Even one Cong. chamber would slam brakes on Bush, give investigative power

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT/Reuters: Democrats on a Roll in Battle for U.S. Congress
By REUTERS
Published: September 3, 2006

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats enter the fall campaign with a clear edge in the high-stakes fight for control of the U.S. Congress, riding a wave of momentum that has them positioned to retake the U.S. House of Representatives and make significant gains in the Senate.

President George W. Bush's low approval ratings and public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, gas prices and the country's direction threaten Republican leadership in Congress and put Democrats within reach of victory on November 7, analysts said.

"I don't think the question any longer is can Democrats win control of Congress, it's can Republicans do anything to stop it?'' said Amy Walter, House analyst for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report newsletter. ``All the factors and issues are pushing so strongly against Republicans.''...

***

A Democratic majority in even one chamber of Congress would slam the brakes on what is left of Bush's second-term legislative agenda and hasten his descent into lame-duck status in the final two years of his presidency.

It also would give Democrats an opportunity to hold hearings and investigate many of the administration's more controversial foreign, military and energy policy decisions....

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-campaign.html

[eleny]

1. This is the dream...

To control one chamber and that will turn on the floodlights. They've been off for too long.

[Jim__]

2. "It also would give Democrats an opportunity to hold hearings ..."

It's a difficult question.

If we have the House, bush's agenda is finished. None of his bills will pass.

Robert Reich argues against hearings on the previous years:

You’ll be sorely tempted to showcase the Bush administration in all its lurid awfulness. Imagine an endless parade of witnesses offering shocking details of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, torture camps, payoffs to Halliburton, Defense Department usurpations, Iraq’s descent into civil war, and other cover-ups, deceptions, data manipulations, suppressions of science, crass incompetencies, and outright corruption. Out of all of these hearings would come a bill of particulars so damning that every 2008 Democratic candidate running for everything from Indianapolis City Council to president will be swept into office on a riptide of public outrage.

After all, didn’t House Republicans during the Clinton years wreak all the damage they could even when there wasn’t much to complain about? Recall Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who, while chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, issued truckloads of White House subpoenas along with a sulphurous geyser of unsupported accusations. Why shouldn’t Henry Waxman, who will fill the same shoes, give as good as the Clinton White House got? Imagine how John Dingell, who will run the House Energy and Commerce Committee, could expose the intimacies between the Bushies and Big Oil; what John Conyers, in command of the House Judiciary Committee, could reveal about Bush’s trouncing of Americans’ civil liberties; or the job Barney Frank, at Financial Services, could do on the administration’s nefarious links to Wall Street. Hell, why not try to impeach Bush?

Warning: Resist all such temptation.

more...

He has a point. We may not regain control of the Senate. if that's true, then it is very important that we win both the Senate and the Presidency in 2008. We need to be a productive force for positive actions in order to do that. Rehashing old wrongs will get in the way of that.

[eallen]

3. As long as the Senate is Republican, Bush can appoint judges...

Judges who defer to government power, and especially to executive power, over civil liberty.

[Benhurst]

4. "Old wrongs"? These are continuing wrongs. Money is being

stolen, the Constitution shredded. The Republican hearings against Clinton were bullshit. Democratic hearings against corrupt corporate power, illegal and immoral military actions, and a rogue executive, should and must be held if we regain the House or Senate.

We're not talking about stains on dresses here, we're talking about treason.