Norman Ornstein
| Feb. 8, 2012, Midnight
As Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain is fond of saying, Congress, with an approval rating of 9 percent to 13 percent, is down to “blood relatives and paid staff.” It is no wonder that President Barack Obama is running against the “do-nothing” 112th Congress and that the pitch is resonating with lots of voters.
Norman Ornstein
| Feb. 1, 2012, Midnight
It is good that we will have some disclosure of the mega-donors to the spate of super PACs that have dominated presidential primaries and caucuses so far, but it is ridiculous that reporting requirements are so lame.
Norman Ornstein
| Jan. 25, 2012, Midnight
I write this column after the Senate has returned from its recess and before the president’s State of the Union message. The tension between Congress and the president is palpable, and nowhere is that more true than in the controversy over recess appointments.
Norman Ornstein
| Jan. 18, 2012, Midnight
Saturday is an auspicious day, for two reasons. It is the date of the South Carolina primary, and it is the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision.
Norman Ornstein
| Dec. 14, 2011, Midnight
The good news on Monday was that the Senate, in a show of broad bipartisan support, confirmed Norm Eisen to be the U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic. Eisen had been in the post for the past year on a recess appointment, and by all accounts, Czech and American, had been doing an exemplary job.
Norman Ornstein
| Dec. 7, 2011, Midnight
While the adjournment date and the Iowa caucuses date are both fast approaching (and the way things are going, might be very close to the same day), I thought I might step back and offer a few observations on the presidential nominating dynamic.
Norman Ornstein
| Nov. 30, 2011, Midnight
Rep. Barney Frank’s retirement from the House will cause mourning among all in the Congress-watcher and Congress-lover fraternity. The news about Frank took attention away for a bit from the failure of the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction and the agenda ahead for the remainder of the year.
Norman Ornstein
| Nov. 16, 2011, Midnight
It is a true measure of the dysfunction in Congress and the political process that the super committee, with an unprecedented opportunity to shape a positive fiscal future and avoid a potential global depression in the coming year, is floundering as the endgame approaches.
Norman Ornstein
| Nov. 9, 2011, Midnight
For all the public wrangling we are seeing over the super committee — mostly centered on tax reform and revenues as a key component of a compromise — the big issue facing policymakers in the coming years is health care costs.
Norman Ornstein
| Nov. 2, 2011, Midnight
When Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) promised to reform the Congressional schedule and moved to cut out commemoratives, which are nice symbols but took up precious floor time, it was a hopeful set of signs. Now look what we have come to.
Norman Ornstein
| Oct. 26, 2011, Midnight
By any objective standard, the Obama approach to Libya has been a huge success. Not a single American life was lost, the United States worked in concert with the Arab League and in partnership with our NATO allies, and a hated and oppressive regime was toppled.
Norman Ornstein
| Oct. 19, 2011, Midnight
The failure of the CLASS Act, a component of the 2010 health care reform law that was added as an amendment because of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) longtime passion to do something about long-term care, was predicted by some and denied by many. But it should come as no shock to anybody closely following the issue.
Norman Ornstein
| Oct. 12, 2011, Midnight
It is worth a column to comment on last week’s Senate flap. Rules controversies in the Senate can be opaque and convoluted, so it is no surprise that so many reporters and commentators got it wrong.
Norman Ornstein
| Oct. 5, 2011, Midnight
Yet another man-made or manufactured disaster was avoided last week when Congress resolved its dispute over how much money to appropriate for disaster relief and whether to offset it. As I have pointed out before, this was not the only threat of shutdown we have ahead.
Norman Ornstein
| Sept. 21, 2011, Midnight
In 1968, CBS News ran a documentary called “Hunger in America,” which stunned large numbers of Americans. Today, CBS could do a new version of that documentary coming to the same, if not more dire and depressing, conclusions.
Norman Ornstein
| Sept. 14, 2011, Midnight
My American Enterprise Institute colleague Desmond Lachman is an international economist who has — unfortunately — been spot on with his forecasts for the United States and Europe over the past few years. He told me a year before the 2008 meltdown that we were headed for a fall, and he told me a year before the Greek collapse about the Euro crisis that loomed.
Norman Ornstein
| Sept. 8, 2011, Midnight
Just like the day almost 48 years ago when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, I remember vividly where I was and what I did 10 years ago on Sept. 11, 2001.
Norman Ornstein
| Sept. 7, 2011, Midnight
In a year of many horrific comments and acts of political misbehavior, we have a new winner for lunacy: the Pima County, Ariz., GOP’s move, in Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ district, to auction off a Glock 23, a gun similar to the one used to maim the Democrat and kill many others, as a fundraising stunt.
Norman Ornstein
| Aug. 3, 2011, Midnight
Last week, I was in Europe, trying to cope with my embarrassment at the spectacle in Congress as we flirted with disaster — a disaster that could have brought down the American economy, the European economy, the global economy, with a swath of lawmakers oblivious to the larger issues at work here, with an entirely manufactured crisis over the debt limit.
Norman Ornstein
| July 27, 2011, Midnight
First, some well-deserved kudos to the Senate’s “gang of six,” which came up with a strong, credible and balanced plan to deal with our long-term debt problem.
