One Bill the Lame Duck Won't Kill

The lame duck session won't be a productive one, but you can count on Congress to find a way to pass the $1 trillion omnibus appropriations bill.

When Congress is out of session, and all the real news is out on the electoral trail, it leaves D.C.-based media types a little short of new material.  It becomes doubly difficult when the new material sounds just like the old material.

Thus it is with the concern about the Continuing Resolution for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2011 (which I will shorten to “C.R.”).  You will recall, especially if you are an appropriations lobbyist, that the Congress passed a C.R. that expires Dec. 3rd.  None of the 12 individual appropriations bills has been passed by Congress, which continues an old theme.

Speculation is that several bills may pass Congress when it returns for its lame duck session.  The reality is that very little will pass.  With the GOP expected to regain control of the House, and Democrats holding a much-reduced margin in the Senate, it makes little sense for the GOP to go along with almost anything.  Why would it do so when it could devise bills much more to its liking four months from now?

Congress “must” tackle the expiring Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, we are told.  It also may want to do something about China and its trading methods, energy legislation, and at least 15 or so additional bills.  None will pass.

Indeed, I now have serious doubts that the lame duck Congress will be able to reach agreement on what to do with the Bush tax cuts.  If enough Democrats in the Senate feel threatened by the next election cycle, they may defect to the GOP and the result would be the full extension of the cuts.  Another possible outcome would see the Bush tax cuts expire and the House in the 112^th Congress quickly pass a GOP version of the tax cuts in February 2011.  That though would lead to a major faceoff with President Obama over a tax cut he would find difficult to swallow.

Those who believe that compromises can be made on either the C.R. or the tax cuts seem optimistic . My own guess resorts to the famous “Occam’s Razor.”  This philosophical theory goes more or less as follows:  “if many competing hypotheses seem possible to explain an event, choose the one that is simplest.”  (For scholars, what William of Ockham really wrote was, “Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.)

So, we have many possible outcomes for the lame duck legislative calendar.  Perhaps 50 to 60 members of Congress will have been defeated.  Partisanship will be more fierce than ever.  Democrats, especially, will begin to become independent from the caucuses.  With so many outcomes possible, let’s choose the simplest—the C.R., will pass, relatively clean, and it’s less than 50-50 that the Bush tax cuts will be handled in any final fashion.  Nothing else of significance seems likely.

In case folks have missed it, this is just about what has happened in one form or another at the end of most recent sessions of Congress.  So, the same old tune, just another year older.