With the impending election, Congress left for its July 4th recess unable to face constituents with any real headway on foreclosure legislation. Having started and stopped the discussion of The Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 several times, it is disappointing to see that Congress is faithfully endeavoring to do as little as possible even when they have a consensus. Conventional wisdom projected that Congress would be able to finalize the bill prior to the recess, following a test vote of 83 in agreement. But procedural hurdles reared, the final passage undone by a dispute over an unrelated issue for tax breaks on renewable energy, an issue also supported by 88 Senators. (By way of explanation, HR 3221 was initially an energy bill that was gutted and renamed TFPA of 2008)
Essentially, what was once a “gentleman’s” game based on philosophical and political differences is now a cutthroat gauntlet of gaming the system. While one can debate the merits and expense of what many view as a bailout bill, on some level, one would expect some kind of response after months of debate, negotiation and compromise to produce a bipartisan bill. But the fact is, it is an election year. With both sides of the aisle maneuvering for political currency, they are using the procedural rules of the Senate to gain advantage, with the ancillary disadvantage of causing any progress to grind to a halt.
HR 3221 was introduced July 30th, 2007 to the House. It passed the House August 4th, 2007. It passed the Senate April 10, 2008. The Senate bill still has to be resolved with the House version. It is now July again… and still nothing. Other bills like HR 3915 and S 2452 which address predatory lending, have been mostly tabled for partisan concerns, most likely to be revisited post-election. The problem is… we have a consensus, the bill has been voted on and ready to go, so what is the holdup?
In the Washington Postarticle “Political Maneuvers Delay Bill After Bill in Senate,” you see a lot of insight into the “do-nothing” Congress:
“Members recognize this is going to be a critical election. There’s potential for dramatic change in the Senate and the House and the presidency. So both sides aren’t willing to give an inch on messaging,” said Brian Darling, director of Senate relations at the Heritage Foundation. “Both Republicans and Democrats have dug in their heels.”
“It’s a delay-of-game Congress,” said R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “This Congress isn’t addressing the issues that are foremost in the public’s mind such as gasoline prices, economic anxiety and the housing crisis.”
Senators in both parties say the logjam is the worst they’ve seen, largely due to copious use of the filibuster. Since January 2007, motions to end debate — cloture motions — have been filed 119 times. The previous record for any two-year session was 82.
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) has used a procedural tactic to prohibit GOP amendments 13 times since January 2007, more than any Senate leader since 1985.
Republicans point to those statistics and accuse Reid of using cloture to deny them the ability to amend legislation often chosen for its political message. That is why, they say, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) has slowed the housing bill with his renewable-energy amendment. The housing bill is one of the few measures moving through the Senate that has a chance to become law.
“Substantive bills have simply been abandoned,” said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). “Therefore, when a vehicle does appear that, like the housing bill, has some consensus behind it, people throw baggage on that immediately derails it.”
Democrats say that Republicans are using the filibuster to block legislation and that their demand for amendments is an effort to turn every bill, no matter the subject, into a debate over GOP issues, such as the estate tax or offshore drilling.
The low point in Senate relations may have come during debate on a climate-change bill sponsored by Sens. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.). Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) forced the entire 492-page bill to be read aloud, an exercise that took nearly nine hours. McConnell said the move was payback for Reid’s failure to act on President Bush’s judicial nominees. Frustrated, Reid moved to end debate and bring the bill to the floor. The vote failed, killing the bill.
Then there’s the housing package, a bipartisan construct assembled by Democrats in consultation with Republicans in both chambers. The measure includes some of the Bush administration’s top priorities on housing, including provisions to modernize the Federal Housing Administration and create a stronger regulator for mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Democrats added a program to give hundreds of thousands of distressed borrowers the opportunity to avoid foreclosure by trading exotic mortgages with rapidly rising monthly payments for more affordable government-backed loans. Even that program was rewritten to address concerns of the White House and the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama.
The measure had passed the House and appeared early this week to be sailing toward final passage in the Senate. On Tuesday, it cleared a cloture vote 83 to 9.
But then Ensign demanded an amendment to add the renewable-energy credits, noting that the housing bill had begun life as H.R. 3221, the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007. The Senate grabbed H.R. 3221 in April, wiped out the energy provisions, replaced them with housing provisions and changed the bill’s title to the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008.”
