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> THE BIG IDEA / PUNDIT PREP / IF YOU READ ONLY ONE STORY --
> Bloomberg's Lisa Lerer and Laura Litvan: "The 111th Congress made
> more law affecting more Americans since the 'Great Society'
> legislation of the 1960s. For the first time since President
> Theodore Roosevelt began the quest for a national health-care system
> more than 100 years ago, the Democrat-led House and Senate took the
> biggest step toward achieving that goal by giving 32 million
> Americans access to insurance. Congress rewrote the rules for Wall
> Street in the most comprehensive way since the Great Depression. It
> spent more than $1.67 trillion to revive an economy on the verge of
> a depression ... ; ended an almost two-decade ban against openly gay
> men and women serving in the military, and is poised today to ratify
> a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. ... 'This is probably
> the most productive session of Congress since at least the '60s,'
> said Alan Brinkley, a historian at New York's Columbia University."
>
> No Congress Since 1960s Makes Most Laws for Americans as 111th
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> By Lisa Lerer and Laura Litvan
>
>
>
> Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- However history judges the 535 men and women
> in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate the past two years,
> one thing is certain: The 111th Congress made more law affecting
> more Americans since the “Great Society” legislation of the 1960s.
>
> For the first time since President Theodore Roosevelt began the
> quest for a national health-care system more than 100 years ago, the
> Democrat-led House and Senate took the biggest step toward achieving
> that goal by giving 32 million Americans access to insurance.
> Congress rewrote the rules for Wall Street in the most comprehensive
> way since the Great Depression. It spent more than $1.67 trillion to
> revive an economy on the verge of a depression, including tax cuts
> for most Americans, jobs for more than 3 million, construction of
> roads and bridges and investment in alternative energy; ended an
> almost two-decade ban against openly gay men and women serving in
> the military, and is poised today to ratify a nuclear arms reduction
> treaty with Russia.
>
> For all of its ambitious achievement, the 111th Congress, which may
> adjourn this week, also witnessed a voter-backlash driven by a 9.6-
> percent unemployment rate that cost Democrats control of the House
> and diminished their Senate majority.
>
> “This is probably the most productive session of Congress since at
> least the ‘60s,” said Alan Brinkley, a historian at New York’s
> Columbia University. “It’s all the more impressive given how
> polarized the Congress has been.”
>
> As lawmakers wrap up the session, Wall Street firms such as Goldman
> Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. are
> positioned to complete their best two years in revenue, General
> Motors Co. has emerged from bankruptcy with more than $23 billion
> repaid to the U.S. Treasury, and American International Group Inc.
> was able to sell $2 billion of bonds in its first offering since the
> company’s 2008 bailout.
>
> Market Performance
>
> The S&P 500 Index has gained 38.9 percent since Congress convened in
> January 2009, the biggest increase for a two-year congressional
> session since 1997-1998, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
> The S&P 500 Index reached 1254.60 yesterday, the Dow Jones
> Industrial Average 11533.16.
>
> Stimulus money created and saved jobs across the country, helping
> strapped state governments retain their workforces, according to
> government analyses. PresidentBarack Obama’s Council of Economic
> Advisers said that in Ohio, for instance, the legislation created
> 122,000 jobs for teachers, police officers and construction workers.
>
> “These policies carried the economy along during a period when the
> private sector was not engaged,’ said Ethan Harris, head of
> developed-markets economic research in New York at BofA Merrill
> Lynch Global Research.
>
> Election Results
>
> The careers of many lawmakers didn’t fare so well. Fiscally
> conservative Tea Party activists channeled their frustration with
> government spending and debt into political campaigns, most often to
> the benefit of Republicans challenging Democratic incumbents. In the
> Nov. 2 elections, Democrats lost 63 House seats, costing their party
> control of the chamber in next year’s Congress. In the Senate, the
> Democratic majority was shaved by six seats; the party will have 53
> votes in next year’s session, Republicans 47.
>
> “What we did was work, and our reward was, ‘Get out of here,’” said
> Representative Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat and outgoing
> chairwoman of the House Rules Committee. While Slaughter won re-
> election, five of her New York colleagues were among Democrats
> defeated.
>
> Party-line votes on most of the major measures engendered ill will
> among Republicans and helped stall in the Senate initiatives
> requiring significant bipartisan support. Blocked legislation
> included limits on greenhouse-gas emissions that scientists blame
> for global warming, a bill the House passed in June 2009, a measure
> offering undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship and the
> administration’s attempts to curb growing income inequality with tax
> increases for higher earners.
>
> Republican Agenda
>
> Those are unlikely to be tackled next year, when the House’s
> Republican majority will turn its attention to dismantling the
> health-care law and cutting domestic government spending by $100
> billion.
>
> Congress this year was also unable to approve a single one of the 12
> annual appropriations bills that fund the government.
>
> “I think it was a disaster,” said Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama
> Republican, of the congressional session.
>
> Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s No. 2 Democratic
> leader, saw it differently: “This whole two-year session has been
> dramatic in terms of its achievement and the changes that it’s
> brought about.”
>
> End of Era
>
> The policies embraced by the 111th Congress suggested the end of an
> era in Washington, as Democrats pushed to reverse three decades of
> deregulation that began under President Ronald Reagan, say economists.
>
> “We’ve been in a trend toward an attempt to deregulate the economy,”
> said Harris. “You’re turning back the clock to an earlier period.”
>
> The scope of regulations approved since Obama took office has made
> business hesitant to expand and hire new workers, he said. “Business
> is overwhelmed,” said Harris.
>
> Congress scored its first big accomplishment weeks after Obama’s
> inauguration with passage in late February 2009 of a $814 billion
> stimulus bill. It has created or saved 3.3 million jobs, according
> to the Congressional Budget Office, while also steering more funds
> to road construction, broadband technologies and renewable energy
> ventures.
>
> New Customers
>
> The health-care legislation approved last March provided insurers
> includingWellPoint Inc. of Indianapolis and drug- makers such as
> Pfizer Inc. of New York millions of new customers by requiring that
> all Americans have health insurance. These industries, as well as
> medical device-makers, will also face billions of dollars in new
> fees, and hospitals face a host of new standards designed to help
> curb soaring costs.
>
> The health-care law is facing legal challenges, with the insurance
> provision a key dispute.
>
> An overhaul of the rules governing the financial services industry,
> approved in July, aims to prevent a repeat of an economic collapse
> that led to the failures ofLehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and
> Washington Mutual Inc. It included $4 billion in aid to help
> thousands of unemployed property owners avoid foreclosure, while the
> program has fallen short of its goals.
>
> Congress also passed laws to help ensure pay equity by enabling
> women to pursue lawsuits claiming they were underpaid, and to
> empower the federal Food and Drug Administration to regulate the
> tobacco industry, which includes restrictions on cigarette marketing.
>
> New Justices
>
> Additionally, lawmakers expanded state programs for health insurance
> for children, and they confirmed two Supreme Court justices, Sonia
> Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Sotomayor became the first Latino to
> serve on the court, and the pair increased to three the number of
> women among the nine justices.
>
> Following the November elections in which voters handed Democrats
> what Obama termed a “shellacking,” Congress in a lame-duck session
> made significant additions to its accomplishment list. Lawmakers
> approved an $858 billion measure that continues for two years Bush-
> era tax cuts for all income levels, extends aid for 13 months to the
> long-term unemployed, provides estate tax relief and cuts by two
> percentage points worker payroll taxes during 2011.
>
> Congress in its last days also voted to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t
> tell” ban on military service by openly gay men and women. Yesterday
> it cleared the biggest food-safety overhaul in more than 70 years,
> giving the FDA more enforcement power. And the expected Senate
> ratification today of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty will
> give Obama a key foreign-policy victory.
>
> “What we’ve been able to do in the lame duck has been not just
> bipartisan by a fingernail, but bipartisan on a broad basis,” said
> Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat.
>
> ‘Cherry on Top’
>
> From a market perspective, Congress’s biggest accomplishment was
> probably the tax cuts, with the estate tax breaks the “whipped
> cream, fudge and cherry on top,” said Ethan Siegal, president of the
> Washington Exchange.
>
> Investors responded to the health-care and financial- services
> measures largely negatively, with health care viewed as “big
> government gone nuts,” he said.
>
> Democrats say it will take years before the public recognizes their
> achievements. Many of the measures that passed were designed to
> forestall a bleaker recession, an argument that’s little comfort to
> many Americans as the nation’sunemployment rate has remained at 9.5
> percent or higher for more than a year.
>
> “It was hard to tell people that we accomplished anything important
> when their lives are so difficult,” said Representative Henry
> Waxman, a California Democrat and outgoing chairman of the House
> Energy and Commerce committee.
>
> Changing Direction
>
> The Tea Party movement, which worked to elect lawmakers advocating a
> new era of fiscal authority, has already begun to shift the
> direction of Congress.
>
> Shortly after the election, Senate and House Republicans announced a
> voluntary ban on earmarks, the funding for pet projects added to
> bills by lawmakers. The incoming House Republican leadership has
> promised to turn the focus of the Appropriations Committee from
> funding government to identifying spending cuts.
>
> Many of those efforts will likely fail in the Democrat- controlled
> Senate. And the party split between the two chambers is likely to
> bring the record of congressional productivity to an abrupt end in
> January.
>
> “There’s just nothing that’s going to be accomplished,” said
> Brinkley. “What really is disturbing is that this is a period in
> which there is a lot to be done.”
>
> To contact the reporters on this story: Lisa Lerer in Washington atllerer@bloomberg.net
> ; Laura Litvan in Washington atllitvan@bloomberg.net;
>