Progressive Dems Muzzle Opposition With New Rules

It's so refreshing to see that a new spirit of bipartisanship rules the day in the halls of Congress.

WASHINGTON (AP) - In their zeal to protect their members from politically hazardous votes on issues such as gay marriage and gun control, Democrats running the House of Representatives are taking extraordinary steps to muzzle Republicans in this summer's debates on spending bills.

On Thursday, for example, Republicans had hoped to force debates on abortion, school vouchers and medical marijuana, as well as gay marriage and gun control, as part of House consideration of the federal government's contribution to the District of Columbia's city budget.

No way, Democrats said.

At issue? $1.2 trillion worth of discretionary federal spending in 12 separate bills. In the past House rules allowed any member to bring up amendments and that fostered debate. Lots of it.

The tradition has often meant laborious debates. But it has allowed lawmakers with little seniority to have their say on doling out the one-third of the federal budget passed by Congress each year. It was a right the Democrats zealously defended when they were the minority party from 1995 through 2006.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., insists the clampdown is to prevent debates from dragging on and on. Republicans, however, have agreed to limit the amount of time debating the bills.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., acknowledged in a brief interview that one reason for restricting amendments is to save members of his party from having to cast politically painful votes.

So instead of debating an attempt backed by House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio to allow more children living in Washington to receive school vouchers, the House will vote on a Quixotic attempt to eliminate the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

"What they want to do is they want to avoid tough votes on appropriations bills," said Rep. David Dreier of California, senior Republican on the Rules Committee.

Even some Democrats are chaffing at the heavy-handed clampdown on debate.

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The process has become so relentlessly efficient that Democrats were actually forced to drag out action to Thursday on a $33 billion measure funding energy programs and water projects. The reason? They need to stretch the workweek into Friday to force lawmakers to remain in Washington for committee work on health care and other spending bills.

Or in other words, the entire process has turned into a fraudulent exercise in legislative democracy. If your representative isn't one of the "in crowd" of darling Progressive Democrats, you can be he or she isn't going to get much of a chance to say or do anything as the liberals ram their pet projects (spending) through.

The system is broken.

Can it be fixed?

Ambassadorships Given to Biggest Fund-Raisers

Every administration places a certain number of non-diplomat types in the ambassadorships around the world. The number historically hovers just above 10 percent, although the average since John F. Kennedy's presidency has been about 30 percent.

Guess what Barack Obama's percentage is?

First, however, consider that then candidate Obama last year pledged that ambassadors would be appointed "based on merit," not party affiliation or ideology. He hammered the Bush administration for having 33 percent of its diplomats who were not trained in diplomacy.

Have you made your guess?

Try 60 percent. True.

This President of Prevarication is setting new records for putting non-qualified people into roles that will expose America to potential embarrassments. A couple of Wall Street Journal reporters note, for example, that the new ambassador to Tokyo is a name you may not recognize:

President Barack Obama's pick for the post is from a different mold: John Roos, a San Francisco Bay area lawyer, was the president's chief Silicon Valley fundraiser and contributions "bundler." He has no diplomatic experience.

Mr. Obama's choice of Mr. Roos, along with other political boosters -- from former investment banker Louis B. Susman, known as the "vacuum cleaner" for his fundraising prowess, to Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney -- has raised eyebrows among some who thought the president would extend his mantra of change to the diplomatic corps.

"We're not only insulting nations [that] we're appointing these bundlers to, we're risking U.S. diplomatic efforts in these key countries," said Craig Holman, a government-affairs lobbyist at watchdog group Public Citizen.

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Of the Obama administration's 55 ambassadorial nominees so far, 33 -- or 60% -- have gone to people outside the foreign-service ranks, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

That ratio likely will drop as he fills more positions. Or at least we hope so.

But the main point is that in the Obama Administration, everything is for sale. Everything.

And all campaign promises come with an expiration date. All of them.