Home > Political Insider > Archives > 2006 > December > 06
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
The dread five-day Congressional week
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The news that Democratic U.S. House leaders are about to impose a five-day work week may seem like very inside-the-beltway news. Guess again. It’s going to affect civic club speech schedules across the country, and even have an effect on traffic patterns at Hartsfield-Jackson.
The House has been adjourning every Thursday and reconvening every Tuesday afternoon. That may seem like a pretty light work week, but the reality is that most members hurry back home every week to a flurry of local meetings and political events. In election terms, the four days at home often means more than anything the members do in Washington.
For many Southern members, that means changing planes twice a week in Atlanta, with a spur flight to their districts and hundreds of miles of driving to get to those Rotary Clubs and party fish fries. The new schedule announced Tuesday won’t allow that kind of time.
Rep. Jack Kingston had a different take on the news.
“Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer,” the Savannah Republican told the Washington Post. “The Democrats care less about families — that’s what this says.”
Of course, the members could always move their families to D.C.
Iowa notes: Transfats, Hillary, and that Illinois fellow
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Des Moines, Iowa — A few notes drawn from the this morning’s Des Moines Register and elsewhere:
— You’d think the New York City decision to ban transfats from restaurants would spark outrage here on the grounds that the American stomach is sovereign. Not so.
Iowa farmers are a bit giddy. Soy beans are a prime source for “trans-free” food oil. To paraphrase Mr. Twain’s observation on “corn pone” positions: Show us where a man sells his soybean futures, and we’ll tell you what his opinion is.
— Hillary Clinton has a strong constituency here, particularly in the eastern, pro-union portion of the state. On Monday, she began calling prominent Democrats here, presumably to reserve key supporters in the ’08 race for president.
She’s invited a handful of Iowans to her Washington D.C. house for a dinner next Tuesday.
— The most fascinating conversation we had with a voter on Tuesday came in Newton, Iowa, a small town — as they all are here — thrown into turmoil by the closing of the local Maytag plant.
Betty Mae Smith, 82, is a cashier at the Middletown Café, which serves the same chicken noodle soup — for $2.35 —they dish out in heaven. Smith is white. Iowa has a miniscule African-American population.
But asked who she liked for president, Smith replied, “That colored gentleman from Illinois.”
She’s already read Barak Obama’s book. “I think he’s very intelligent. What dirt can they bring up on him?”
And Hillary? “I don’t think that we’re really ready for a woman,” Smith said.
As for George W. Bush? The elderly woman sputtered, rolled her eyes, slapped the table and shouted, “Jesus God!” The president is not popular in Newton.
— Tom Vilsack, the exiting Iowa governor and only announced Democrat for the ’08 presidential nomination, met with newspaper editors on Tuesday, and called for a decrease in farm subsidies, and an increase in federal money for conservation.
That sounds like a brave position for a man who will depend heavily on the farm vote in the January 2008 caucuses. But Iowa State University economist Chad Hart explained.
Because of the strong prices corn and soybeans now bring, farmers will be getting very little in the way of subsidies. Any federal money for conservation would be an increase — not a trade off.
