Posted on 09/21/2012 3:17:00 PM PDT by Kaslin
In the wake of Romney’s “47 percent” comments and less than positive polling from key swing states, every squishy Republican in the liberal media's stable of acceptable Republicans went into full panic mode. But just yesterday, President Obama made a huge admission when he admitted that his biggest miscalculation was that he thought he could change Washington from the inside.
Republican strategist Alice Stewart raised that point during a chat with MSNBC's Thomas Roberts this morning, blasting Obama for it and saying that he had two years in his term in which his party ran both houses of Congress. That's an indisputable fact, but Roberts insisted that Stewart was wrong on the length of time that Democrats in Obama's term controlled both the House and Senate: [See video below break. MP3 audio here.]
THOMAS ROBERTS: All right so let’s say good morning and bring in today’s Power Panel we have Perry Bacon MSNBC contributor and political editor for The Grio, Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis, and Republican strategist Alice Stewart. It’s great to have all three of you here.
Alice – I want to start with you because the race is becoming this kind of tape gotcha game – the president’s campaign responding to Romney’s remarks by digging up something that Mitt Romney said back in 2008 that basically parallels what the president said.
[Buzzfeed tape]
ROBERTS: So – Alice Romney was slammed for jumping on the situation in Libya – jumped on the redistribution remarks kind of pulling them out of context now he’s giving another knee jerk reaction by seizing on the change remarks – when basically he campaigned that way in ’08 – why does that seem so different from Mitt Romney in his own words in ’08 from what the president said on Univision the other day.
ALICE STEWART: Well – there’s a big difference in Romney saying it and President Obama saying it – when Obama saying that the biggest thing he’s learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside – newsflash he’s been on the inside for the past four years and we have a terrible economy. We have a terrible crisis overseas and he’s had not only that – he had control over the House and Senate for the first two years while he was in office and he failed to make things better for the American people.
ROBERTS: Alice technically it wasn’t the first two years it was for only several months because of the ongoing political races that were still taking place – you know that right. It wasn’t for a full two years.
STEWART: He had control of the House and Senate for the first half of his presidency and he had the opportunity to put polices in place that would help create a strong economy and create jobs for the American people – and at the end of the day the American people cannot say that their lives are better off than when he took office and he said himself if he can’t turn the economy around and he can’t create jobs it’ll be a one-term proposition and it’s looking more like that everyday.
ROBERTS: Alice – according to the calendar that’s factually not true that he had control for two years, but I’ll move on.
The ObamaCare debate, in which the Democrats had majorities in the House and Senate, lasted longer than several months. In fact, it took up almost a whole year. During Obama's first two years, his Democratic allies in Congress passed not only Obamacare, but Cash for Clunkers, Cash for Caulkers, Dollars for Dishwashers, Dodd-Frank, and the massive debt-ballooning stimulus.
Democrats won big in 2006 -- when they took the House from Republicans -- and 2008. They had a 60-seat supermajority in the Senate during much of the first two years of President Obama’s first term and a sizable majority in the House. Roberts's use of Congress's many recesses to dismiss the two-year number is patently ludicrous.
I think it was only 19 or 20 months of total demhole control.........
Just another case of terminal stupidity.
"Nothing in your post changes the fact that they had control for two full years."
Full control of the US Senate requires a filibuster-proof majority to pass legislation with the use of a cloture vote to prevent unlimited debate. The dates indicated in the above post denote the periods the Democrats had such full control. A simple majority control of the US Senate, committees and sub-committees and the legislative calendar was correct for the Democrats in the US Senate during the 111th Congress.
Since the institution of the cloture rule in the US Senate during the 65th Congress, only eight sessions of Congress have had a party with a filibuster-proof majority in the US Senate. These filibuster-proof Congresses were: 74th, 75th, 76th, 77th, 89th, 94th, 95th, 111th - all controlled by Democrats. The Republicans have never had a filibuster-proof majority in the US Senate.
Majority Party |
Number of Senators |
required for Cloture |
|||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
"Having a filibuster-proof majority for any period of that time near the end of session would have allowed them to pass the entirety of their agenda provided only that they were careful procedurally."
Which is exactly how the PPACA was passed by the Democrats in the US Senate during late December 2009, at the end of the first session of the 111th Congress.
"Furthermore, not all of the business of the Senate requires a cloture vote. The ACA, arguably the most important (read: damaging) piece of legislation was passed with less than a filibuster-proof majority."
The PPACA was passed in the US Senate via the following two votes:
1.) December 23rd, 2009 - 60 to 39 in favor of invoking cloture.
2.) December 24th, 2009 - 60 to 39 in favor of passing the PPACA.
Notice, in both of the recorded votes in the US Senate on the PPACA, each was performed with a filibuster-proof majority of 60 votes. Are there any other facts of which you are unsure?
dvwjr
Which one is the anchor and which the anchorette?
Actually, I think if you look closely at what he’s saying it’s even worse.
What he’s effectively saying is that the democrats could not do the horrible things they wanted to do because they had to worry about re-election. If they did what they wanted and what 0bama wanted they risked losing in the next election.
Left is the anchor.
Well ain’t that special?
(before New Years we’ll hear of a huge b!tch fight and how the anchorette stole his checkblanks and peed on the divan and was cranked up every day before noon and besides regularly took on all comers [gulp] at the I-90 rest stop, where these two probably met in the first place...sickening bleeps...)
Not all Senate business requires invocation of cloture. The majority leadership could proceed with business that did not require debate to be suspended, introducing their controversial business on a schedule that allowed them to vote when they had 60 votes. That is indeed what they did, as you yourself admit (with one point upon which you are mistaken, but hold on.)
Most business in the Senate, as in the House, is done in committee. During the entire period from 2007 to 2013, the Democrats had (have) such control.
The fact that they lacked a filibuster proof majority in the months before the mid-term elections allows liberal dissemblers to skate on a technicality; the truth is Congress does not generally address controversial legislation in later than the spring of the midterm year anyway.
ACA was not passed while The Senate had a filibuster proof majority. Parts of ACA were passed on the votes you indicated, but the House had not passed the bill at that point. The bill was not passed by the House until March, 2010. This is not a technicality: the House was not willing to pass the Senate's version of the Bill, and Amendments had to be made, and passed, as part of a dubious use of budget reconciliation that sidestepped the rules of the Senate. Those Amendments, plus the bill originally passed by the Senate in the closing hours of 2009 are the actual ACA.
But nice try.
Your chart is wrong in the last several Congresses. Are there any other facts upon which you are unsure?
He’s right! They didn’t control Congress for two years. They controlled it for FOUR (2006-2010).
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