Congressional Policy Issues
Fight Club: Who is in charge here?
Last December, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted a drone strike in Yemen that appears to have gone horribly wrong by mistakenly targeting a wedding convoy and killing scores of civilians. By early January of this year, U.S. officials had launched an internal investigation of the strike and in April, The New York Times
“Tell me how this ends” This is what former CENTCOM Commander and CIA Director David Petraeus had posited to journalist Rick Atkinson back in early 2003 when he was still a commanding officer of the 101st Airborne Division and in preparation to invade Iraq. While General Petraeus had made this comment with respect to the Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced plans to spend $50 million this year to fight gun violence. Bloomberg will bring together the gun control groups that he already funds – Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America – to form a new organization called Everytown On Thursday, Chris Cillizza examined an Obama statement in Texas: “This has become the least productive Congress in modern history, recent memory. And that’s by objective measures, just basic activity.” Cillizza agrees and extrapolates this a little too far, saying this Congress is the least productive in history. By the numbers many would argue this isn’t As Congress steps closer to the various fiscal cliffs over the next week, the pressing question for Republican leadership is how to defund Obamacare. Several Republicans have indicated they will not support any continuing resolution not tied to the defunding the ACA. The law goes into effect on October 1st and many see this as During a Communicating and Working with Congress seminar Ken Gold and I were teaching last week, I brought to the attention of the class the prospect that congressional staff may seem a little more ornery than normal due to the fact that they may be losing their government health insurance. While many of the Congressional With nine days to go, hope of averting the March 1 sequester continues to fade, with each side drawing a line in the sand, and little reason to believe that their differences can be breached any time soon. Last week the President again went on record demanding that any agreement to delay or cancel the In the wake of the tragic massacre in Newtown, President Obama set forth a list of proposed gun control measures including a new assault weapons ban. An earlier ban expired in 2004. Regardless of how you feel about the proposal or how effective the previous ban was, its 2004 expiration illustrates four features of the In terms of public policy, the Supreme Court’s 5:4 decision to uphold the bulk of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is an enormous victory for President Obama and the 111th Congress that enacted it. Politically, it may be a wash—for Obama and Democrats, it’s a relief to have the High Court’s seal
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“Tell Me How This Ends”
Gunning for a Fight?
A Caveat on Congressional Productivity
Funding the Government, Defunding Obamacare, & Innovative Procedure
Federal Gov Staff to lose FEHBP
Update on the Sequester and Its Potential Impact
The Assault Weapons Ban: Lessons about Congress
Parsing the Supreme Court’s Decision