See: Last Lame Duck Se$$ion
"113th Congress near the bottom in laws enacted" by Alan Fram, Associated Press December 21, 2014
WASHINGTON — The 113th Congress began its turbulent life two years ago battling over whether to help Hurricane Sandy victims. Its members did, eventually.
By the time Congress limped out of town last week, one of its last acts was to honor the 100th anniversary of the extinction of passenger pigeons. In between were mostly modest achievements overshadowed by partisan gridlock, investigations, and sharp clashes capped by a government shutdown.
Right.
If productivity is measured by laws enacted, this Congress was near the bottom.
I don't want them doing anything because they only make things worse.
Congressional and White House records showed that President Obama signed 296 bills into law as of Friday, the second lowest total, by 13 measures, for any two-year session since the 1940s.
The session that President Harry S. Truman dubbed the ‘‘do-nothing Congress’’ of 1947- 48? It enacted more than 900.
Each party accused the other of scuttling bills for political purposes ahead of November’s elections, which gave Republicans firm control of the House and Senate in the new year.
Leaving the Capitol last week, outgoing Senate majority leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, lamented that lawmakers should have achieved more, ‘‘but that’s what we got.’’
Republicans contended that Democrats forced blatantly political votes on issues from the minimum wage to pay equity that had no chance of passing.
Such tactics were ‘‘designed to make us walk the plank. It had nothing to do with getting a legislative outcome,’’ the Senate’s outgoing minority leader, Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, said last week.
Revamping the immigration system, tightening background checks for gun buyers, starting work on the Keystone XL oil pipeline — they all foundered as the Republican-run House and Democratic-led Senate blocked the other’s priorities.
I thought it was only Republicans that did that.
Across-the-board spending cuts took effect after they proved not painful enough to force the two parties to negotiate a plan for reducing the deficit, attempts to overhaul the tax code went nowhere, and each chamber passed a budget that the other ignored.
The partisan impasse was complicated by lawmakers in the Tea Party movement whom GOP leaders often found unmanageable. That helped lead to a 16-day partial government shutdown that voters decried.
It became a hallmark of this Congress.
On the last day, the Democratic-led Senate confirmed a dozen of Obama’s judicial appointees and sent the White House legislation extending tax breaks for working-class people and special interests alike.
But an 11th-hour attempt to renew a federal program helping cover the cost of losses from terrorism was derailed by departing Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican who called it a giveaway to the insurance industry.
While Obama signed scores of bills into law last week, they were mostly minor. One honored golfer Jack Nicklaus with a Congressional Gold Medal for his ‘‘excellence and good sportsmanship.’’
Yeah, you are paying them to do that.
Through two years, the bar for accomplishments dipped so low that routine functions such as averting a federal default and keeping government agencies open seemed like crowning achievements.
Republicans led investigations of the Internal Revenue Service’s treatment of conservative groups and the deadly 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Both parties decried poor medical care by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
They dropped those scandals.
Democrats unilaterally weakened filibusters, the Senate’s century-old rule that helps the minority party block action it opposes. Unimpeded, Democrats then confirmed a pile of Obama’s stalled judiciary and executive branch nominees.
Before leaving, Congress approved legislation financing federal agencies through September but not without revolts in both parties. Conservatives bolted because it did not halt Obama’s executive actions deferring deportations of millions of immigrants in the United States illegally. Liberals rebelled against its eased restrictions on banks and big political donors.
But the big intere$ts got what they wanted!
Other accomplishments included a modest budget deal that capped spending and rolled back some governmentwide cuts. Lawmakers provided $60 billion for victims of Sandy, passed a farm bill, and eased flood-insurance costs.
The House voted more than 50 times to kill or weaken Obama’s 2010 health care overhaul, a law that is perhaps his proudest achievement. It voted to block the administration from curbing carbon emissions from coal-fired plants and from protecting streams and wetlands from pollution, deport many immigrants in the country illegally, and ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
None of these bills cleared the Senate.
The Senate voted on bills raising the federal minimum wage, pressing employers to pay women the same as men, letting students refinance college loans, and extending jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. All died.
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Related: Congress OK’s reduction of retirees’ benefits
A $en$e of betrayal, for $ure!
Maybe we could talk on the plane:
"Boston-to-D.C. flights showcase region’s power players; Offer slice of Hub’s political, corporate stratosphere" by Matt Viser, Globe Staff December 23, 2014
The lobbyist, the professor, and the business executive were all flying between Boston and Washington one day recently when they spied the familiar figure of Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III.
The scene was Logan’s shuttle terminal, but it might have been the next best thing to a stroll down the halls of Congress.
Arthur Segel, a Harvard Business School professor and international real estate investor, approached the Massachusetts Democrat to say hello and they agreed to reconnect to talk about India, where he has expertise.
As Kennedy boarded, he gave a wave to Michael Mattoon, a lobbyist at Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Once seated, Kennedy spotted Bob Pozen, the longtime mutual fund executive who was en route to meetings with a board affiliated with the World Bank.
Kennedy, in turn, did his own bit of networking. He caught Senator Elizabeth Warren, preparing to board a flight before him, and got her insight into a vexing Senate holdup.
“That,” Kennedy said, “is what the shuttle flight is like.”
The hourly shuttle flights between Boston and Reagan National Airport are a vital connection between the nation’s capital and the Hub of the Universe in more ways than one. The BOS-DCA shuttle provides an airborne showcase of the region’s power players as they travel to private dinners and university clubs, to fund-raisers and congressional hearings.
It is one of the nation’s most-traveled routes, and among the 4,000 daily passengers are lobbyists and defense contractors, university professors, and health care executives.
“There are more business suits on this flight than any other in the country,” said James Wiegel, the national sales manager for Wellesley Investment Advisors, which recently opened an office in the Washington area.
The flights are a unique sample of the Massachusetts-based economy. On Monday mornings, they are packed with defense contractors heading to meetings at the Pentagon or defense industry think tanks. On Monday afternoons and Tuesday mornings, members of Congress are boarding flights to make it down in time for Tuesday evening votes.
Regulars include Supreme Court justices (Stephen Breyer) as well as Cabinet officials (Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz). As secretary of state, John Kerry still occasionally flies the shuttle and is welcomed back like an old friend (he doesn’t go through security, since he has his own detail, but he does wait in line with his boarding pass before finding his seat in the first row of first class).
Flight attendants know that Senator Warren likes tea with cream. An eager Warren supporter sitting in the back of the plane once sent a flight attendant to offer the new senator a drink. She declined.
“She doesn’t know you,” came the reply from the flight attendant. “And she doesn’t want a drink.”
Senator Edward Markey, who has backed legislation banning in-flight cellphone calls, is always careful to heed the warnings to stop his phone conversations before takeoff.
Overt deals are rare on the flights — and are even frowned upon. Peter Malone, a private equity executive, said he takes blank cover sheets to obscure some of his documents. Passengers on this flight, he said, would know what they mean more than on any other route in the country. When deals do happen, they must be done discreetly, given the captive audience.
For members of Congress, it can be like office hours, where they are forced to confront constituents who happen to be seat mates. Gate agents report that passengers frequently request a new seat assignment so that they can be next to a person with whom they are hoping to conduct business.
So that is how we can reach them?
“There’s definitely a club car kind of feeling,” said Charlie Baker, the long-time Democratic consultant (not the one who is the Republican governor-elect) who says he has flown on the shuttle weekly since 1990.
There are an average of 46 daily flights between Reagan National Airport and Boston, about two every hour on weekdays by either JetBlue or US Airways.
No worry about global warming there, huh?
****************
“Airline flights are somewhat like the golf course,” said Larry Rasky, a longtime Boston-based Democratic consultant who frequently travels to Washington. “It’s a good place to socialize but a bad place to do deals. Airplanes are particularly bad for discretion. However, like the golf course, a good social experience can reap benefits in the future.”
See: Obama's Golf Game
The flights are a time to make the kind of connections that will pave the way for a deal later. Gossip is traded — about personalities, what legislation is moving, or the latest committee assignments. But no one wants to be the aggressive guest at the cocktail party.
“I think people are kind of guarded in those areas,” said Jim Segel, a longtime frequent flier, first as a top aide to former congressman Barney Frank and now as a lobbyist at ADS Ventures, a government relations firm. “It’s a question of being a safe harbor. You don’t expect it and don’t want it. It’s bad form. People for the most part don’t act that way, certainly not professionally.”
On a recent Monday at a Logan lounge, Tom Traylor, the vice president for government affairs at Boston Medical Center, was waiting to board a D.C. flight for meetings on Capitol Hill. Nearby was a defense contractor in a rumpled suit who has meetings at the Pentagon but said the topic was too discreet to discuss as he sprinted to his flight.
A few hours later, Warren stared at her Macbook, munching on a banana as she typed a broadside against a White House nominee. Representative Katherine Clark, fresh from the airport salon in preparation for a White House ball, laughed with Representative Kennedy.
Such random encounters happen all the time — and can change history.
One night in 2008, on the last flight from Boston to Washington, Senator Edward M. Kennedy was in first class when he beckoned former US representative Chester Atkins to sit next to him. He talked about how Barack Obama would be a transformational leader, and how much his election would mean to the country....
Yeah, how did that all work out?
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Back on the ground:
"Marty Meehan’s D.C. links help fuel UMass Lowell’s rise" by Bryan Bender, Globe Staff December 30, 2014
WASHINGTON — Former US representative Marty Meehan stood before a gathering of defense contractors and military officials recently at UMass Lowell, the once-sleepy campus that has seen explosive growth under his leadership as chancellor.
“Oftentimes you see research universities a little hesitant to get engaged and involved with the defense industry,” Meehan told the group. “We embrace it.”
Embrace it, indeed. Since retiring from Congress in 2007 and taking over UMass Lowell, Meehan has presided over one of the most effective networks for securing taxpayer funds and corporate research dollars for a university, drawing especially from the Pentagon and defense companies such as Waltham-based Raytheon.
Related: The Biggest Gun Dealers on Planet Earth
Research and development funding at UMass Lowell has grown from $36 million when Meehan arrived to more than $66 million this year as a result of federal grants, a series of corporate partnerships, and other public and private sponsors, according to university data.
“There is a certain value added that I bring to the table,” Meehan said in an interview. “I was a member of Congress for 14 years and I spent a lot of time and attention meeting people, interacting with people, and traveling in some cases around the world as a member of the Armed Services Committee. I am trying to take advantage wherever I can of connections I have.”
That right there is why the entire $y$tem is rotted.
The university’s pipeline to taxpayer and private-sector research dollars is in many ways a triumph of lobbying and exemplifies the clout wielded by former Washington insiders. UMass’s chief Washington lobbyist is Bill McCann, an Andover native who served as Meehan’s chief of staff when he was in Congress.
Also see: The Kennedy War Lobby
That's what he left behind?
The school also has a key supporter in Meehan’s successor in Congress, Representative Niki Tsongas, who replaced him on the influential Armed Services Committee.
At the top of this power structure sits Meehan, who has close ties to federal agencies, members of Congress, and corporate CEOs from his decade and a half on Capitol Hill. Moreover, the 57-year-old former lawmaker wields a $4.1 million campaign warchest left over from his House years, from which he can dole out money to select office-seekers, including those who help fund his school.
With the unexpected resignation earlier this month of UMass president Robert Caret, Meehan is among those mentioned as a possible candidate to take over as head of the UMass system.
Meehan’s access and ability to connect university faculty and research with key decision-makers in Washington are assets not only for UMass Lowell but for his former chief of staff’s company.
According to lobbying disclosure records, McCann’s Strategic Marketing Innovations firm, which represents nine universities and a host of high-tech companies across the country, has earned nearly $1 million in fees from UMass Lowell since 2005, when McCann stepped down as Meehan’s chief of staff and went to work for the company.
Some critics say Meehan’s and McCann’s efforts raise fundamental questions about how taxpayer money is funneled to institutions whose leaders have powerful political connections.
That's the way our $y$tem works.
***************
UMass Lowell still falls far short of attracting the level of funding that other, higher-profile research universities can. For example, the total research and development expenditures of Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently topped more than $700 million, according to a report by the US Patent and Trademark Office.
But, for UMass Lowell’s size, the flow of dollars from Washington has helped to transform the campus, which boasts a new $95 million student center known as University Crossing and will soon have ground broken for a business school.
* * *
Raytheon Co. is the nation’s fourth-largest defense contractor, with more than $22 billion worth of defense-related revenue in 2013. The company has an estimated 63,000 employees worldwide, including an estimated 1,000 UMass Lowell graduates.
Lately, parts of UMass Lowell itself have begun to resemble some of those Raytheon divisions....
Great.
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Also see: UMass Boston hopes new facility highlights academics
