Thoughts From A Conservative Mom

Archive for the ‘Legislative Branch’ Category

President Barack Obama boldly proclaims, “The buck stops here!” But, whenever his policies are criticized, he acts as if the buck stopped with George W. Bush.
 
The party line that we are likely to be hearing from now until the November elections is that Obama “inherited” the big federal budget deficits and that he has to “clean up the mess” left in the economy by the Republicans. This may convince those who want to be convinced, but it will not stand up under scrutiny.

No President of the United States can create either a budget deficit or a budget surplus. All spending bills originate in the House of Representatives and all taxes are voted into law by Congress.
 
Democrats controlled both houses of Congress before Barack Obama became president. The deficit he inherited was created by the Congressional Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, who did absolutely nothing to oppose the runaway spending. He was one of the biggest of the big spenders.
 
The last time the federal government had a budget surplus, Bill Clinton was president, so it was called “the Clinton surplus.” But Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, where all spending bills originate, for the first time in 40 years. It was also the first budget surplus in more than a quarter of a century.
 
The only direct power that any president has that can affect deficits and surpluses is the power to veto spending bills. President Bush did not veto enough spending bills but Senator Obama and his fellow Democrats in control of Congress were the ones who passed the spending bills.
 
Today, with Barack Obama in the White House, allied with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in charge in Congress, the national debt is a bigger share of the national output than it has been in more than half a century. And its share is projected to continue going up for years to come, becoming larger than national output in 2012.
 
Having created this scary situation, President Obama now says, “Don’t give in to fear. Let’s reach for hope.” The voters reached for hope when they elected Obama. The fear comes from what he has done since taking office.

Read more at One News Now

The Marxists see their agenda and puppet politicians being challenged by everyday Americans, and they’re rallying the troops!  Do we have to resolve to meet them?

The Wall Street Journal reports:

The leaders of the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union have agreed to coordinate spending millions of dollars in the midterm elections to support pro-union candidates, most of them Democrats.

The two labor organizations say they have a combined $88 million or more to deploy in this year’s election cycle. It’s not clear how much of that money they will pool together.

The renewed alliance between the two big labor groups comes as Democrats are battling to retain control of both houses of Congress. The AFL-CIO and SEIU plan to target elections in 26 states, all but five of which they consider battleground territory, including California, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio, [and Oregon].

The SEIU, with 1.8 million members, says it has budgeted $44 million, up 26% from 2006.

Most of the SEIU’s $44 million comes from the 300,000 of its members who donate $7 monthly to the union political-action committee.

Turnout is a critical concern for union leaders.

“The enthusiasm gap isn’t just with the public,” said SEIU national political director Jon Youngdahl. “It’s with our members as well.”

Union leaders have expressed disappointment with some Democratic leaders for failing to push harder to pass pro-union legislation. This was one of the reasons the AFL-CIO’s Arkansas affiliate last week voted not to support Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D., Ark.) for re-election.

To counter any possible apathy, Mr. Trumka said the unions planned to put more campaign workers in the field than in 2006 and 2008, knocking on doors of union households and handing out leaflets at work sites. The federation also will coordinate phone banks and mailings, tracking progress through weekly polls.

Michelle Malkin observes:

As I’ve noted over the last two years, it’s going to take a bottom-up revolt by disgusted rank-and-file members to stop the political raid on worker dues.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson: “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

She also unearthed this scandalous gem:

In related news, from the Marxist People’s World , comes news of an radical joint get-out-the-vote effort with the AFL-CIO:

The AFL-CIO executive committee voted unanimously this morning to join One Nation, Working Together, a new national coalition of labor and civil rights groups that has as its purpose to “reorder America’s priorities by investing in the nation’s most valuable resource – its people.”

The labor, civil rights, environmental, faith and other organizations that have formed the new coalition intend to replace unemployment and economic crisis faced by the country’s majority with “nothing less than a future of shared prosperity for all our people,” the AFL-CIO said in a statement after it voted to join One Nation.

“None of us alone have been able to achieve our priorities,” said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO.

One Nation’s first official act as a coalition will be a march on Washington on Oct. 2, which unions say will energize an army of tens of thousands who will return to their neighborhoods, churches, schools and voting booths to prevent a Republican takeover of Congress in November and begin building a new permanent coalition to fight for a progressive agenda.

AFL-CIO targets Oregon in fall campaigns

What Do Workers Do When Union Bosses’ Political Agendas Don’t Reflect Their Own?

When the Founding Fathers issued the Declaration of Independence, they proclaimed: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent, have made it clear that they are willing to operate without such authority in order to pass their “cap-and-trade” energy-tax legislation. For the sake of our representative government, they must be stopped.

On Nov. 2, the American people will give their consent to the candidates whose legislative agenda they support. Based on the discontent throughout the country, both sides of the aisle think the upcoming midterm elections will reduce the size of the current Democratic congressional majority. A widespread loss of Democratic seats would be an unmistakable condemnation of the far-left legislative agenda being pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Obama administration.

Incredibly, this forecasted repudiation of big government could be greeted by ousted politicians with a repudiation of voter intent. After the election, but before the newly elected Congress is sworn in in January, the current Congress may call a lame-duck session in November and December. During this session, congressmen and senators removed from power may still vote to enact new legislation. Some Democrats already are talking about their plans to exploit this session to address unpopular issues.

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lieberman have been particularly unabashed about their hopes to advance the cap-and-trade bill in a lame-duck session where defeated congressmen and senators would be estranged from the will of people. This bill – which intentionally would raise the cost of energy produced by fossil fuels so we would use less of it – has not had enough support to pass. In fact, the bill was shelved recently by Mr. Reid, who clearly stated, “We know we don’t have the votes.” They don’t have the votes because congressmen do not want to vote for another expensive, unpopular bill just before a highly contested election. Of course, those congressmen who lose their election will no longer be accountable to the people in a lame-duck session.

Mr. Lieberman admits that “there is a certain awkwardness in a lame-duck session. But these are big and important issues. …” Perhaps it is the opening words of the Constitution are the cause of that “certain awkwardness.”

“We the People” speak with our votes and already have spoken out resoundingly against this energy agenda. If those who support cap-and-trade are voted out of office, Mr. Lieberman and his colleagues should respect that message.

Read more at the Washington Times

The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy: Push through union ‘card-check,’ cap and trade, and more

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

View on YouTube – Part 1

View on YouTube – Part 2

View on YouTube – Part 3

View on YouTube – Part 4

View on YouTube – Part 5

View on YouTube – Part 6

Attacks on Freedom

The Original Tea Party

View on YouTube

The Civil War and Gilded Age

View on YouTube

Progressivism

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FDR’s State And LBJ’s Society

View on YouTube

Big Gov’t and Tea Parties

View on YouTube

The Constitution and Freedom

Woodrow Wilson and the roots of Progressivism

Barack Obama and “The Second Bill of Rights”

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

We the Serfs

WHO has changed how the constitution is interpreted?

Only seventy?  Somehow I get the feeling they neglected to mention this fact to the voters…

Gateway Pundit reports:

The Socialist Party of America announced in their October 2009 newsletter that 70 Congressional democrats currently belong to their caucus. 

This admission was recently posted on Scribd.com:

American Socialist Voter –
Q: How many members of the U.S. Congress are also members of the DSA?
A: Seventy

Q: How many of the DSA members sit on the Judiciary Committee?
A: Eleven: John Conyers [Chairman of the Judiciary Committee], Tammy Baldwin, Jerrold Nadler, Luis Gutierrez,
Melvin Watt, Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson, Steve Cohen, Barbara Lee, Robert Wexler, Linda Sanchez [there are 23 Democrats on the Judiciary Committee of which eleven, almost half, are now members of the DSA].

Q: Who are these members of 111th Congress?
A: See the listing below

Co-Chairs
Hon. Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07)
Hon. Lynn Woolsey (CA-06)

Vice Chairs
Hon. Diane Watson (CA-33)
Hon. Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18)
Hon. Mazie Hirono (HI-02)
Hon. Dennis Kucinich (OH-10)

Senate Members
Hon. Bernie Sanders (VT)

House Members
Hon. Neil Abercrombie (HI-01)
Hon. Tammy Baldwin (WI-02)
Hon. Xavier Becerra (CA-31)
Hon. Madeleine Bordallo (GU-AL)
Hon. Robert Brady (PA-01)
Hon. Corrine Brown (FL-03)
Hon. Michael Capuano (MA-08)
Hon. André Carson (IN-07)
Hon. Donna Christensen (VI-AL)
Hon. Yvette Clarke (NY-11)
Hon. William “Lacy” Clay (MO-01)
Hon. Emanuel Cleaver (MO-05)
Hon. Steve Cohen (TN-09)
Hon. John Conyers (MI-14)
Hon. Elijah Cummings (MD-07)
Hon. Danny Davis (IL-07)
Hon. Peter DeFazio (OR-04)
Hon. Rosa DeLauro (CT-03)
Rep. Donna F. Edwards (MD-04)
Hon. Keith Ellison (MN-05)
Hon. Sam Farr (CA-17)
Hon. Chaka Fattah (PA-02)
Hon. Bob Filner (CA-51)
Hon. Barney Frank (MA-04)
Hon. Marcia L. Fudge (OH-11)
Hon. Alan Grayson (FL-08)
Hon. Luis Gutierrez (IL-04)
Hon. John Hall (NY-19)
Hon. Phil Hare (IL-17)
Hon. Maurice Hinchey (NY-22)
Hon. Michael Honda (CA-15)
Hon. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02)
Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX-30)
Hon. Hank Johnson (GA-04)
Hon. Marcy Kaptur (OH-09)
Hon. Carolyn Kilpatrick (MI-13)
Hon. Barbara Lee (CA-09)
Hon. John Lewis (GA-05)
Hon. David Loebsack (IA-02)
Hon. Ben R. Lujan (NM-3)
Hon. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14)
Hon. Ed Markey (MA-07)
Hon. Jim McDermott (WA-07)
Hon. James McGovern (MA-03)
Hon. George Miller (CA-07)
Hon. Gwen Moore (WI-04)
Hon. Jerrold Nadler (NY-08)
Hon. Eleanor Holmes-Norton (DC-AL)
Hon. John Olver (MA-01)
Hon. Ed Pastor (AZ-04)
Hon. Donald Payne (NJ-10)
Hon. Chellie Pingree (ME-01)
Hon. Charles Rangel (NY-15)
Hon. Laura Richardson (CA-37)
Hon. Lucille Roybal-Allard (CA-34)
Hon. Bobby Rush (IL-01)
Hon. Linda Sánchez (CA-47)
Hon. Jan Schakowsky (IL-09)
Hon. José Serrano (NY-16)
Hon. Louise Slaughter (NY-28)
Hon. Pete Stark (CA-13)
Hon. Bennie Thompson (MS-02)
Hon. John Tierney (MA-06)
Hon. Nydia Velazquez (NY-12)
Hon. Maxine Waters (CA-35)
Hon. Mel Watt (NC-12)
Hon. Henry Waxman (CA-30)
Hon. Peter Welch (VT-AL)
Hon. Robert Wexler (FL-19)

If your “honorable” representative is on this list, I recommend you immediately google their opponent in the next election, make a donation and get involved in taking back congress from avowed socialists! 

American Thinker observes:

That’s 70 out of 255 Democrats in the House who are avowed socialists. You also wonder how many are still in the closet.

Again, we see the cowardice of these people. If they really had courage, they would run as both Democrats and socialists and be proud of it.

If the RNC were smart – and they’re not – they would make an effort to get the facts about these anti-free market congressmen known far and wide. And what these Democrats have signed on to by being members of the Socialist Party of America is quite plain.

From the Preamble of the SPA:

We are socialists because we reject an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender discrimination, environmental destruction, and brutality and violence in defense of the status quo.

We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane international social order based both on democratic planning and market mechanisms to achieve equitable distribution of resources,meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships.

Note that some of what they stand for is boilerplate from both Democrats and Republicans. It is their “vision” of a “humane social order” that is based on the “equitable distribution of resources” among other nonsense that sets the socialists apart from rational people.

An examination of that list would tell you that the overwhelming majority of those Democrats are from extremely safe districts so its not like a revelation like this would mean their political careers are over. But it is still shocking to know that 20 years after the fall of Communism, so many lawmakers would still be enamored of such a spectacularly failed economic and social system.

What Obama means by the word “democracy”

Quick quiz: What do we call a system of government in which an unelected cadre of self-professed wise men make decisions for a nation of millions, all the while insulting those millions as ignoramuses? We used to call it tyranny. Now, apparently, we call it an “independent judiciary.”
 
At least that’s the way the left sees it. The role of the judiciary in this country, according to liberals, is to act as a sort of super-Senate, qadis on the hill who decide based on whim and fancy how the rest of us should live. The American people are benighted morons; the judiciary is full of brilliant moral thinkers. They must rule us.
 
This perspective, of course, would have sickened the Founding Fathers, who established an independent judiciary in order to adjudicate legal disputes, not to rewrite laws at will. In fact, the founders recognized the threat of judicial omnipotence, which is why they wrote the Constitution so as to limit the judiciary: The judiciary cannot control its own purse strings, nor can it even define its own jurisdiction. Under Article III of the Constitution, Congress’ power over the judiciary doesn’t end with up-or-down judicial nominee votes—Congress actually has the power to take whole areas of law away from the judiciary completely.

Read more at CNS News

Liberals see Supreme Court as backup legislature

Way to buy off your voter blocks with taxpayer money!

President Barack Obama signed into law legislation providing $26 billion in aid to cash-strapped state governments amid fears the U.S. economy is stalling just months before this year’s midterm elections.

The House, taking a one-day break from the campaign trail, returned to Washington today to approve the measure 247-161 before lawmakers adjourned once again for their August recess.

The bill, designed to prevent thousands of layoffs of teachers and other public service employees, cleared the Senate last week after a pair of Republicans joined Democrats in breaking a filibuster.

Representative Mike Castle of Delaware, who is running for the Senate, and Joseph Cao of New Orleans were the only Republicans to support the bill. Three Democrats opposed the plan. Twenty-five lawmakers didn’t vote.

The bill became the latest flashpoint in an election year debate over jobs, the economy and the deficit. Republicans, who have attacked federal spending as one of their top election issues, called the legislation a costly bailout of government employees, a key Democratic constituency. Democrats, who have struggled to realize their jobs agenda, said the bill would keep teachers in the classroom and police on the beat while still cutting the deficit.

Read more at Bloomberg

Let us all now bail out the states?

The Next Big Crisis: State Bankruptcies

The Income Tax and Government Spending

The summer of 2010 is turning out to be a hot one – and not just because of the weather. The duration and depth of the recession, exacerbated by the high-tax, big-spending policies of the Obama administration, has led Americans to take a closer look at those who purport to “lead” us. We don’t much like what we see.

The problem? It’s the sense of entitlement, stupid. Democrats, who are in control of Washington, have long decried the excesses of “the rich.” President Obama has repeatedly called for “sacrifice,” meaning tax increases for those earning over $200,000 per year. In the meantime, his wife describes traveling to Denmark at taxpayer expense to lobby for the US Olympics as a “sacrifice” – long before setting off on the first of the eight vacations she is enjoying this summer (including one at a five-star Spanish resort).

 In a democratic republic, government employees are supposed to be the people’s servants, not their masters. Unfortunately, America is now ruled by a government class occupied by too many who are too far removed from the lives of those they are supposed to serve. Some, like Daschle and Geithner, benefit from a special set of rules reserved for the powerful and connected. Others – like the President– make plenty of money from the easy celebrity won through pursuit of public office. Yet others (like Rangel) use the power of their government positions to raise money for their own personal projects.

Read more at Townhall.com

America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution

Class War: How public servants became our masters

U.S. Military Serving as Chauffeurs, Babysitters for the Pelosi Kids: Receipts That Will Blow Your Mind

Won’t protect our borders. Won’t protect our electrical grid. Building a mosque at Ground Zero. The Ruling Class has not only forgotten 9/11…they’re setting us up for another one.

The U.S. Senate has dropped a House-approved plan that would prepare the United States to defend itself from an attack from any electromagnetic pulse source – whether it would be from a natural solar flare or the detonation of a space-located nuclear weapon by enemies intent on destroying America’s infrastructure, according to a representative who has raised alarms over EMP.

U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., said it is “unfortunate.”

“While one part of the federal government was warning us of possible solar electromagnetic-pulse damage to our electric grid, a key Senate commission approved a bill to ignore this threat,” he said.

“It’s particularly ironic since the Senate amended a bill, H.R. 5026, approved unanimously by the House that would specifically protect the grid against solar EMP and other physical threats,” he said.

WND has reported for years on the devastating danger from an EMP attack that could be launched by a second-rate missile system against America.

The concern is that any nuclear detonation that could be launched into the atmosphere anywhere from 25 to 250 miles above the United States could decimate the nation’s electric grid, essentially transporting it instantly back to an era of mechanical machines and agriculture.

Read more at World Net Daily

Is your family prepared for an emergency?

We will not be taken for granted as anyone’s guaranteed “voting block.” We are loyal to no party – only the constitution and founding principles. Ignore us at your peril!

With [less than] 100 days until the election of 2010 takes place, the one thing that’s clear is the anti-incumbent fervor the runs across the entire political spectrum. Yes, Democrats will feel the brunt of this voter unrest — the party in power almost always loses seats in Congress in midterm election years like this one.

But this year is likely to be different. As incumbents in both parties may discover, they are in trouble this November.

One problem the GOP has is the GOP. The brand is still badly damaged by voters’ memories of George W. Bush and hampered further by low ratings of congressional Republicans today. The Tea Party brings energy to Republicans but no clear leader or message has emerged to win over independent and swing voters. And divisions persist between the Tea Party and the Republican Party establishment.

By all rights this should be a terrible year for Democrats and could end up that way still, but with 100 days to go the Republicans could still kick this one away.

For all the problems voters have with Democrats right now, they don’t have much love for Republicans either. I think there is a very good chance that by November several Republican incumbents will be in deep trouble. If Democrats were to lose 30 seats in Congress and Republicans lost 12 seats, for example, yes it would be a bad year for Democrats but not nearly the year Republicans hope for.

At this point I think it could go either way. We could be looking at Democrats on the verge of losing the House of Representatives, or watching Republicans squander the opportunity of a decade.

Read More at Fox News

Republicans on Track to Snatch Defeat from Jaws of Victory

Have the Republicans Learned Their Lesson?

Tea Parties and the Future of Liberty

Prior to 1913, there was no federal income tax. The states had rights and representation in Washington DC, there was no Federal Reserve Bank, and the federal government lived under the enumerated powers afforded within the US Constitution. What a difference one year can make…

Almost a hundred years later, it’s clear that the policies established in 1913 must be revoked in order to restore power to the people and the states. But can the American people stuff the Genie back in to the bottle?

The History of the US Tax System can be summed up in one paragraph…

Prior to the enactment of the income tax, most citizens were able to pursue their private economic affairs without the direct knowledge of the government. Individuals earned their wages, businesses earned their profits, and wealth was accumulated and dispensed with little or no interaction with government entities.

Passage of the 16th Amendment to the Constitution would forever change life in America and not for the better.

The 16th – The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

It’s hard to imagine how the aforementioned amendment could have been written any broader, or why 36 states would agree to such an open ended federal power to strip citizens of their rightful earnings via taxation without representation and with literally no boundaries or limits to how far the federal government could ultimately go in their effort to buy the votes of some with the assets of others.

Since 1913, the federal tax code has been used as a primary tool of leftist social engineering in which the people have been forced to fund a government they no longer recognize and no longer support. The US Congress has a mere 11% approval rating today and the Executive branch is supported only by the 28% of citizens who benefit personally by the robbing of fellow citizens.

The states are now fiscal dependents of the federal government and the federal government is a twenty trillion pound ape trampling through the rose garden of American life, and nobody seems to have any clue how to rein it all in.

Further, thanks to the passage of the 17th Amendment, also passed in 1913, the states no longer have representation in Washington DC. Once again, what seemed like a simple sentence and a good idea to some at the time has since been used by the federal government to eliminate state’s sovereignty and rights.

Read more at American Thinker

The Income Tax and Government Spending

It’s Time To Repeal the 16th Amendment

How the 17th Amendment has led to unrestrained federal powers

Repeal the 17th Amendment

We’ve gone as a nation, in less than two years, from Hope and Change to “hope we can change the stuff we hoped for.” Still, a question — one of pointed interest to Republicans — looms: change to what? Meaning, what are you all going to do, assuming you take the House and/or the Senate, to fix the problems you identified as reasons for throwing out the Obamacrats? People who push themselves as political saviors, like the Democrats two years ago, come to think of it, eventually find they have to start saving. It can be messy.

A Washington Post story by Perry Bacon Jr. underscores the GOP challenge: to wit, “Rep. Ryan pushes budget reform, and his party winces.”

Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin’s First District, one of the smartest men in politics insofar as I can tell, goes around touting his brilliantly conceived free-market, limited-government approach called “Roadmap for America’s Future.” Whose main defect appears to be that in facilitating economic recovery it would change the ways Americans interface with federal social programs and the tax system that supports them. The prospect of that seems to disturb colleagues; thus … well, hear out Bacon: “[M]any Republican colleagues … even as they praise Ryan for his doggedness, privately consider the Roadmap a path to electoral disaster.”

In other words, do the right thing and the wrong things happen to you. Voters fume and rage. Some undertake to eject you from office, forcing you to resume the practice of estate law in Pascagoula or Pomona.

Read more at Townhall.com

Reservations with Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap”

Have the Republicans Learned Their Lesson?

The dog days of summer are almost upon us, and as autumn approaches and the midterm elections loom, the American people have many important issues on their minds. One of the most important issues is whether Congress will elect to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, which are due to expire on January 1, 2011. President Obama has made clear his opinion that the tax cuts should expire for families making over $250,000 a year. Some liberal economists and pundits go further, pointing to our skyrocketing deficits and budgetary woes as compelling reasons why none of the tax cuts should be extended. Thus, as a new year – and a new chapter in our nation’s political and economic history – looms, Americans in every socioeconomic bracket face a potential tax hike.

Is a tax increase the answer to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? Is it the best way to stimulate economic growth, create jobs, and renew confidence in the American dollar at home and abroad? How one answers these questions depends, fundamentally, on one’s belief about the role of government and its relationship to and impact on the economy. Is government the greatest engine of economic growth and prosperity or should the fate of America’s financial future be determined by the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit of the American people?

Clearly, President Obama and his allies in Congress believe that all social questions, be they economic or otherwise, are best addressed by government. This is the philosophy that has driven the various bailouts and stimuli of the past three years (a philosophy that, to many conservatives’ chagrin, was shared in part by former President George W. Bush), and the philosophy that led Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to assert recently that unemployment benefits create jobs faster than any other kind of economic activity.

Read more at the Christian Post

The Facts About the 2003 Tax Cuts

The Obama Tax Trap: How some Republicans are preparing to walk right into it

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn made it official: Illinois will have a special Senate election just for the lame duck session.  Thus Illinois joins Delaware and West Virginia (both having special elections) as the three states whose winners on election day will—barring a disputed election result—be seated for a lame duck session in December.  A fourth, Colorado, is less clear but may also be in play.

The lame duck session looks increasingly likely—and increasingly ambitious.  Sen. Kerry continues to stress that cap-and-trade will be on the agenda, and Sen. Harry Reid (who may be a lame duck himself after Election Day) confirmed it to the Netroots Nation audience, saying: “We’re going to have to have a lame-duck session, so we’re not giving up.”

Along with cap-and-trade, a lame duck will likely consider the recommendations of Obama’s deficit commission — a package that will include enormous tax hikes and could draw the support of some departing Republicans like Judd Gregg of New Hampshire George Voinovich of Ohio, and Robert Bennett of Utah.

And organized labor, seeing the lame duck as their last chance for a legislative return on their political investments for years, will also demand lame duck action.

While Sen. Tom Harkin is still promising some version of card check, more likely is Sen. Bob Casey’s proposed union pension bailout, S. 3157, which would relieve unions of their pension obligations – with a potential price tag for taxpayers in the hundreds of billions.  Democratic Whip Dick Durbin signed on as a co-sponsor yesterday, indicating this bill is a top priority.

The winners in Delaware, Illinois, and West Virginia could be the vital deciding votes on these major policy issues.

Read more at Big Government

The Obama-Pelosi Lame Duck Strategy: Push through union ‘card-check,’ cap and trade, and more