Congress is already talking about and planning for the lame-duck session of the 114th Congress. You may have heard the reference to a lame-duck president but there is also a lame-duck Congress every two years. It takes place every election year between November and January.
A lame-duck Congress includes members of Congress who have retired and those who have failed to get reelected. The newly elected members do not start until January.
Four have announced retirement – Mikulski of Maryland, Boxer of California, Coats of Indiana, and Reid of Nevada.
After the fall recesses Congress typically reconvenes in mid-November and adjourns before Christmas, so a lame-duck session lasts about a month.
Right now it’s too early to tell whether the upcoming session will be active or “lame” until the election in outcomes show if the Republican maintained majorities in both houses and who wins the White House.
“We really don’t know until we see what happens with the election,” Norman Ornstein, a longtime Congress-watcher and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said last week.
“If Democrats somehow took the House and the Senate, I’d think you find Republicans would up their game, trying to have more influence over legislative outputs before they would lose a lot of their traction. Now that’s not a likely outcome, but even losing the Senate would kind of change the calculus,” he said.
“Having said that, they’re not going to want to stick around for that long,” Ornstein said. “Most of the Republicans don’t want to pass legislation, and so they’re going to try to do the minimum necessary.”
However, lame-duck sessions are often popular for controversial items because there is no fallout for the “lame-duck” members. The fact that there is no incentive to listen to constituents is sufficient reason to eliminate, or at least severely limit, lame-duck sessions.
Here are a few samples of lame-duck sessions.
Trade Act of 1974 was a result of a lame-duck session. This legislation was intended to enhance the world trade system to provide free competition between the US foreign nations and to foster some economic growth including full employment in the United States. Like a lot of other things it has been manipulated terribly. One thing we can note – we never did get full employment.
In 1994, we had the creation of the World Trade Organization to replace GATT – General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The problems with any government intervention are the encroachments they make on free enterprise and manipulations that take place. Manipulations simply reinforce the idea that you cannot out legislate the human mind.
Thus we need to keep a close watch for surprises—such as an attempt to seat Merrick Garland, nominated by President Obama to be the next Supreme Court Justice.
Another surprise could be a move to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is considered a political liability by many.
Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah went so far as to suggest, “it will probably have to be after the elections. I think we have a better chance to passing it.”
This year saw a great movement of citizen involvement and that involvement has helped re-energize “we the people” to insist on better governing by those elected to represent them. This energy needs to be mixed with vigilance to make sure that uses of confusing and unfamiliar legislative terms, such as lame-duck, are not used to counter the will of the voters!