Last Thursday was one of the best days to be on Capitol Hill. January 3rd, the Constitutionally mandated day when all newly elected members of Congress enter into their terms of office. It’s a day of celebration, one filled with events and receptions – not fundraisers – for members old and new, their staff, friends, family and the rest of official Washington. It’s one of the few days in DC where there are more smiles than frowns in the halls of Congress.
The frowns came back the next day. As I’ve noted before on Bearing Drift, the 112th Congress was one of the least productive in history, lurching from one self-made crisis to another, seemingly adrift. If legislation wasn’t must pass or completely innocuous, it had little potential to become law. The cynical among us prefer it that way – a Congress that can’t get anything done is a Congress that isn’t doing bad things. But for the rest of us, who want to see a functioning government that passes budgets, lowers spending, and lifts governmentally imposed burdens off the backs of the people, it means another couple years of frustration.
Unfortunately, the 113th Congress doesn’t appear to be off to a much better start than the 112th. While we had an election, things didn’t change drastically. The overall balance of power in the House, Senate and White House remains the same. The margins are slightly different – a handful of more votes for Democrats in both bodies – but the realities are generally the same. Coming just days off the heels of the passage of a fiscal cliff law that left a bad taste in the mouth of most Republicans, me included, the new Congress is faced with a number of problems they have to address that were handed down to them by their predecessors. Here are a few highlights of things Congress either must take up or is expected to take up in the next year.
- –Debt Ceiling/CR/Sequestration Fix – The fiscal cliff deal punted a decision on sequestration and raising the debt ceiling to March and the current Continuing Resolution for funding the government ends in March as well. This gives Congress an additional two months to dither before a rush of frantic negotiation at the very last minute to avert the budget cuts and keep the government operating. The good news for conservatives is that tax rate increases are effectively off the table, regardless of Nancy Pelosi’s claims to the contrary. The President got his revenue in the fiscal cliff deal and he doesn’t have the leverage to force any further increases in rates. The bad news is that he is still going to push for deduction limitations and other ways to increase revenue to help off-set the need for cuts. So while Republicans consider tax increases off the table, the President and Senate Democrats don’t. The President has also pledged that he won’t negotiate on the debt ceiling like he did in 2011. While that’s probably just posturing, with minimal cuts to entitlements included in sequestration, there’s not much for him to fear there. And given the poisoned relationship between House Republicans and the White House, I don’t know if a deal here is even possible.
- –Farm Bill – One of the lesser known aspects to the fiscal cliff was the expiration of most farm programs, including their much maligned subsidies, at the end of December 2012. The fiscal cliff bill included a nine month extension to give lawmakers a chance to finish up their negotiations on the bill, which last most of last year. One of the biggest problems facing the farm bill this year is the potential decoupling of agriculture programs from nutrition assistance and food stamps. For quite a long time now, the farm bill has succeeded by garnering support from both rural and urban members of Congress. Rural members get the programs their constituents want and need in the agriculture arena, and those in urban areas get the food stamps, subsidized school lunches and other nutrition programs their constituents want. In the current budget environment though, most of these long term alliances are breaking down as everyone seeks to defend their critical programs. This is one of the primary bills to watch in the 113th.
- —WRDA – As critical to the inland waterways states as the Farm Bill is to agricultural states, the Water Resources Development Act bill has been plagued with a number of problems over the past few years, the biggest of which is the House Republican ban on earmarks. WRDA, which is essentially a list of priorities and fund for specific projects directed at the US Army Corps of Engineers, is due up for passage this year. It was last passed in 2007 over President Bush’s veto – the first of four times when Congress overrode a Presidential veto during the Bush presidency. The stumbling block to WRDA is simply that the entire bill is effectively a list of earmarks. However, unlike most earmarks, the bill doesn’t actually fund projects, it simply authorizes them to be funded. It’s expected that this will be one of the top transportation related bills to move through the 113th Congress, assuming Congress finds a creative way around the earmark ban.
- –Gun Control – Democrats have made it clear that they are going to exploit the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut for a renewed push for comprehensive gun control legislation. Despite the fact that we still have little idea what caused the tragedy or if gun bans or restrictions could have averted it, you can rest assured that some in Congress will continue pushing throughout the year for some kind of federal ban on assault rifles, high capacity magazines for rifles and handguns, and stricter background check requirements. Whether or not they are successful remains to be seen.
- –Immigration reform – Both House Republicans and the President have said immigration reform will be a key priority this year. The likelihood is that the President will start with a renewed push for a legislative DREAM Act to compliment his executive order from last year. On the Republican side, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has listed immigration reform, as a jobs issue, in his list of priorities for this Congress.
There are a few things you don’t see on this. The most glaring is entitlement reform. Given the House and Senate Democrats’ unwillingness to address entitlement reform in a way Republicans would consider meaningful, the chances of seeing anything done there is pretty slim. There’s also nothing on the agenda about other major spending cuts or reforms designed to reduce the size of government. Finally, don’t expect to see a budget this year. The House will pass one, but the Senate hasn’t done so for years, and there’s no reason to believe they’ll change that track record this year. Overall, this Congress will likely punt anything that isn’t a post office naming or something similarly innocuous, and wait until the last minute to do anything critical – pretty much just like last one.
While I try not to be the bitter cynic, my gut tells me that 113th Congress is going to be quite similar to the 112th. A lot of sound and fury, a minimum of actual legislating. Or, to put it more succinctly, it’ll be like déjà vu all over again.
