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A Look at What the 112th Congress U.S. House of Representative's Conservative-Tea Party Has Accomplished

Updated on March 10, 2019
My Esoteric profile image

ME has spent most of his retirement from service to the United States studying, thinking, and writing about the country he served.

112th CONGRESS IS IN SESSION (for a few days a year)

Source

YOU BE THE JUDGE

THIS HUB STARTED from a series of comments between @Jon Ewall and myself in another hub I wrote regarding President Obama's accomplishments (see link here and below). After a short preamble, I will present the gist of those comments in the next section, then some commentary in a third and let the comments fly (I hope).

The following is what I gathered from www.opencongress.org, which lists all of the legislative actions in Congress. According to the latest update on Open Congress, the House has introduced a total 3066 Bills plus an assortment of other resolutions, joint resolutions, etc. Of these, the only ones that actually passed at least the House and had anything to do with Jobs in a significant way are listed below (in my dialogue with @Jon Ewall, he said there were nine job related bills; I don't know if he meant passed or simply introduced:

HR 1 - 3/9/2011: Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011 (Job Saving, absorbed in other legislation)

HR 2 - 1/19/2011 - Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act (CBO says Job Killing itself, killed in Senate)

HR 4- 4/13/2011 - Comprehensive 1099 Taxpayer Protection and Repayment of Exchange Subsidy Overpayment's Act of 2011: (Bipartisan (the liberals didn't like it though), Job Preventing, is Law. I only mention it for its irony; it is job killing because the piece of Obama Care this Bill repealed would have created a number of private sector and government jobs for accountants and others to prepare, process, maintain, and enforce its requirements. Saner heads on both sides of the aisle prevailed and figured out spending $2 to save $1 wasn't a good idea after all.)

HR 1076 - 3/17/2011 - To prohibit Federal funding of National Public Radio and the use of Federal funds to acquire radio content: (Job Killing, went nowhere)

HR 1249 - 9/15/2011 - America Invents Act: (Bipartisan, Job Creating, is Law)

HR 1473 - 4/14/2011 - Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011: (Bipartisan, Job Saving, is Law)

HR 2608 - 7/27/2011 - Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012 (offered by Jon Ewall) - to continue Small Business Program Extension and Reform Act of 2011: (Job Creating, Passed in Senate but with amendments which must be reconciled with House, currently tabled with a slightly bipartisan vote

HR 2219 - 7/9/2011 - Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2012: (Bipartisan, became part of other legislation)

HR 2560 - 7/19/2011 - Cut, Cap, and Balance Act of 2011: (Job Killing, killed by Senate)

HR 2944 - 9/21/2011 - United States Parole Commission Extension Act of 2011: (Bipartisan, Job Saving, should be law as of 10/16/2011)

HR ? - 9/23/2011 - Continuing resolution to provide funding to operate the government into fiscal year 2012: (Job Killing, killed in Senate)

HR 6655 - 12/13/2012 - Protect Our Kids Act of 2012 (Signed into law 1/3/2013)

HR 6684 - 12/21/2013 - Spending Reduction Act of 2012 (Sent to Senate, referred to committee)

HR 6726 - 1/1/2013 - Congressional Pay Freeze and Fiscal Responsibility Act (Sent to Senate with no time left to act on.)



If I have missed any, let me know the HR number and I will include them. Except where noted, the Job - Killing, Creating, Preventing, or Saving status is of my own opinion.

COMMENT DISCUSSION

I made a hub out of these discussions because 1) I talk a lot and 2) more importantly, they are important issues, to myself and to Jon who sees the other side of things. Besides by obvious problem with time compression, most of what we say is the truth, from each of our points of view and to the degree it has been researched. There were about three back-and-forths, but, this sort of summarizes it all:

FROM My Esoteric to @Jon, I looked up HR 2698 from the 112th Congress. Assuming I have the correct bill, this is what it said:

SECTION 1. EXPANSION OF APPLICATION OF SPECIAL RULES FOR CERTAIN GOVERNMENTAL PLANS TO INCLUDE PLANS ESTABLISHED BY POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS.

(a) In General- Section 105(j)(2) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended--

(1) by inserting `or established by or on behalf of a State or political subdivision thereof' after `public retirement system', and

(2) by inserting `or 501(c)(9)' after `section 115' in subparagraph (B) thereof.

(b) Effective Date- The amendments made by this section shall apply to payments after the date of the enactment of this Act.

I am not sure what this bill has to do with jobs. Did I get your citation correct?

From My Esoteric Hub Author8 hours ago

Ooops, @Jon, you are right, 9 months, it just seems like two years, which makes it one jobs bill a month. That would be an ok record, even in my book, so now I have to and look to see what they actually were or if, as Old Poolman and I are discussing in another CMerritt hub, it is just what they are calling it.

You and I both know there are many things a President can do outside the Will of Congress via Executive Directive, for a time anyway because they can always be overridden by Congress. Being blamed for all that goes wrong, as, again, we both know, goes along with the job and sometimes unfairly so but nevertheless with Dire consequenses as Bush I found out in his re-election bid. The economy was picking back up a little and it was never that bad because of him, he was still fixing the problems caused by his predecessor, but theory has it, the public didn't vote for Bush because of the economy. I didn't vote for Bush either, but for other reasons; I had to vote Democrat for the first time in my life because the Republican party had moved so far to the right, I didn't recognize them anymore; the social Conservatives had cosumned my party by then and that appalled and frieghtened me; the Republican party that I had grown up with and belonged to had all but disappeared.

I would argue that it is the Conservatives who have effective control over Congress; here is my reasoning.

Without doubt, the Conservatives have control of the House, even the Tea Party may have now, based on the last funding bill that was initially voted down.

In the Senate, yes, the Democrats have majority, but not a super-majority (which apparently didn't make much difference anyway since, true to form, they couldn't bring the three parts of the party together to vote as a block ... more on that later.), however, the Conservative Senate leadership, for the first time in American history, are able to control 100% of their members vote so, in effect, only Mitch McConnell is voting for the Conservatives in the Senate and not 47 individual Republican, Conservative, and Tea Party Senators. What does this mean? Effective control of the Senate for the Conservatives. How? Abuse of the power of the fillibuster. While Senator Reid may be able to set the agenda because of his party's majority, Senator McConnell, through the active abuse of the fillibuster, controls what gets passed. Ergo, the Conservatives actually control Congress.

Back to the Democrats Super-Majority, what a wasted oppurtunity! But, as to be expected of Democrats, the conservative-side wouldn't agree with the liberal-side (by the way, I put most of the fault with the liberal's unwillingness to compromise and see the long-term) and the moderates were unable to mediate; the liberals wanted their cake and to eat it and to eat it NOW; as a result, they got next to nothing.

To me, it is very easy to see why President Bush keeps getting blamed; President Obama has spent his whole president trying to repair the desvestation Bush's presidency caused to America AND Obama has been trying to do this in the face of a firestorm of critism from the Conservatives saying we need to go back to Bush's economic policies that produced these terribel results in the first place ... oh yeah, then add in a Democratic party who are having the most fun fighting amongst themselves rather than for America.

As I pointed out in the body of this hub, while you are right, unemployment was 7.8% when the stimulus started (it had been 5% at the beginning of the Bush presidency) it was rising fast, the avalanche, with all of its massive momentum, of job loss was just starting. Given the way financieal depressions or even recessions of this magnitude historically go, 9.8+% unemployment in some parts of the country two years after the beginning of the stimulus is actually a pretty amazingly low number. Also, as I mentioned earlier in the hub, the stimulus was based on 3rd quarter, 2008 data. Based on that data, the stimulus was enough. It wasn't until after the 4th quarter, 2008 was in (after the stimulus bill was basically finalized) did the administration and the world become aware of the extent of the damage this (at this point in time) coming depression was going to cause. For Obama and America, unfortunately, it was too late; the stimulus was set and there was no way the Conservatives would let Obama increase it enough to address the 4th quarter data.


FROM jon ewall 18 hours ago

TO My Esoteric

You said ''Need to look at HR 2698, but I must say, only 9 job producing bills in TWO YEARS is a rather anemic record. '' NOTE that the republicans have had control of the house since jan. 2011, approximately 9 months not 2 years. A LITTLE HISTORY FROM ANOTHER REPLY.

’the President can do nothing outside the will of congress, yet some how he is to blame for the entire worlds problems’’

HOW TRUE

From Jan. 2007 to 2010, the Democrats had majority control of our government ( CONGRESS ) and still to today they control the Senate and the Presidency.

The recession started in Dec 2007 and ended in April 2009. In 2010 the Democrats had a SUPER MAJORITY CONTROL including the Presidency.

Somehow it is hard to understand why President Bush is always being BLAMED for today’s problems by President Barack Obama and the Democrats who have had 2/3‘s control of the US Government since 2007.

The Democrats passed the Stimulus Bill in Feb.2009, the Stimulus Bill ends Sept.30,2011.The funds that were approved was to ignite the job market and the economy. 2009 unemployment was 7.8%, as of today it is 9.8%+ in many areas of the country. Any monies lying around not being used should be returned to the US Treasury and used to pay down the debt( the unused $$$$$ are paying interest to our debtors).

have a great day!

DISCUSSION OF THE ABOVE

I DON'T HAVE much to say at this point other than to ask you to go back and look at the first section of this hub and, assuming I have accounted for all of the House Resolutions that may have had a significant impact on jobs, that actually passed the House (regardless of whether they made it through the Senate or not), count them up, determine if you agree or disagree with Job impact assessment, and see if we have nine that really save or create jobs, whether bipartisan or not. I didn't look at the 2,500 or so H.R.s that were simply Introduced, as far as I know, they are all dead or in committee or something; what I do know, is they aren't real until the House tried to act on it which, in this House, means it was passed.

© 2011 Scott Belford

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