advertisement

Dems blast GOP & big oil

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and some friends were on camera this afternoon to deliver a rhetorical beat-down of President Bush and his "rubber stamp" Congress, and to apply the charge of "corruption, cronyism, and incompetence" to the current price of gas.

"These people can't help themselves. They are so tied to big oil that they can't grasp what energy independence is," said Pelosi. Due to this fact, she said "only Democrats" can solve the nation's energy problems.

What about those GOP charges of obstruction?

"Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. It's appalling that they would even resort to that pathetic approach," she said, and went on to list her familiar complaints about the Bush energy bills: They were written behind closed doors by and for energy companies, which benefited by $12 billion worth of subsidies as a result.

Pelosi, along with Dems. Stupak, Clyburn, and DeLauro, called for greater development of alternative energy sources like bio fuels.  "Let's look to the Midwest, not the Mideast," she said.

They were not optimistic about the possibility of the FTC investigation showing results. "It's going to be another whitewash by this White House," said Stupak. "It should be the shortest and cheapest investigation in history. All that is required is for the president to make a short trip to the mirror," said Clyburn.

Discuss (2 comments)  Email this | Link to this

Gas, gas, gas in the House

The House returns from the two-week Spring break today to a modified, limited, election year freak-out over the price of gas.

A budget, extension of tax breaks, pension legislation, lobbying reform, and immigration/border security... all stuck in limbo or limping towards floor consideration over the upcoming five-week stretch leading to the next recess. But when it comes to a pocketbook issue that threatens the birthright of every American to drive where they want when they want, the Congress will respond with alacrity. This is especially true with an election looming in six months.

No one is pretending that much can be done in the short term to lower the price of gas, and a lot of what we are about to hear this week is going to amount to finger pointing over who did -- or didn't do -- what to keep prices down. But House Majority Leader John Boehner, Ohio, has just given us an idea of what he thinks should be considered here in Congress to address the situation, and House committees are outlining future plans to hold hearings on price gouging and oil company profits.

CONTINUED »

Discuss (5 comments)  Email this | Link to this

This week in the U.S. House

I had to confront an ugly truth last week as I prepared to host the annual Radio & Television Correspondents' Association dinner and struggled with the protocol for head table seating of our nation's political leaders. It's something that those of us who toil on the House side -- from members to staff to press -- try to deny. But the point was brought home in stark terms last week when I learned that if I were to follow strict protocol, then every senator outranks every House member (except for the speaker) and therefore must be afforded privilege of place on the dais. So Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Ak., for example, is seated closer to the podium than the House minority leader, not only owing to his status as president pro tempore, but simply because he's a member of the "upper body." The House majority leader is outranked by the Senate minority whip. And so on. Somehow it just don't seem right.

So the chip that I normally carry around on my shoulder as a House producer is especially large this week and only getting larger, seeing as how most of the national news-making coming out of Congress these days is originating over on Mt. Olympus and not here in your humble "People's House."

CONTINUED »

Discuss (0 comments)  Email this | Link to this

America's "war anxiety"

New House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, says that the war is causing "anxiety" among the American people that "clouds the perception of what is happening in Washington." "The war is a big issue," said Boehner at his weekly off-camera briefing with Capitol Hill reporters. "When the country is at war, there is a certain unsettling among the American people."

This anxiety will have an impact at the polls in November, he admits, but adds: "I'm not saying that it's a detriment to Republicans." Boehner posits that the administration and Republicans are getting "no credit" for the good economy "as a result over the fact that we are at war." Boehner adds that America is fighting in Iraq for the right reasons and that there is no other option but to stay the course and ultimately win. The war in Iraq has kept the homeland safe from terror, he says. "I truly believe that that's kept the battle off of our land."

Finally, Boehner says that House Republicans will have some kind of announcement later this week about their legislative agenda for the balance of the year.

Discuss (7 comments)  Email this | Link to this

Clinton back on Congress' mind

A Republican congresswoman from Florida says that she will not vote to honor Bill Clinton's birthplace in Hope, Ark., because the former president "has some explaining to do" about his role in the Dubai ports deal. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite says that the deal itself is bad enough, but she is "even more outraged when I hear that (Clinton) may have consulted with the Crown Sheik of Dubai on this deal."

"How do we show that we are serious about protecting the United States from terrorist nations when we are proceeding to honor the birthplace of someone who may have brokered this deal?"

CONTINUED »

Discuss (6 comments)  Email this | Link to this

This week in the U.S. House

The work of the nation continues apace this week in your U.S. House of Representatives, which, relatively speaking, isn't saying much. The House has been slow getting off the mark this year, what with an historically late return from the holidays compounded by early signs of a bad case of election year gridlock setting in.

Into this void steps Rep. Chris Shays, the Connecticut Republican who is holding his second hearing into cruise ship safety on TUESDAY. Shays, who represents the family of missing honeymooner George Allen Smith, will host family members of victims of cruise ship dangers, along with representatives of some cruise lines.

CONTINUED »

Discuss (3 comments)  Email this | Link to this

Berlusconi leaves Congress wondering

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gave the bulk of his speech to Congress in Italian Wednesday - a decision that left members of Congress who showed up to listen somewhat in the dark.

Because no one here in the Capitol knew until the last minute that Berlusconi would not be speaking in English, there were no accommodations made for simultaneous audio translation. That meant that the relatively few members of Congress who attended the speech would not have the benefit of those little earphones to help them understand what was being said, unless, of course, they "capisce Italiano". They were provided, however, with a written English translation of the remarks to help them try and follow along.

CONTINUED »

Discuss (0 comments)  Email this | Link to this

This week in the House

Hard deadlines -- like the one that was looming at the end of the week on the ports deal -- are anathema to the political mind. Issues take time to mature, coalitions need time to form, controversies need time to breathe. Politicians thrive in an environment of ambiguity, and none of this happens when congressional leaders are forced to act when a political firestorm is at its hottest, as would have been the case this week had not Dubai Ports World (DPW) voluntarily submitted to an investigation. 

House Republican leaders had set aside their weekly Tuesday closed-door planning session to figure out how they were going to deal with the terminal takeover, which was set to go into effect March 2. Two hearings looking into both the issue and the process that led to approval of the deal were slated for the week. All of those events will still go forward, just not with the same urgency that surrounded them before Sen. John Warner, R-Va., announced the takeover delay yesterday on "Meet the Press." (Transcript link)

CONTINUED »

Discuss (0 comments)  Email this | Link to this

'I'm just a bill'

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Calif., is trying to force an ethics investigation into a clerical error buried in the text of the just-passed budget cutting bill, charging that the incident is emblematic of the Republican "culture of corruption and incompetence" in Washington.

On February 1, the House passed a measure left over from last year that would trim $39 billion from spending in social programs like Medicare and Medicaid. In December, the legislation had passed the Senate, but only with a tie-breaking vote from Dick Cheney. It cleared the House by a mere two votes over unified Democratic opposition.

CONTINUED »

Discuss (1 comments)  Email this | Link to this

This week in the House

Not too much to report this week as your U.S. House continues to be slow getting off the mark this election year. Things aren't going to pick up any time soon: next week is Presidents Day recess.

The big event for the week will be the Wednesday release of the House special Katrina committee's report on What Went Wrong. Somehow a draft of the document was leaked to the Washington Post -- hometown newspaper of the committee's chairman, Rep. Tom Davis (R-No. Va.) -- which printed parts of it yesterday on the front page. From what we have seen of it, the report dispenses enough blame to go around, but so far the focus has been on the role of DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, who today is rejecting assertions that his agency was too preoccupied with terror threats to adequately plan for -- and respond to -- a natural catastrophe.

CONTINUED »

Discuss (1 comments)  Email this | Link to this