Congressional Democrats

As Congress begins picking through President Obama's vast election-year budget, many Democratic incumbents and candidates seem to be finding something they love -- to campaign against. A Democratic Senate candidate in Missouri denounced the budget's sky-high deficit. A Florida Democrat whose congressional district includes the Kennedy Space Center hit the roof over NASA budget cuts. And a headline on the 2010 campaign website of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) blares her opposition to Obama's farm budget: "Blanche stands up for Arkansas farm families."

LANSDOWNE, Va. -- Former President Bill Clinton urged Congressional Democrats to pursue a positive agenda if they intend to reclaim the majority in the House and said they should not shy from gun control in the process, advising it need not be a "toxic land mine," if done correctly. Addressing the party as Democrats closed a three-day issues conference, Clinton warned that Republicans will pose a more formidable challenge in the midterms than they did last November, and that Democrats should reach beyond their political comfort zone if they hope to add seats again in two years.

Echoing the limited agenda President Bush outlined in his State of the Union address, congressional Democrats are eyeing their second year in the majority with much-diminished expectations. Gone are the grandiose promises of legislation to bring the troops home from Iraq, which dominated the Democratic agenda last year and nearly ground business on Capitol Hill to a halt.

Some Republican congressional leaders have argued for a trench warfare approach to President Obama's initiatives, fighting him for every yard, but polls released this week indicate the peril of that approach for the GOP as it seeks to rehabilitate itself after a stinging election defeat. The surveys indicate that the gap in approval between the president and Republicans in Congress has remained extremely large, that Republicans face greater internal divisions than Democrats and that the Democrats have maintained a significant edge in party identification.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, saying, "It's not over till it's over," met today with congressional Democrats who may determine the party's presidential nominee, called for party unity and appealed to them for "fairness." Jackson, his drive for the White House stalled by Michael S. Dukakis, met for about an hour in a closed House of Representatives chamber with about 160 House Democrats, most of whom will be so-called super delegates to the Democratic National Convention in July.

PORK IS NOT PARTISAN. Republicans took over Congress in the mid-1990s promising to cut wasteful government spending, then started a feeding frenzy at the public trough. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the number of earmarks (home-district projects whose funding is inserted into spending bills) in the House went from 3,000 in 1996 to 15,000 in 2005.

Last week, Jay Leno wandered out of his studio to ask people on the street what they thought about the North American Free Trade Agreement. Thought about it? Hey, they had hardly heard of it. A typical response went: "Nafta? How do you spell that?" As Leno discovered, Americans aren't lying awake worrying about NAFTA. All of which makes the strident opposition of so many congressional Democrats mystifying.

President Obama's call for a televised bipartisan meeting to discuss stalled healthcare legislation comes as his party unfolds a strategy to force Republicans to put policy ideas on the table that Democrats believe they can exploit in the fall elections. After a year of suffering GOP attacks on the president's plans for healthcare and the economy, the White House and congressional Democrats are gambling that voters will find Republican ideas to be even more unpopular. For example, Obama's call for a meeting, which he announced to a national television audience before Sunday's Super Bowl, reflects the belief in Democratic circles that most provisions of the party's healthcare bill remain popular and will stand up well against GOP ideas.

The Rostenkowski plan to eliminate the budget deficit, launched with great fanfare just over a week ago, appears doomed on Capitol Hill because President Bush failed to give it any support, Democratic congressional leaders charged Tuesday. The proposal advanced by Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.

A loyal phalanx of Democrats in Congress continued to stand behind Al Gore's fight for the presidency despite the bruising legal setback he suffered Monday, but many are steeling themselves for the prospect that his fight soon will end in defeat. Most congressional Democrats supported Gore's decision to appeal a Florida circuit judge's refusal to overturn the Nov. 26 decision declaring George W. Bush the winner of the state's 25 electoral votes.

WASHINGTON - The game of chicken over the nation's impending "fiscal cliff" - the automatic tax increases and spending cuts due if Congress fails to act by year-end - has officially begun. Congressional Democratic leaders made clear Monday that they had no interest in averting the bleak scenario if Republicans continued to refuse to soften their hard-line opposition to higher taxes on wealthier Americans. "If Republicans won't work with us on a balanced approach, we are not going to get a deal," said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the No. 4 Democrat and the party's senatorial campaign chairwoman, during a talk at the Brookings Institution.

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Democrats, usually struggling with some level of discord over tax issues, seemed suddenly less combative after emerging from a closed-door session with President Obama's top surrogates, advisor David Axelrod and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Call it their game face, but at a lunch session that was described as “lively” and “healthy” with Senate Democrats on Tuesday, lawmakers left with a show of not quite unity, but something more like an evolving party position.

Americans overwhelmingly approve of the budget agreement that averted a government shutdown, and credit Democrats more so than Republicans for reaching the compromise, a new poll finds. The CNN/Opinion Research survey, conducted Saturday and Sunday, is one of the first released after Friday's last-minute compromise between House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the White House. It found that 58% of Americans approve of the compromise, while 38% disapprove and 5% had no opinion.

Congressional Democrats searched for leverage Friday in their bitter debate with Republicans over extending George W. Bush-era tax cuts, lashing out against giving "tax breaks to millionaires" and preparing for a rare weekend session in the Senate on the issue. But the increasingly aggressive Democratic posture may come too late in the protracted battle over the fate of tax cuts that are set to expire Dec. 31. The White House has indicated it would consider an agreement with Republicans to temporarily extend all tax breaks, even for households earning more than $250,000 annually, if the GOP agreed to concessions and withdrew its block on certain Democratic priorities.

The White House and congressional Democrats are pushing to bring to a vote a bill that creates a path to legal status for young illegal immigrants, seeking to win support from moderate Republicans in the lame-duck session before a more conservative GOP contingent arrives in January. Senior Obama administration officials say Congress should take the opportunity to pass the bill, which was written by members of both parties, to demonstrate to Latino voters that there is bipartisan support for practical approaches to dealing with illegal immigration.

The Republican leader who hopes to become the next speaker of the House criticized White House economic policies Tuesday in a speech that was met with a coordinated attack from Democrats that resembled the rapid response perfected during Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Rep. John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) called for firing the Treasury secretary and repealing parts of the healthcare law, giving shape to a party agenda as Republicans try to take over the House this fall. In response, Democrats unleashed Vice President Joe Biden for a rebuttal that cast Boehner's priorities as a return to the George W. Bush administration policies that led to the economic crisis, and that showed Democrats were unwilling to let Republican attacks go unanswered.

ONE-UPMANSHIP? Congressional Democrats are bracing for trench warfare with Bush on many domestic issues in the wake of the President's State of the Union and budget messages. Although the Democrats generally pledged cooperation after Bush's speech, look for rival bills designed to out-do what the President has proposed on everything from tax cuts and education to health care and trade issues. . . .

California's congressional Democrats challenged House district lines proposed by a state Supreme Court panel and asked a federal court to intervene. The Democrats, whose control of the state's new 52-seat House delegation would be threatened by the pending reapportionment plan, argued that the proposed districts were too unequal in population and would hurt minorities in the Los Angeles area.

Congress is shattering its longstanding reputation for being a gridlocked, lethargic, "do-nothing" institution, instead compiling a record of landmark policy changes in healthcare, financial industry regulation, economic policy and more. But at the same time, Congress is suffering sky-high levels of public disapproval, signaling a big problem for Democrats as they head into the closing months of the midterm election campaign. They are doing a lot of big things, but a lot of people do not like what they are doing.

All sorts of people step forward to defend their country by serving in the military. And the military is glad to have them: college grads, high school dropouts, men, women. Race doesn't matter, and actually, neither does citizenship. Close to 30,000 members of the U.S. military are not American citizens. So it is astonishing that to this day, openly gay men and women are still not allowed to serve in the armed services. And though Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates took steps in March to make it harder to expel homosexuals from the military — by, for example, limiting the evidence that can be used against those suspected of being gay — the change nonetheless perpetuates the notion that gays and lesbians should have to live in fearful secrecy, as though they were criminals instead of patriots.