By: Jeff Newman
While most Americans have been happily engrossing themselves in the splendors and spending of the Christmas Season, I have been happily and heavily engrossing myself in the brawls and battles of the Lame Duck Congress Season. I practically wore out my remote control’s recall button this past month from flipping back and forth between CSPAN-1 (live coverage of the House of Representatives) and CSPAN-2 (live coverage of the Senate). Sigh…if only I had also been subscribed to CSPAN-3 (live coverage of the White House and Federal Government events) how much happier I would have been. Maybe Santa can do something about that for me.
What a Lame Duck Season it has been, full of high-stakes drama and excitement rarely found within the typical mundane political discourse and debate. Santa has delivered early Christmas gifts to President Obama by magically enabling the passage of some truly historic legislation that many pundits thought the president would not be able to get passed. In addition to the Tax Compromise Bill, we witnessed the passage of the Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy (I seriously never thought this discriminatory policy would be repealed any time soon.), the NEW START Treaty with Russia, the 9-11 Emergency Responder Compensation, and other important legislation. The Republicans certainly must have been on Santa’s Naughty List to have gotten treated so badly this season.
Merry Christmas President Obama. You went from being the Republican’s shellackee to becoming their shellacker! Celebrate while you can because I fear they are going to be out for some serious revenge come the 112th Congress, which is too bad because there still is much work and much compromising between both parties and branches of governments that needs to be done.
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