Lame Duck or Dead Duck?

Despite bravura Hill talk and media hype, the lame-duck session of Congress commencing November 29 will probably get the 1982 award for Biggest Non-Event of the Year. Early on, it was predicted that cots would have to be set up in the Capitol for the all-night sessions to get the members home by Christmas. Now it looks like December 17 will be the cut-off date of the lame-duck effort, and possibly a week before that. The agenda for the special session was to have included Social Security, Senator Jesse Helms’s social bills, foreign aid, defense spending, and a big jobs bill. However, it looks like none of these will get action, although a lot of posturing on these issues might lead you to think otherwise.

Congress has held six lame-duck sessions since 1945, and most have dealt with relatively unsubstantial business. The upcoming session will do nothing to alter that hallowed tradition, the December political theater offering welcome respite from the rigors of Christmas shopping. President Reagan wanted the special session, and Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker did not. Both were right. Before the election, Reagan was right because the call for a lameduck session gave him a club to beat the laggard, undisciplined Congress with. After the election, Baker is right because now the Democrats have a club to beat him with.

JM

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John McLaughlin

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Despite bravura Hill talk and media hype, the lame-duck session of Congress commencing November 29 will probably get the 1982 award for Biggest Non-Event of the Year. Early on, it was predicted that cots would have to be set up in the Capitol for the all-night sessions to get the members home by Christmas. Now it looks like December 17 will be the cut-off date of the lame-duck effort, and possibly a week before that. The agenda for the special session was to have included Social Security, Senator Jesse Helms’s social bills, foreign aid, defense spending, and a big jobs bill. However, it looks like none of these will get action, although a lot of posturing on these issues might lead you to think otherwise.

Congress has held six lame-duck sessions since 1945, and most have dealt with relatively unsubstantial business. The upcoming session will do nothing to alter that hallowed tradition, the December political theater offering welcome respite from the rigors of Christmas shopping. President Reagan wanted the special session, and Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker did not. Both were right. Before the election, Reagan was right because the call for a lameduck session gave him a club to beat the laggard, undisciplined Congress with. After the election, Baker is right because now the Democrats have a club to beat him with.