Why a (lame)duck (Congress)?

Forgive the Marx Brothers allusion – but why is there about to be a lameduck session of the old Congress, when an election has just been held for a new Congress? I can understand why the old President stays in office, and has to do things, while the votes are tallied and retallied, and the Electoral College meets, since the executive branch just has to keep on executing. But the legislature doesn’t legislate 24/7, so why not wait until the old Congress, which has lost its legitimacy, has expired, and a new Congress, with a fresh mandate, can met?

(I know there might be an objective GQ-type answer to this question, possibly based on what happened in the late 18th century, but I ask it in GD because I’m sure that responses will be political.)

To try and ram through nominations before those pesky democrats take over?

Perhaps – though it works both ways. Does anyone remember what happened back in November and December 1994, when the Dems controlled the Congress and had Clinton in the White House, but the Repubs had won control in the midterm election?

Still work ahead for lame-duck Congress

The President’s warrantless wiretapping bill is also in limbo.

There are some things that just can’t wait

According to the editorial, “Bipartisanship on Hold,” in today’s New York Times, Bush has asked the old Congress “…to ratify his recess appointment of John Bolton as Ambassador to the United Nations.”*

The editorial goes on to say that Bush “wants immediate approval of his administration’s deal to sell nuclear technology to India despite that nation’s refusal to sign or abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.”

Then there’s the wiretapping bill that “was drafted by Vice President Dick Cheney’s lawyers and by Senator Arlen Specter, the outgoing Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee…that would regulate the president’s ability to spy on Americans’ phone calls and e-mail without a court order.”

The editorial claims the new bill that Bush wants “would gut the (current) law, absolve him of illegal behavior and turn over the task of determining the constitutionality of his program to a court that is not equipped to make that judgment.”

The budgets for many areas of the federal government for the current fiscal year (FY2007 which began on October 1, 2006) still have not been past by the current Congress. Those areas of the government are operating under what is called a “continuing resolution .” A CR means those agencies are effectively only able to pay salaries and keep the lights on until Congress finalizes and passes the budget. A CR is time-limited; it expires on a specific date unless Congress passes the budget or authorizes an extension of the CR.

The current CR expires on November 17. Congress must pass the current budgets by the deadline, or extend the CR. Right now it appears Congress will only extend the CR until December 8 .

However, Congress may choose not extend the CR nor finalize the budget, by the current deadline. If that were to occur, those agencies would have to shut down. While not likely, it is possible. It has happened, the last in 1995/1996.

Now if you are of the mindset that this might not be a bad idea, you may want to think again. A shutdown of the government, even a partial shutdown, has wide ramifications. Your social security check might get delayed so you don’t have money to pay your bills. Your VA home loan approval might get delayed so you lose on buying your house. You get my drift.

Firstly, it seems odd to me that the fiscal year is so much out of synch with the election cycle. But, even with that, why can’t there be a continuing resolution which will last until the earliest time that the new Congress can pass a budget?

They can easily pass one that will do this when Congress returns later this month. Whether they will or not is up in the air because that shifts a large amount of work to the beginning of the next Congress. On the other hand, it would allow the new Democratic majority a chance to shape the appropriations bills.

This is a complete WAG but if the current Congress fails to pass a current budget before the current Congress adjourns, under Article I., Section 7 of the Constitution, everything must go back to square one. That means the President must issue a new budget plan, get it introduced by the House, and approved by the House and Senate and/or immediately pass a new CR, or the government shuts down.

No, it doesn’t. A CR can run until, say, February 1 and then the new Congress can pass whatever it likes in the way of an omnibus appropriations bill.

You don’t have to go through the entire budget process again. In fact, you don’t necessarily have to go through the budget process to pass appropriations bills. There has been at least one time in the past few years where a budget resolution was not approved and Congress went ahead with appropriations bills.

To clarify some of the confusion here, Congress is not passing “the budget” right now. The work on the budget resolution is during the Spring and it merely gives an outline of what federal spending will be. Congress needs to pass appropriations bills (not budget bills) to fund the government. It has failed to pass all but two appropriations bills, and thus it must either finish work on them this month or punt into next year.

I disagree. If the current Congress were debating a bill to ban the wearing of bowties on Sundays, if the bill is not passed before Congress adjourns (and the President signs it into law), the bill is dead. The new Congress must introduce a completely new bill to ban the wearing bowties on Sundays. A new Congress cannot pass legislation that was introduced by a previous Congress.

The same applies to budget bill. The content of any particular bill is irrelevant.

Technically, you are correct. However, a Continuing Resolution can be in effect until whenever the Congress and President say. They can easily pass a CR that goes into next year. Sure, new appropriations bills will have to be introduced in the next Congress, but that does not mean they have to go through the budget process. All that happens is that the appropriations committees pass them and then Congress passes them and the President signs them.

The gap between the election and the new folks actually taking office could be shorter. The reason it isn’t is in large part historical: it took longer in horse & buggies to make the journey.

I seem to recall they did shorten it once, it used to be a longer gap (??)

Yep, before the 20th Amendment both a new Congress and a new President took office on March 4th. Among other things this meant that the lame duck Congress was in charge of counting electoral votes and picking a winner if there wasn’t a majority. Didn’t Congress also not convene until December? That would mean a 13 month gap between being elected and sworn in.

I give – what happened?

Correct me if I’m wrong but the lame duck congress would still count the electoral votes. The electoral votes I think are counted in the Senate in December, which is only one month after the election and a month before the new President is sworn in.

And from what the constitution reads it suggests that once the counting is done if one person does not have a majority then the House must instantly vote on a President.

Anyways, AHunter has definitely hit the nail on the head. Especially before trains became widespread it could take an incredible amount of time to get to the Seat of Government for certain persons. The trip from Massachusetts to D.C. via horse and buggy could be a long one, and so would the trip from Georgia to D.C.

Once a train network was fairly regular the longer lame duck session became somewhat pointless, and that is why it was cut down as it was. I still think we need some period after election day and before the new congress comes in, for a variety of reasons I think an instance switchover the day after election day would be problematic.

The members of the Electoral College cast their votes in December, but Congress doesn’t count them until January when the new Congress takes office.

Unfortunately, these days, it almost does.

The two-month lame duck period, as noted, is a consequence of the Twentieth Amendment, ratified in 1933, which shortened the earlier four-month period.

The drafters of the Twentieth probably thought they were eliminating lame duck legislating, because the Congress of that era could wrap up its work in six to nine months. And so it went, for a while–the 1934 session of Congress, the first to begin on January 3, adjourned sine die on June 18!

When World War II broke out on September 1, 1939, Congress had already adjourned and President Roosevelt had to call it back into special session to repeal the Neutrality Act. This is the last time a President has called a special session of Congress. It will probably never happen again.

Decades slipped by, the budget increased, and Senators discovered that filibusters could be used on other things besides civil rights bills. By the late 1970’s, Congress was in session ten or eleven months per year, and it was no longer possible to adjourn from early October (to allow time for campaigning) until January 3.

Theoretically, we could further shorten the interval between Election Day and the new Congress. I dare say that three weeks would be long enough for all but the longest recounts to be settled and for the parties to elect their leadership.

But there are only two ways to accomplish this–move back Election Day (by law), or move the new Congress forward (by Constitutional amendment). The former will never happen, because people would howl about encroaching on the holiday season. The latter will never happen, because you can’t get a consensus for any Constitutional amendment these days.

So if you’re chomping at the bit, waiting for your party to grab the reins of power, be patient. Next time the shoe will be on the other foot.

Of course, the current congress only met for 93 days this year. I think they could have found the time to pass the federal budget without a lame duck session, if they really thought it was important to do so.

Not nearly as much as what happened in the 1998 lame-duck session, following serious Republican losses due in large part to their stated determination to come up with something to impeach Clinton for. They hurried up and did it while they still had enough votes.