Conn. Congressmen Disappointed With Session
By Marty Toohey
WASHINGTON, Oct. 17, 2002–Late Wednesday night the House voted to pack its bags, catch a red-eye home and kiss the rest of its legislative agenda goodbye until after the November elections.
It was a session with even more bipartisan bickering and finger pointing than usual, with Democrats blaming the lack of progress on the House Republican majority and Republicans blaming the lack of progress on the Democratic-controlled Senate.
House members leave with health care, prescription drug and economy-related bills unsigned, and with 11 of the 13 appropriations bills that make up the federal budget still not having made it through the final conference. The Iraq resolution, the election reform bill and the defense appropriations bill were among the few major pieces of legislation to make it out of Congress recently, and although Connecticut House members from both parties found silver linings, overall they found the legislative logjam ridiculous.
“In the bigger picture, I think the session was a colossal failure,” said Rep. Jim Maloney (D-5). “If you ask legislators what their number one job is, they’ll uniformly says ‘pass the 13 budget bills.’ ”
Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-6) blamed the Senate for the legislative woes.
“I am ashamed of the paralysis in the Senate,” she said. “Unlike any session in my 20 years, this session will not come to fruition until late November.”
Before adjourning, the House passed a stopgap spending bill to keep the government funded until Nov. 22, making a lame-duck session following the elections certain. Since early October Congress has funded the government on a week-to-week basis. Maloney said Congress will reconvene Nov. 12.
The House’s decision to adjourn came suddenly, and even 20 minutes beforehand members talked about legislative work they would do Thursday.
The House leaves with discussion of the military situation having hogged the spotlight, which irked Rep. John Larson (D-1).
“All in all, it’s been a very frustrating matter,” Larson said. “The only thing people talked about in Congress was Iraq. Meanwhile, people back home have their own security concerns: job security, pension security, economic security. There was a lot left undone, and I think voters are aware of it and share equal contempt. And I think it reflects on the entire Congress.”
Maloney and Johnson also took issue with the lack of resolution on domestic issues.
The House passed its prescription drug bill, written by Johnson, which would provide $350 billion in drug benefits. Health care officials have urged the reimbursements to offset rising costs and prevent providers from dropping out of the Medicare program.
But the prescription drug bill probably won’t make it to the Senate floor before adjournment, which is expected any time. It’s uncertain if the Senate will sign it into law in the lame-duck session.
“That means we’re going to have another year of campaigns promising a prescription drug plan without actually having a prescription drug plan,” Maloney said.
“I’m still hopeful the Senate will come to its senses and pass the bill,” Johnson said.
The three found positives, though.
Johnson said she’s proud of a passed bill she co-sponsored to help eliminate fatalities resulting from medical errors, as well a grant to the University of Connecticut for research to develop a vaccine providing near-universal protection to soldiers from animal-transmitted diseases.
Maloney said he’s pleased with passed legislation dealing with money laundering and corporate accountability. He said he was especially pleased with legislation that he wrote requiring intelligence to keep closer tabs on hawalas, Middle Eastern banking groups that transfer money through informal agreements. Federal security organizations have identified hawalas as a conduit for movement of terrorist money.
Maloney said he’s also pleased with an anti-shredding law he authored.
“Personally, I feel I had a very good year,” he said.
Larson said he was pleased with the work of the House Armed Services and Science committees, both of which he sits on. He said both committees worked in a partisan “hand-in-glove” manner to finish legislation.
But he said he wasn’t surprised that several bills from the committee never made it to the floor and that many economic issues never made it there, either.
“That was the goal” of the Republicans, Larson said. “To get a vote on Iraq and get out of town.”
Maloney agreed. “They didn’t wrap it up, they just walked away,” he said.
Johnson was on a plane soon after the vote, but Larson and Maloney spent the night in the nation’s capital.
Published in The New Britain Herald, in Connecticut.
