This post is about how the Congressional agenda gets set and mis-set by federal elections, especially when there’s a presidential election. In today’s The Hill, there’s an article about how much time the Democratic leadership has to effect change before next year’s presidential contest puts the kibosh on making necessary, and often difficult, policy decisions. Important debate on SCHIP, the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), appropriations bills, FISA changes and other issues of the day only have about two months left. Once the earlier primaries start to kick off, no one of either party will want to lay down a serious position for fear that it will be exploited by the other side. It doesn’t matter that right now or in early 2009 they all might agree and implement the changes. In a few months, it’s presidential calculus, not American citizen calculus that’s the controlling factor.
Having worked in federal politics and national advocacy during the last three election cycles (starting in 2004), I’ve seen firsthand how much an impact elections have. And that’s not related to the quip that “elections have consequences”. They also have pre-consequences. From the summer of 2004 until early 2005, nothing of consequence could be accomplished by Congress since everything was about Kerry and Bush’s campaigns. Okay, these things happen. 2005 should have been the year to get things done, but nothing much moved. That’s partly due to having a rubber-stamp Republican Congress that year, but also people didn’t get moving quickly enough. Licking their wounds from 2004, they waited too long. Then, the ramp up to 2006 elections started around November 2005. Take back the Congress was the mantra, and the scheme concocted by Rahm Emanuel was to not rock the boat. He found small-d Democrats (Republicans in Democratic clothing) to run. They wouldn’t push a progressive agenda. Real progressives sometimes took less controversial positions in order to ensure they’d win their uphill challenges.
The Democrats won. Yay! I celebrated and screamed until my voice was hoarse. But, what happened after that? It seemed Democrats would have all of 2007 to try to make a difference. They flew out of the starting gates and ran directly into the earlier U.S. presidential race in history! By spring 2007, candidates were popping up and by summer we had a bumper crop. Fierce ideology and partisan one-uping was in fashion before Labor Day had a chance to force the white shoes back into the closet! Now, with each state trying to move their primary or caucus into the late 1990s, it seems as if reasonable dialogue at the national level is pretty much kaput until 2009. Where’d the two-year Congressional cycle go?
