Think the Dems are content with the damage done? Think again

...there have been signs in recent weeks that party leaders are planning an ambitious, lame-duck session to muscle through bills in December they don't want to defend before November. Retiring or defeated members of Congress would then be able to vote for sweeping legislation without any fear of voter retaliation.

"I've got lots of things I want to do" in a lame duck, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D., W. Va.) told reporters in mid June. North Dakota's Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, wants a lame-duck session to act on the recommendations of President Obama's deficit commission, which is due to report on Dec. 1. "It could be a huge deal," he told Roll Call last month. "We could get the country on a sound long-term fiscal path." By which he undoubtedly means new taxes in exchange for extending some, but not all, of the Bush-era tax reductions that will expire at the end of the year.

In the House, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva, co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters last month that for bills like "card check"—the measure to curb secret-ballot union elections—"the lame duck would be the last chance, quite honestly, for the foreseeable future."

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, chair of the Senate committee overseeing labor issues, told the Bill Press radio show in June that "to those who think [card check] is dead, I say think again." He told Mr. Press "we're still trying to maneuver" a way to pass some parts of the bill before the next Congress is sworn in.

Other lame-duck possibilities? Senate ratification of the New Start nuclear treaty, a federally mandated universal voter registration system to override state laws, and a budget resolution to lock in increased agency spending.

Then there is pork. A Senate aide told me that "some of the biggest porkers on both sides of the aisle are leaving office this year, and a lame-duck session would be their last hurrah for spending." Likely suspects include key members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congress's "favor factory," such as Pennsylvania Democrat Arlen Specter and Utah Republican Bob Bennett.

Unique Bank of North Dakota just got uniquer

The health care budget reconciliation bill appears to have a special carve-out for one of its most ardent critics — Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

Though the measure would broadly eliminate government subsidies to banks that offer student loans, the Bank of North Dakota will continue to receive federal assistance for its student loan program.

Conrad said Thursday that the Bank of North Dakota “is a unique institution” because it is “owned by the people of North Dakota. ... And they service the loans that they write, so they are not like these other institutions that have created this problem. They don’t farm out servicing of their loans. They retain it.”

Banking chair Kent Conrad: Reconciliation (simple majority) can't be used to pass Obamacare

On Face the Nation, Senate Banking Committee Chair Kent Conrad said, "Reconciliation cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform.

It won't work. It won't work because it was never designed for that kind of significant legislation. It was designed for deficit reduction... The major package of health care reform cannot move through the reconciliation process.

It will not work... It will not work because of the Byrd rule which says anything that doesn't score for budget purposes has to be eliminated. That would eliminate all the delivery system reform, all the insurance market reform, all of those things the experts tell us are really the most important parts of this bill.

The only possible role that I can see for reconciliation would be make modest changes in the major package to improve affordability, to deal with what share of Medicaid expansion the federal government pays, those kinds of issues, which is the traditional role for reconciliation in health care."