Embattled Democrats put off votes, debates on taxes, other tough issues until after election

Congress punts tough choice until after election

WASHINGTON — A deeply unpopular Congress is bolting for the campaign trail without finishing its most basic job — approving a budget for the government year that begins on Friday. Lawmakers also are postponing a major fight over taxes, two embarrassing ethics cases and other political hot potatoes until angry and frustrated voters render their verdict in the Nov. 2 elections.

As a last necessary task before leaving, both the Senate and House passed a temporary spending measure needed to keep federal agencies operating when the new budget year starts.

As Congress moved toward a messy end to a session fraught with partisan fire, President Barack Obama campaigned for Democrats in Iowa and Virginia, accusing Republicans of being dishonest about what needs to be done to revive the economy and restore middle-class dreams.

With their House and Senate majorities on the line, Democratic leaders called off votes and even debates on all controversial matters.

“It would be one thing if you have a chance to pass something, then by all means have a vote,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said Wednesday. “But it was pretty clear that it was going to be mutually assured destruction.”

One foot out the door, the House and Senate convened just long enough to vote on a “continuing resolution,” a stopgap measure to keep the government in operating funds for the next two months and avoid a pre-election federal shutdown.

The Senate late Wednesday approved the temporary spending bill 69-30. The House followed suit several hours later with a 228-194 vote, sending it to Obama early Thursday.

“We may not agree on much, but I think, with rare exception, all 100 senators want to get out of here and get back to their states,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is locked in a tough re-election fight against Republican Sharron Angle in Nevada.

Staying or going might seem an equally unpleasant prospect for some embattled Democrats, who are facing more than four weeks of defending unpopular votes in favor of Obama’s economic stimulus measure, health care law and uncompleted legislation for curbing global warming.

They also head home without what was supposed to be their closing argument of the campaign, an extension of Bush-era tax cuts for families making less than $250,000.

Republicans and a few Democrats urged Congress to preserve the tax cuts for all Americans, even the wealthiest. Democratic leaders opted to avoid the risk of being branded tax hikers and punted the matter until after the elections.

Republicans applied the label anyway, scolding Democrats for folding the tent without voting on extending former President George W. Bush’s tax cuts beyond their Dec. 31 expiration. A motion to adjourn upon completing routine business passed by a single vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, after 39 Democrats joined Republicans in protest.

“If Democratic leaders leave town without stopping all of the tax hikes, they are turning their backs on the American people,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Pelosi has vowed that the middle class tax cuts will be passed this year.

Republicans also denounced Democrats for delaying the ethics trials of Reps. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., until after the elections. Both lawmakers had said they wanted trials as soon as possible.

House leaders also appeared unlikely to call a vote on a Senate-passed school nutrition bill favored by first lady Michelle Obama. The bill is opposed by liberals because it would cut food stamp benefits to find the money to pay for better school lunches. The Senate passed the $4.5 billion legislation in August, and many of the child nutrition programs it includes are to expire on Thursday, the last day of the fiscal year. They’ll be temporarily extended under the stopgap bill.

In the waning hours before adjournment, Democrats moved what smaller legislation they could.

The House advanced to Obama’s desk a bill setting NASA policy and legislation aimed at strengthening congressional oversight of sensitive spy operations. But a House measure to provide free health care and additional compensation to World Trade Center workers sickened in the towers’ crumbled ruins was sure to stall in the Senate.

The stopgap spending measure was kept clean of a host of add-ons sought by the Obama administration, including money for “Race to the Top” grants to better-performing schools and more than $4 billion to finance settlements of long-standing lawsuits by black farmers and American Indians against the government. A single GOP senator, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, was blocking the bill for black farmers and Indians, and negotiations were continuing.

Prospects were being helped by the addition of several measures — favored by western Republicans — to resolve Indian water claims.

The stopgap bill is a reminder of the dismal performance by Congress in doing its most basic job — passing an annual budget and the spending bills for agency operations.

Only two of a dozen annual appropriations bills have passed the House this year and none has passed the Senate as Democratic leaders have opted against lengthy floor debates and politically difficult votes on spending.

The breakdown in the budget process includes a senator from Obama’s own party holding up the confirmation of a director to head the White House budget office, a critical post. Mary Landrieu, D-La., is blocking the nomination until the administration lifts or significantly modifies a Gulf oil well moratorium imposed after the BP spill.

The end-of session agenda included:

—The House, on a 304-118 vote, sent to the president a legislative blueprint for NASA’s future that would extend the life of the space shuttle program for a year while backing Obama’s intent to use commercial carriers to carry humans into space. Obama will sign the measure.

—Also on its way to the president’s desk was the first intelligence authorization bill since 2004, with compromise language on demands by Congress for greater access to top secret intelligence. The most secret briefings will still only be provided to top congressional leaders, but members of the intelligence panels will receive a general description of the programs. The House vote was 244-181.

—The House approved legislation, 348-79, that would allow the U.S. to seek trade sanctions against China and other nations for manipulating their currency to gain trade advantages. Its prospects are unclear in the Senate.

The child nutrition bill ran into trouble after House supporters abandoned their own $8 billion version and proposed passing the Senate version, which would be partially paid for by using future funding for food stamp programs. The bill now faces opposition from hunger groups, and some Democrats have said they will not support it if the food stamp money is used.