THAT 113 CONGRESS

This 113^th Do Nothing Congress still has a year of life. In November an entire new House and 1/3^rd of the Senate will be selected for the 114^th Congress.

While most of us blame the Republican dominated House for the lack of progressive action and the near disastrous Government shut down over the budget; much to my surprise last week both the New York Times, a dedicated Administration advocate, and the Right leaning Wall Street Journal ran articles blaming the Senate and specifically Democrat Senate Leader Read for most of the 2012/13 debacle.

As leader of the majority party he has the power to select what proposed legislation reaches the floor for a vote. In fact both papers mentioned many bipartisan bills that past committee approval which he had pocketed. A great number had had origins in the House and were Senate versions.

Again to my surprise the papers did mention the number of positive bipartisan house bills that were passed only to die in the Senate.

Unfortunately the Democrats are better spinners so that we the people are led to believe that it has been the as Jerry Green would say “those damn Republicans” that have been the source of all the roadblocks.

FYI the present House of Representatives consist of 233 Republicans, 200 Democrats, and 2ouse  ofHouse

 Independents.

The Senate has 53 Democrats, 45 Republicans and 2 Independents who usually vote with the Democrats.

Other interesting facts about this Senate is that there are 9 states that have one Democrat and one Republican Senator and two with one Independent Senator. Of those two Main still has 1 Republican Senator and Vermont 1 Democrat.

For those interested the nine states are: Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

I do not know how many if any of these states will chose a Senator this November. However political pundit Larry J. Sabato
 

Director, U.Va. Center for Politics has remarked that he believes that the Republicans have an excellent chance of increasing the Senate position as well as in the House. He believes that this could diminish Read’s autocratic control over the Senate.

Did you know that New Jerseys House representation is split evenly; 6 Republicans and 6 Democrats! With the way the Districts have been gerrymandered it is unlikely that there will be any changes in the near future.