And the hits just keep on coming! It looks like Immigration, if at all, will happen AFTER the midterm elections...
Quote:
The 2010 congressional agenda
Pretty soon, Congress won’t be able to hide behind the health-care-first excuse anymore, and plenty of anxious activists are wondering if their issue will finally get some attention in 2010.
Most of them are probably going to be disappointed.
The shortened election year calendar, heightened partisan atmosphere and dismal public approval ratings for incumbents are forcing lawmakers to do a reality check on just how much of President Barack Obama’s domestic agenda is too much.
“This institution is exhausted — the members and the place,” said Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who announced his retirement last week after 30 years in the Senate. “We need a break.”
Climate change and immigration reform are among the issues that many insiders are predicting will be pushed past the midterm elections as Democrats focus on such higher political priorities as creating jobs, writing new rules for Wall Street and finishing health care reform.
“There has not been a sort of planning out of this year yet, mostly because health care has been the dominating issue,” said one senior Senate aide. “After we dispose of that conference, we’ll be able to have a better sightline in terms of what we do take up for the rest of this year.”
What’s already clear is that economic issues will dominate the start of this year’s session, and they now threaten to crowd out all other domestic priorities, much as health care did last year. Toss in a few volatile fights over the transfer of Guantanamo Bay prisoners to a U.S. prison, funding for the Afghanistan war and renewal of the Patriot Act, and the congressional bandwidth is even further stressed.
“Priority No. 1 remains keeping the economic recovery going,” said Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “We can’t allow the gradual recovery to sputter out.”
Democratic aides expect a jobs bill to come to the Senate floor shortly after health care is completed.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) tasked Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois and Democratic Policy Committee Chairman Byron Dorgan of North Dakota with crafting a measure late last summer.
The two Democrats spent months meeting with every Democrat in the caucus. By December, they had 121 policy proposals grouped into broad categories such as small-business job creation, green technology, infrastructure development and the protection of public-sector jobs.
But the Senate bill is expected to be fundamentally different from a House-passed, $174 billion jobs bill, which Republicans derided as a watered-down version of the $787 billion stimulus plan they say has failed to spur job creation. That could set the stage for a lengthy conference to reconcile the two measures.
Although there has been some speculation that a labor organizing bill will be added to the jobs bill, labor leaders are gearing up for a stand-alone measure that would also move before March.
(pg 2, skipped, and now at the end of p3)
A handful of Democrats in Congress and the White House are pushing congressional leadership to take up immigration reform this year.
The issue is a politically tricky one for Democrats, given the gains they made with Hispanic voters in 2008 that they hope to repeat in November.
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has signaled she’s reluctant to push another politically tough vote on her members without first seeing Senate action — a move that probably dooms any proposal this year, given the amount of time the slow-moving Senate is likely to be tied up in other issues.
Last month, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) introduced legislation that would open a door for legal status to illegal immigrants.
In the Senate, Schumer is working with Republicans to craft a bipartisan immigration bill. Senior White House aides recently held a conference call to assure Latino activists that Obama remained committed to passing a comprehensive immigration bill this year.
But even some veteran immigration advocates warn that the struggling economy and looming elections could make Democratic leaders unwilling to take up such a controversial issue.
“One gets the sense that the politics of 2010 are going to be difficult under the best of circumstances,” said Henry Cisneros, a Clinton administration Cabinet secretary who was on the White House call. “As hopeful as I am, I am also sober about the underlying facts.”
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31367.html