be “working” to gain or keep their jobs.
Political wisdom dictates the schedule Congress has announced means any bills not enacted by July 4, will very likely either be dealt with in the lame duck session or will be punted into the 115th Congress in 2017. Can Congress even get 12 appropriations bill done and to the President, can it agree on a budget resolution, can it essentially do 12 month’s work in half that time? The answer is a firm “maybe.”
One could argue that during 2015, the heavy lifting was all done in the last 90 days of the year. The biggest accomplishments of first session included the two-year budget deal, including the increase in the federal debt ceiling; the $1.15-trillion FY2016 omnibus spending bill and its passel of policy riders, and the extension of about 55 federal tax breaks through 2016, with a fair share of those IRS blessings gaining permanent status. Also finalized was the first multi-year reauthorization of federal highway and commuter programs in decades.
However, a lot of the issues important to agriculture didn’t get tickets on those last trains out of DC in December. Challenges still facing agriculture include killing off EPA’s “waters of the U.S. (WOTUS)” rule, now in abeyance nationally thanks to a federal court stay; similar treatment is proposed for rules to recapture CO2/carbon from existing and new power plants, as well as the agency’s recently proposed rule to make ground level ozone maximums stricter; the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) still must be reauthorized, and the grumbling over the impact of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) – the biggest overhaul of FDA food safety authority in 70 years – is getting louder, especially among farmers and animal producers.
Federal preemption of state food labeling authority is a significant priority for food and agriculture, the House having passed a bill last year to federally preempt state laws requiring the labeling of foods/feeds containing genetically engineered (GE) ingredients. While the House effort enjoyed strong bipartisan support, getting a Senate bill introduced has proved difficult.
On trade – an area of which President Obama is very proud – the approval by 12 Pacific Rim nations of the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) free trade accord has the White House and industry ratcheting up political pressure on Congress to approve the pact affecting 40% of global gross domestic product (GDP). Congressional efforts to lift the nearly 60-year trade embargo on Cuba will also see no action until at least post-election. It also appears the dreaded Farm Bill cycle will resume as both House and Senate ag committees intend to hold Farm Bill oversight hearings, particularly to review USDA implementation of the hard-won omnibus ag program law.
The inevitable lame duck session – the legislative housecleaning period – begins November 15, and is set to end December 16. It’s lame duck where unresolved hot button and/or personal policy issues are dealt with without fear of negative election impact, generally as policy riders on unfinished spending bills and other must-pass legislation. It’s also when defeated, retiring and otherwise departing lawmakers go for broke as part of their rush to create their “legacy” as lawmakers.
Candidates for lame duck action include some kind of immigration reform, along with the possibility of comprehensive federal tax reform, though no plans on either front have emerged. While federal court challenges to President Obama’s executive orders deferring deportations of certain classes of illegal immigrants are pushing the immigration issue to the Supreme Court, both House Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) stated publicly no action on immigration will be taken while Obama is in office. On the tax reform side, Ryan, the former chair of the power tax-writing House Ways & Means Committee, wants to take a shot at reforming both personal and corporate tax rates, while closing a long list of tax code loopholes to help pay for lower tax rates. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R, UT), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, however, appears to be skeptical of the Ryan plan, or least the timing of it.
So, is an abbreviated congressional work schedule a blessing or a curse? I’m guessing it’s a little of both. Some argue the less time they’re in town, the less damage they can do. However, the nation’s business can’t get done on its own, so attention must be paid.
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Do you really think voting is going to fix the problem? People acting like the state is their religion is the problem. Also known as statism. People would never dare question authority. They simply conduct the ritual of voting to elect their next dictator! They call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. Republican vs Democrat, it’s a left vs right paradigm, a delusion. freedom and security will never come from a politician.
If Congress is only going to work a 110 days they should only be paid for a 110 days. How much of the 110 days is going to be work for their constituents verses raising money for the party. We the people are going to make some changes this November and put people in office who want to work for us.