Bears, budgets, farmers top Congress to-do list

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio walks to the House floor on Capi­tol Hill Tues­day in Wash­ing­ton, as the lame duck 112th Con­gress began. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Harry Hamburg)

DONNA CASSATA

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Bears and bud­gets top the list as Con­gress returned Tues­day from a seven-week elec­tion break to a long list of unfin­ished business.

Loom­ing large in the lame-duck ses­sion is the urgent need for Pres­i­dent Barack Obama and Con­gress to fig­ure out how to avoid the dou­ble eco­nomic hit of tax increases and auto­matic spend­ing cuts to defense and domes­tic pro­grams that kick in after Jan. 1. Those high-stakes nego­ti­a­tions could take weeks and the issue may not be resolved by year’s end.

In the interim, Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans are pick­ing up where they left off on sev­eral bills while wel­com­ing the newest mem­bers — 12 in the Sen­ate and some 70 in the House — for Con­gress’ ver­sion of fresh­men orientation.

The Sen­ate has sched­uled an early evening pro­ce­dural vote Tues­day for a sportsmen’s bill that will decide the fate of 41 polar bear car­casses that hunters want to bring home from Canada as big-game tro­phies. Hunters killed the bears just before a 2008 ban on polar bear tro­phy imports took effect, but were not able to bring them home before the Fish and Wildlife Ser­vices listed them as a threat­ened species.

The House on Tues­day is expected to pass and send to the pres­i­dent leg­is­la­tion that would exclude U.S. air­lines from the require­ments on emis­sions that the Euro­pean Union has sought to impose on all planes fly­ing to and from the Euro­pean continent.

The House vote comes a day after the EU pro­posed a one-year freeze on the car­bon emis­sions charges for non-European air­lines. The emis­sions pro­gram has met strong oppo­si­tion from air­lines and gov­ern­ments out­side Europe, includ­ing the United States, China and India.

The Air Line Pilots Asso­ci­a­tion said Mon­day that even with the tem­po­rary delay Con­gress needs to act to ensure that U.S. air­lines are not liable in the future for the EU-imposed tax. It said the cap-and-trade pro­gram could cost U.S. car­ri­ers $3.1 bil­lion over 10 years.

While the nation’s vot­ers endorsed the sta­tus quo of divided gov­ern­ment — a Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent and Sen­ate, a Repub­li­can House — Obama cruised to re-election and his embold­ened party gained seats in both the House and Sen­ate. In the new polit­i­cal order, Democ­rats will hold a 55–45 edge in the Sen­ate if inde­pen­dent Angus King of Maine cau­cuses with them as expected. Repub­li­cans’ advan­tage in the House nar­rowed and is likely to stand at 233–201.

Democ­rats were lead­ing in the six unde­cided House races in Ari­zona, Cal­i­for­nia, Florida, North Car­olina and Utah.

The ques­tion over the next seven weeks is whether Obama and Con­gress can agree now or later on how to slash $1.2 tril­lion from the deficit, raise rev­enues with pos­si­ble changes in the tax code and address the enti­tle­ment pro­grams of Social Secu­rity and Medicare. They also have to fig­ure out how to stop across-the-board cuts to defense and domes­tic pro­grams total­ing $110 bil­lion next year.

Obama meets with con­gres­sional lead­ers at the White House on Fri­day. Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans rec­og­nize the urgency, but the demands remain unchanged.

“If our Repub­li­can coun­ter­parts can step for­ward with that rev­enue piece, we will be able to find a solu­tion,” Sen. Patty Mur­ray, D-Wash., said Sun­day on ABC’s “This Week.” ”We can’t accept an unfair deal that piles on the mid­dle class and tell them they have to sup­port it. We have to make sure that the wealth­i­est Amer­i­cans pay their fair share.”

The GOP insists that tax rate increases are a non-starter.

“There’s a right way to do this and there’s a wrong way to do it,” Sen. Saxby Cham­b­liss, R-Ga., said Sunday.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has sig­naled that a solu­tion is imperative.

“2013 should be the year we begin to solve our debt through tax reform and enti­tle­ment reform,” he told reporters last week.

Cru­cial in the House this week is pas­sage of leg­is­la­tion that would end Cold War trade restric­tions so U.S. exporters can take advan­tage of the low­ered tar­iffs and greater mar­ket access that accom­pany Russia’s entry into the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion. Rus­sia offi­cially joined the WTO in August and the United States is alone among more than 150 WTO mem­bers in not being able to enjoy the more open Russ­ian market.

The mea­sure has been a top pri­or­ity of U.S. busi­ness groups seek­ing to expand busi­ness in the grow­ing Russ­ian econ­omy. To pla­cate crit­ics of Russia’s poor human rights record, the trade bill is com­bined with leg­is­la­tion that would sanc­tion Russ­ian offi­cials involved in human rights violations.

The sportsmen’s bill com­bines 19 mea­sures favor­able to out­doors­men, allow­ing more hunt­ing and fish­ing on fed­eral lands, let­ting bow hunters cross fed­eral land where hunt­ing isn’t allowed and encour­ag­ing fed­eral land agen­cies to coop­er­ate with state and local author­i­ties to main­tain shoot­ing ranges.

A five-year farm bill passed by the Sen­ate and by a House com­mit­tee last sum­mer will either have to be extended into next year or passed in the remain­ing weeks of the ses­sion. The 2008 farm bill expired Sept. 30.

The bill’s only real chance for pas­sage is if law­mak­ers decide to use its sav­ings as part of nego­ti­a­tions on the so-called “fis­cal cliff.” The Sen­ate bill would save $23 bil­lion over 10 years and the House Agri­cul­ture Com­mit­tee bill would save $35 bil­lion over 10 years.

Oth­er­wise, the bill will be extended into next year. Some Repub­li­cans have sug­gested a year­long exten­sion, but farm-state mem­bers and farm groups have said they would pre­fer a shorter exten­sion to keep the pres­sure on for passage.

Though much of the work was done on the bill this year, it stalled this fall because of dis­agree­ments over food stamp spend­ing. House lead­ers refused to bring the bill to the floor before the elec­tion, say­ing it didn’t have enough votes.

Repub­li­cans have inter­nally dis­agreed over cuts to food stamps, which make up about 80 per­cent of the half-trillion-dollar bill’s cost over five years. The Sen­ate bill would cut about $400 mil­lion a year out of the program’s almost $80 bil­lion annual cost while the House bill would cut about $1.6 bil­lion from food stamps annu­ally. Con­ser­v­a­tives have said nei­ther ver­sion makes deep enough cuts.

Leg­is­la­tion set­ting defense bud­gets remains undone, and the House and Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices com­mit­tees were work­ing infor­mally in recent weeks on a bipar­ti­san bill that both cham­bers could pass.

The House approved leg­is­la­tion months ago, but the Sen­ate hasn’t acted. The free­stand­ing Sen­ate bill has attracted more than 70 amend­ments and Major­ity Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is press­ing for a time agree­ment that would limit amendments.

Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats will meet Wednes­day morn­ing in the Sen­ate to decide lead­er­ship jobs, with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, expected to move up to the GOP’s No. 2 spot, replac­ing Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who is retiring.

In the House, Reps. Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., are vying for the No. 4 job.

The biggest ques­tion in the House ranks is whether Minor­ity Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., remains in her lead­er­ship job.

Posted by AP News on Nov 13 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.