Congress is back at work for a brief session before the full-time electioneering begins. It will return after Election Day for a "lame-duck" session, where the outgoing Congress -- with many members repudiated by the voters -- have one last chance to do damage. This year's legislative politicking is particularly fraught, because Republicans expect to lose seats, and quite possibly their majority in at least one house.
Congress is back at work for a brief session before the full-time electioneering begins. It will return after Election Day for a "lame-duck" session, where the outgoing Congress -- with many members repudiated by the voters -- have one last chance to do damage. This year's legislative politicking is particularly fraught, because Republicans expect to lose seats, and quite possibly their majority in at least one house.
Their top domestic priority is permanent repeal of the estate tax. Under President Bush, Congress enacted bills gradually reducing the taxes paid by the wealthiest estates, but the law sunsets in 2011.
As Chuck Collins of the organization Responsible Wealth puts it, "If we are going to have any taxes at all, the fairest place to start is with dead billionaires." Under current law, only the richest 1 percent of estates pay taxes at all, yet wealth is so concentrated in America that this tax brings in half a trillion dollars over the next decade. If we repeal that tax, either taxes must be raised on other working Americans, or more programs cut -- or deficits will swell.
Earlier this year, the Republican leadership cynically tied a permanent repeal of the estate tax to legislation providing the first minimum-wage increase in a decade. Though the real value of the minimum wage is at its lowest level since World War II, supporters of an adequate minimum wage did not take the bait.
Now the GOP leadership has a scheme tying estate tax repeal to extension of the child tax credit. It's a beautiful exposition of the reigning philosophy and strategy -- trade some crumbs for everyone else for massive giveaways to billionaires. This vote will go down to the wire. The only thing standing between the Republican right and permanent repeal of America's fairest tax is a few shaky political moderates, including Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Prior of Arkansas, and Republican George Voinovich of Ohio. The Republican leadership is frantically seeking goodies to throw these senators in exchange for flipping their votes.
The top foreign-policy priorities are legislation legalizing extra-legal treatment of detainees and illegal spying on Americans. Bush contends that, as commander in chief, he is free to ignore the PATRIOT Act's system for requiring a special court to approve otherwise illegal wiretaps.
Now the administration wants Congress to overturn even that slender protection of privacy. The White House also wants legislation on the custody, treatment, and trial for terrorist suspects that would overrule a June Supreme Court decision holding that prisoners were protected by both U.S. constitutional safeguards of due process and by the Geneva Conventions.
However, the release in recent years of many hundreds of terrorism "suspects" rounded up by overzealous police and prosecutors demonstrates that the government sometimes makes mistakes. That's why the constitutional founders rejected star-chamber prosecutions, and devised Fourth Amendment protections against police-state searches and seizures. Vice President Dick Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and political chief Karl Rove timed the introduction of these dubious proposals to coincide with 9/11 memories and stepped-up rhetoric on terrorism. They were betting that Democrats would not dare vote against Bush on a national security issue, on the eve of an election.
But the gambit is backfiring. Moderate Republicans have qualms about both measures. Much of the opposition is coming from the Pentagon's own lawyers. Democrats are prepared to back a version of the legislation that preserves constitutional safeguards, while Republicans are divided.
Other lame-duck priorities include extension of other Bush tax cuts, authorization of extended oil and gas drilling, partial privatization of Social Security, and a draconian "enforcement-only" version of immigration reform that rejects the sensible compromise negotiated by Bush and moderate Republicans and Democrats, tying tougher enforcement to a path to "earned citizenship" for some longtime residents who came here illegally.
The jockeying is likely to be fierce before the election, and even more intense afterward if Republicans, as expected, lose seats. Ironically, the bigger the Republicans' election loss and more sweeping the repudiation, the more desperate will be the lame ducks' last hurrah.
If Democrats and Republican moderates can hold the line for a few more months, the nation will be spared bad legislation. We might even look forward, in the next Congress, to the bipartisan approach to thorny national challenges that was promised back in 2000 by a candidate named Bush.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect. This column originally appeared in The Boston Globe.
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