Obama and Congress: Up Close and Personal

Obama and Congress: Up Close and Personal
President Must Know When to Hold and When to Fold

By Bruce J. Schulman 11/21/08 5:00 PM


President-elect Barack Obama will need to work effectively with Congress if he hopes to enact his legislative agenda. (WDCpix)


As President-elect Barack Obama assembles his administration, the final scenes of the 2008 campaign shift to Capitol Hill, where a lame-duck session shadowboxes over economic recovery measures. At the same time, the unresolved races in Georgia and Minnesota, the fate of renegade Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and the Democrats’ quest to construct a “filibuster-proof majority” highlight the crucial challenge for the incoming president: his ability to push legislation through both houses of Congress and appointments through the Senate.

Even with Obama’s party in power on Capitol Hill, that task will not prove simple. Nobody should expect a reprise of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first hundred days, when Congress rushed to enact banking reforms without even getting the chance to read the legislation.

Indeed, an electoral mandate and majorities in both houses offer no guarantee of legislative success. President Jimmy Carter could not navigate his energy plan through a Democratic Congress (remember the cardigan?), nor could President Bill Clinton win support for his health-care plan (remember the Health Security Card?).

Republicans have fared no better. Fresh off his re-election victory in 2004, George W. Bush told the White House press corps that he had “earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it.“ He staked much of it on a proposal to privatize Social Security that failed to move through the GOP-controlled Congress.

How, then, might Obama avoid such pitfalls? The career of another senator-turned-president suggests some valuable lessons. During the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson transformed the relationship between the legislative and executive branches. A former Senate leader, LBJ immersed himself and his staff in all the details of legislation from “the cradle to the grave, from the moment a bill is introduced to the moment it is officially enrolled as the law of the land.”

Johnson visited the Capitol frequently and met constantly with congressional leaders. “There is but one way for a president to deal with the Congress,” he said, “and that is continuously, incessantly and without interruption. If it’s really going to work, the relationship between the president and the Congress has got to be almost incestuous. He’s got to know them even better than they know themselves.”


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http://washingtonindependent.com/19572/obama-and-congress

...that President Obama should take his time with the Congress. In fact, it should be the progressives in Congress who should do everything they can to facilitate needed legislation in as short a period as a time as possible. THIS IS KEY.

The Obama transition team will have PLENTY of time to pre-arrange deals with incoming and current progressives in the Congress before he is inaugurated. But he has an UNPRECEDENTED amount of PROGRESSIVE democrats in the senate that he will be able to get a LOT of things done. At post time he has 56 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucus Democratic (except Lieberman on Iraq), so if we get Franken and Martin we should be able to steamroll the will of the people with the following items:

I've listed several items that need to be initiated or even finished in the first 100 days at this location:
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BanTheGOP/39">CONGRESS: THE FIRST 100 DAYS

1. Nationalize Energy Companies.
2. Fill the federal judge vacancies. See JUSTICE 40/40: 40 Judges in 40 Days for details. http://journals.democraticunderground.com/BanTheGOP/38">JUSTICE 40/40: 40 JUDGES IN 40 DAYS)
3. Sign the Kyoto Treaty. IMMEDIATELY.
4. Initiate a comprehensive universal health care plan.
5. Establish a fair tax system, including a maximum wage law and increased, fair gradation schedules.
6. Nationalize private retirement accounts.
7. GET OUT OF IRAQ! Announce a schedule that removes ALL US military personnel from Iraq by a certain date.
8. Cut Military Spending.
9. Investigate crimes by the Bush Administration.

These are but nine steps, certainly not all-inclusive, but easily delegated and consolidated, and CERTAINLY within the scope of achievability with a cooperative congress and administration. I had added a tenth, a new Fairness Doctrine that mandates real-time rebuttal for all political programs, that I'm still working on.