The Democrats claim that they lived up to their campaign promise and enacted six major bills in their first 100 hours in office. The actual number is a fat, round, zero. None of the bills the Democrats are touting so far have made it into law and four of the six have been approved only by the House.

There's more...

This week the House of Representatives finished its "First 100 Hours" agenda in a total of 42 legislative hours.  They passed 6 bills they'd laid out as their initial priorities (Speaker Pelosi has declared her intention to have the House produce and pass global warming legislation by July 4th), and I wanted to take a look back on who voted how on these bills.

HR 1, implementing most 9/11 Commission recommendations (vote)
HR 2, minimum wage increase (vote)
HR 3, stem cell research (vote)
HR 4, negotiating Rx drug prices (vote)
HR 5, student loan interest rates (vote)
HR 6, repealing Big Oil tax breaks (vote)

The Democratic House caucus voted unanimously for 4 of these 6 bills.  The two votes where some Dems voted no were on stem cell research and repealing tax breaks for oil and gas (the bill would also punish companies who don't renegotiate leases the government screwed up in 1998-99).  There were 16 Democrats voting against the stem cell bill, and 4 who voted against the oil tax break bill.  Even on HR 3, the vote in which the Democrats were most divided, Democrats voted 216-16 (or 93% to 7%) in favor.  A majority in the House is 218, but enough members didn't vote that the Democrats' votes alone would have sufficed to pass the bill.  In fact, that is true of all 6 bills.  By historical standards, the Democrats exhibited an extraordinary, even extreme, degree of party unity on these votes.

There's more...

While right-wing bloggers, assisted by the if-it-bleeds-it-leads media, have been on a brutal campaign to discredit freshman Representative Dr. Steve Kagen and distract from the issues, the new Congressman from Wisconsin's 8th Congressional District has been busy, working with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle to address the critical issues facing this nation.

The Democrats in Congress finished their first 100 legislative hours, with Kagen and other members of Wisconsin's congressional delegration voting to increase the minimum wage, lower prescription drug prices, and cut student loan interest rates.

While right-wing bloggers continue to rehash old news, Congressman Kagen is focused on reaching across the aisle to fix the issues his constituents sent him to Washington to fix. Asked about his part in pushing the Democrats' 100-hour agenda forward, Kagen responded:

There's more...

Congress passed H.R. 4 today over the President's veto threat, but supporters were unable to get enough votes to signal its ability to overcome that threat. That makes it an almost certainty that the legislation will be watered-down in the Senate.

H.R. 4 did not receive enough votes to override a veto. President Bush has promised to do so. Therefore, the legislation in its current form will not be what is eventually passed into law. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) is resistant to the House approach and is likely to seek out a compromise with moderate Republicans like Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) that allows, but does not require, government negotiations to lower drug prices. The extent to which House Democrats will go along with what they will see as a watered-down version of their bill remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: The Senate does not have enough votes to override a veto, thus change to the bill is required to appease enough Senators to vote with the Democratic leadership.

There's more...

(cross-posted at Daily Kos)

Today marks the end of the first full week that the Democratic-controlled 110th Congress has been in business. Given that, I think it'd be a good idea to evaluate just how Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) have been performing during their first week on the job. One has to keep in mind that the House and the Senate operate quite differently, so it's understandable that the House has been able to get more matters voted on in a quicker period of time, particularly since we are pushing through an agenda that is broadly supported by a vast majority of the American people. The Senate, though, prides itself on its style of deliberation, so it was a given that much of the legislation would not be passed right off.

Today, I'll be taking a look at how the House has been doing. Below the fold, there's an outline of what the House Democrats aimed to achieve in the first 100 hours of the new Congress:

There's more...