Tag: U.S. Senate

Remember Benghazi? The Hypocrites On The Hill Should

Donald Trump will never build the Great Wall he envisioned on this country’s southern border, but his lawyers and minions are erecting the largest stonewall against Congressional oversight since Nixon’s presidency. In a scolding letter to Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), White House attorneys have said that the administration will simply reject some 81 subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee that he chairs.

The reason offered for this blanket refusal to cooperate sounds much like a Trump tweet. “Congressional investigations are intended to obtain information to aid in evaluating potential legislation,” huffed the president’s lawyers, “not to harass political opponents or to pursue an unauthorized ‘do-over’ of exhaustive law enforcement investigations conducted by the Department of Justice”

Requests for information from the House Oversight Committee, the House Intelligence Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Senate Intelligence Committee have all met with roughly the same arrogant attitude — as if the executive branch has no obligation to provide any information at all to Congress. Such dismissive responses represent a profound violation of the Constitutional order.

View the complete May 15 article by Joe Conason on the National Memo website here.

Trump drags feet on climate treaty, and Republicans aren’t happy

As Kigali Amendment languishes, Sens. Kennedy, Carper point fingers at the administration

It has the support of industry heavy-hitters, environmental advocates and a bipartisan cushion of votes in the Senate.

But the Kigali Amendment, a global treaty to limit hydrofluorocarbons — highly potent greenhouse gases found in air conditioners, refrigerators, insulation and foam — is stuck.

When representatives of the world’s largest nations gathered in 2016 in the Rwanda capital city of Kigali, they agreed nearly unanimously to limit the gases, which are far worse for the climate than carbon dioxide but dissipate faster.

View the complete May 13 article by Benjamine J. Hulac on The Roll Calli website here.

Inside Mitch McConnell’s cynical and shameless power grab

On Monday I wrote about the GOP’s long-term plan to turn the presidency into a (Republican) unitary executive office. You might think that it makes no sense that members of Congress would go along with such a thing, seeing as it directly interferes with their own constitutional prerogatives. That was certainly what the founders assumed would be the case. They assumed that human egos would demand that people jealously guard their own branches of government, thus preserving the checks and balances that would keep any one branch from gathering too much power unto itself. But it turns out that the modern Republicans are loyal to their party above all else, and no one personifies that dedication more than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

said that McConnell was the man behind the curtain who made it all happen. Depending on who does the writing, he could also go down as one of America’s most notorious senators. No, he’s not like those traitors who abandoned the Senate to join the Confederacy, nor is he a crude segregationist like the 20th century’s Theodore Bilbo or James Eastland of Mississippi. He’s no demagogue like Wisconsin’s Joe McCarthy or Louisiana’s Huey Long either. But there are elements of all of those men in McConnell, who holds a very special place in that pantheon as what historian Christopher R. Downing called “the gravedigger of democracy.”

In a recent article for the New York Review of Books, Downing writes:

[McConnell] stoked the hyperpolarization of American politics to make the Obama presidency as dysfunctional and paralyzed as he possibly could. As with parliamentary gridlock in Weimar [Germany], congressional gridlock in the US has diminished respect for democratic norms, allowing McConnell to trample them even more. Nowhere is this vicious circle clearer than in the obliteration of traditional precedents concerning judicial appointments. … McConnell and our dysfunctional and disrespected Congress have now ensured an increasingly dysfunctional and disrespected judiciary, and the constitutional balance of powers among the three branches of government is in peril.

View the complete May 8 article by Heather Digby Parton of Salon on the AlterNet website here.

Mueller fallout deepens Senate tensions

The fallout from special counsel Robert Mueller‘s probe is deepening fracture lines in the Senate.

Tensions spiked during the Judiciary Committee’s questioning of Attorney General William Barr, marking the latest point of frustration on the high-profile panel.

Republicans accused Democrats of giving Trump’s AG the “Kavanaugh treatment,” while Democrats returned fire by suggesting the GOP was chasing conspiracy theories with its plan to probe “spying” and the handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

View the complete May 3 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

Amy Klobuchar prosecutes Bill Barr with dozens of pieces of evidence from the Mueller report Brendan Skwire

Minnesota Democratic senator and presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar essentially prosecuted Attorney General Bill Barr at Thursday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, using evidence from the Mueller report to score point after point at Barr’s expense.

“I asked you if a president or any person convincing a witness to change testimony would be obstruction of justice, and you said yes,” Klobuchar began. “The report found that Michael Cohen’s testimony to the House, before it, that the president repeatedly implied that Cohen’s family members had committed crimes. Do you consider that evidence to be an attempt to have a witness change its testimony?”

“No. I don’t think that that could pass muster. Those public statements he was making, could pass muster as subornation of perjury,” Barr began, but Klobuchar cut him off

View the complete May 1 article by Brendan Skwire on the Raw Story website here.

Recap: AG Bill Barr’s Senate testimony on the Mueller report

Attorney General Bill Barr is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian interference in the 2016 election — a day after it was revealed that Mueller sent him a letter objecting to his March 24 characterization of the report’s findings.

Catch up quick: Barr told Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that if Mueller felt as if he could not make a prosecutorial decision on the question of obstruction of justice, then he “shouldn’t have investigated it. That was the time to pull up.” When pressed on his March 24 letter clearing Trump of obstruction, Barr said: “I didn’t exonerate. I said that we did not believe there was sufficient evidence to establish an obstruction offense, which is the job of the Justice Department.”

On the process of releasing the report:

Barr said that he told Mueller in a phone call that he “wasn’t interested” in putting out the special counsel’s prepared summaries in a “piecemeal” fashion, despite Mueller’s requests.

View the complete May 1 article by Zachary Basu on the Axios website here.

President looms large over McConnell-Pelosi spending ceiling talks

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is trying to build a functional working relationship with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) as the two tackle the mammoth task of winning a deal on fiscal spending ceilings for the next year.

McConnell says the deal is his top legislative priority after the April recess, but achieving it won’t be easy.

Democrats are insisting on parity between defense and nondefense spending, arguing any hike for the Pentagon must be equal to that for domestic spending.

View the complete April 17 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

GOP senators divided on Trump trade pushback

Senate Republicans are negotiating among themselves over how to respond to President Trump‘s trade agenda as they brace for new tariffs on the European Union and a trade deal with China that some fear could leave American farmers worse off.

There are divisions over whether to send a stern message to the White House with a tough bill that’s likely to get vetoed — or a more modest proposal that could actually get Trump’s signature and become law.

It was a dilemma that GOP leaders eschewed altogether in the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, deciding not to advance legislation curbing Trump’s power to impose tariffs for fear an intraparty fight could hurt voter turnout.

View the complete April 16 article by Alexander Bolton on The Hill website here.

How McConnell is Killing the Senate

Congress has recessed for two weeks without passing a desperately-needed disaster relief bill. Why not? Because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t want to anger Donald Trump by adding money for Puerto Rico that Democrats have sought but Trump doesn’t want.

America used to have a Senate. But under McConnell, what was once known as the worlds greatest deliberative body has become a partisan lap dog.

Recently McConnell used his Republican majority to cut the time for debating Trump’s court appointees from 30 hours to two – thereby enabling Republicans to ram through even more Trump judges.

View the complete April 14 by Robert Reich on his blog here.

‘Nuclear’ fallout in Senate might take some time to register

Democrats show no immediate signs they are contemplating retaliation

The Senate’s Geiger counters hardly registered Wednesday afternoon after the most recent deployments of the “nuclear option” to speed up confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominees, although the long-term effects on the institution may very well be significant.

The first nominee considered, Jeffrey Kessler to be an assistant secretary of Commerce, was ultimately confirmed by voice vote after the two hours of post-cloture debate allowed under the new process was declared expired.

And there was no real effort by the Democratic minority at dilatory motions: They didn’t demand meaningless quorum calls or other procedural votes.

View the complete April 4 article by Niels Lesniewski on The Roll Call website here.