Tag Archives: legislation

The Traffic Cop

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Unlike the House, where the Speaker is expected to expedite the will of the majority, the person charged with running the Senate is not expected to exert his will.

Instead, he or she is more like a glorified traffic cop, making certain that all of the highways of the upper chamber are cleared of obstructions and moving smoothly.

It’s a tough job because the Senate is necessarily full of obstructions and rarely moves smoothly.The Senate majority leader, unlike the Speaker, is not named in the Constitution. Nor is the majority leader the top Senator in the line of succession to the White House. That title goes to the president pro tempore — usually the longest serving senator. Continue reading →

The Train Wreck

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Originally Published in The Hill.

The healthcare train currently chugging down the tracks is going to crash, and it is not going to be pretty.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the Senate Finance Committee chairman who helped design the healthcare reform bill signed into law by President Obama three years ago, was the one who initially called it a “huge train wreck.”

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, characterized the law as “beyond comprehension.” Continue reading →

How Boston Will Impact Washington

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

The Boston attacks will have an inevitable, if unpredictable, impact on the debates in Washington D.C.

We now know that the perpetrators were legal residents, that they were Muslim, that they were Chechen, that they were pretty young. We know the older one was disaffected and unhappy with living in America. We know he was radicalized to become anti-American.

We surmise that the younger one was less radical but perhaps more prone to being influenced by his big brother. Continue reading →

The Gun Vote

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

This column is about the vote on Wednesday in the U.S. Senate on the amendment to the gun control bill which had two main sponsors: Democrat Joe Manchin (WVa) and Republican Pat Toomey (Pa).

The effect of the amendment would have been, among other things, to have increased background checks on people buying guns to include gun shows and internet sales.

I don’t want to discuss the merits of the amendment; I want to chat about why it failed in the face of overwhelming popular support. Continue reading →

A Missed Opportunity

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I actually don’t blame some Members of the Senate for threatening to filibuster the still-mysterious gun bill.

Who knows what they have come up with in the back halls of the Congress and who know what they will end up with once this bill gets to the floor.

Mitch McConnell had it exactly right when he held out the right to support a filibuster until he actually got a glimpse of the bill.

I think the whole process has pretty much stunk. Continue reading →

Cafeteria Conservative

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Karl Rove is probably a cafeteria conservative. So am I.

Cafeteria Catholics are Catholics who go to Mass on a regular, or semi-regular basis, but don’t exactly follow all the rules of the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church has a lot of rules. No pre-marital sex. No masturbation. No birth control. No gay stuff. No abortion. No meat on Fridays. No food an hour before you take communion.

Lots of Catholics tend to pick and choose among these rules. The no pre- Continue reading →

The Enemy Within

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I feel like America is collectively living in a very disturbing episode of the Twilight Zone. The events from Friday morning in Connecticut have thrown me for a loop.

A kid from the suburbs killed a bunch of small kids from the suburbs and their teachers and their principal. That these children are roughly the same age as my son fills me with a combination of rage, dread, sadness, empathy, and confusion. Continue reading →

There Should Not Be A Law

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

When you travel, you get a chance to get reacquainted with the USA today, and on the front page of that newspaper, the headline blared “61 bills, Congress is on pace to make history with the least productive legislative year in the post World-War II era.”

Okay, it’s a long headline. And the headline pretty much sums up the story by my friend Sue Davis. It should come as no surprise that the Congress and the current President found little to agree on. And with the Senate pretty much taking the year off (they haven’t passed a budget in three years, for example), this story doesn’t necessarily fit into the “news” category. Continue reading →

Regulations Wipe-Out U.S. Productivity

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com

Americans produce more regulatory paperwork than manufacturered goods. You heard that ‘torectly as they say (sometimes) in the South.

Americans spent enough time and effort complying with government regulations to total $1.8 trillion of our roughly $15 trillion national GDP. (Source: Small Business Administration)

During the same year, the entire American manufacturing industry made $1.7 trillion worth of: airplanes, cars, furniture, clothes, upholstery, widgets, gadgets, wingnuts, and Sidewinder missiles. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Industry Economic Accounts (2009))

This is why the current ‘debate’ (mud-slinging) by the Obama Administration over ‘out-sourcing’ and ‘Bain Capital’ is so maddening, mind-numbing and quite honestly, ‘dishonest’. Continue reading →