Tax Cuts--DADT--START Treaty....Brad Bannon

Political strategist Brad Bannon discusses the tax bill and other issues from the the lame duck session of Congress.

Republican senators say privately they expect the Senate to ratify the New START treaty this week, which would hand President Obama his third major victory of the lame-duck session.

GOP senators — including those who plan to vote for the treaty and those who say they’ll oppose it — have told The Hill they expect it to pass easily.

At least eight Republican senators have announced they either will vote to ratify the treaty or are leaning strongly toward doing so.

Two-thirds of the senators present in the chamber, assuming there is a quorum, must vote “aye” to ratify.

Three more GOP senators said Monday they are likely to support the treaty.



Update on Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 11:23AM by The LBN Team

Here is a recent post from Brad's political blog at US News and World Report:

As a political consultant it always amazes me how focused my clients become when they are in real political trouble. So congratulations to President Obama for pulling a couple of rabbits out of a couple hats and getting the Senate to ratify the START Treaty with the Russians and to repeal the military’s odious Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy against gay soldiers and sailors. The folks on Fox News were hopping mad at the Senate last night and that’s good enough for me.

As the faithful readers of the TSJ blog know, I was angry at the president for caving into congressional Republicans and agreeing to extend the Bush tax bonanza for bankers and billionaires. But the President demonstrated leadership and a deft touch in the last week of the lame duck session.

And as a college professor, it is always striking how much of their course work my students do in the last week of the semester. So I want to congratulate Congress for getting off its butt and finally doing the right thing for the people who worked on the 9/11 cleanup.

It was good to watch Congress address the tough deadlines that it faced this week but members of Congress need to demonstrate the same urgency when it comes to addressing other pressing national problems. The official unemployment rate is still near 10%. But Washington seems content to hope the economy gets better instead of taking any concrete steps to improve what is still a dire situation for millions of American families. And I don’t think giving Donald Trump another tax cut will do the trick.

And finally there are two other issues that will not go away even though Congress appears indifferent to them. Congress failed to pass the DREAM Act which would have rewarded young immigrants with American citizenship for their service to their adopted country. And the Senate failed to pass any legislation that would address the health problems created by greenhouse gases.

But Christmas is the season to be thankful so I am content to congratulate Congress for what it has done and wait until January 1 to push Capitol Hill to do what it needs to do.