Let's Start Another Fight: Kerry's Senate History (An Abridged Version)

The Coffee Shop
1

Since Huey Long, uh…I mean John Kerry, joined the Senate in 1985, he’s been the lead sponsor on:

316 Bills, 31 of which passed the Senate (10%), 5 of which became law (1.6%)

60 Resolutions, 28 of which passed the Senate (47% (decent)), 4 of which became law (5%)

The 5 Bills that became law:

  • A Bill To Amend The Small Business Act With Respect To The Women’s Business Center Program (1999)

  • A Bill To Redesignate The Federal Building Located At 380 Trapelo Road In Waltham, Massachusetts, As The “Frederick C. Murphy Federal Center” (1994)

  • A Bill To Authorize Appropriations For The Marine Mammal Protection Act Of 1972 And To Improve The Program To Reduce The Incidental Taking Of Marine Mammals During The Course Of Commercial Fishing Operations, And For Other Purposes (1994)

  • A Bill To Authorize Appropriations To Carry Out The National Sea Grant College Program Act, And For Other Purposes (1991)

  • A Bill For The Relief Of Kil Joon-Yu Callahan (1987)

The 4 Resolutions That Became Law:

  • A Joint Resolution Designating The Week Beginning October 20, 1991, As “World Population Awareness Week” (1991)

  • A Joint Resolution Designating November 13, 1992, As “Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial 10th Anniversary Day” (1992)

  • A Joint Resolution Designating September 18th, 1992, As “National POW/MIA Recognition Day” And Authorizing The Wearing Of The National League Of Families POW/MIA Flag" (1992)

  • A Joint Resolution Designating October 22 Through 28, 1989, As “World Population Awareness Week” (1990)

Looks like he generated a decent amount of bill Lead Sponsorhips (though that doesn’t necessarily mean that he or his staff did the grunt work on it), but his bill attainment rate wasn’t good. Can’t quite close the deal, huh, Johnny Boy?

What’s this guy been doing to earn his Senate salary for the last 20 years? If he were a salesman, a 1.6% closure rate would have gotten him canned and sent back to working the drive-thru window at McDonald’s.

Hey…maybe he should start practicing saying “would you like fries with that, sir?”

3

Just curious, because I have absolutely no idea what the answer is,

What rate is considered good for a Senator? Who has the best ‘closure’ rate and what is it?

4

Those numbers are fin and all, but they don’t mean jack unless you can make some comparison to the rest of the Senate, or to Senators who have been around for a comparable time. Maybe 1.6% is average. Maybe it’s outstanding. Maybe it doesn’t mean a damn thing. Context man, context.

5

I know that Spence Abraham was lead sponsor of 12 bills that passed in the six years that he was a Senator and that was a relatively high number so the 1.6 bills/year might be a good average. So Senator Kerry would be running at around 16% (5/(1.6x20)) of how many bills he should have been lead sponsor on were he doing the work of an average Senator.

More interesting is the various titles of the bills that he got passed. It’s nice that he introduced a bill to protect dolphins. It’s part of any politician’s job to hand out some patronage by getting a building named after someone. But, to quote the old Wendy’s commercial “where’s the beef?” None of these bills or resolutions have any great significance when it comes to the office that he is seeking. He has all of these great plans now, but no laws in 20 years to (1) improve the military, (2) improve the capacity of the CIA or FBI to fight the bad guys, or even (3) improve education or trade policy.

9

net loss of 1.6 million jobs while on his watch, his plan to restore them failed.

Private industry creates jobs. Not governments. We live in a free market economy. Not a welfare state.
A key component of fiscal policy is to create/maintain consumption…regarding our trade agreement and tariff policy we need to be either all in or all out. The toe in the water approach is killing us.
going after WMDs in the one place they weren’t, while ignoring all the places they are and not securing the country.

Evidence pointed to the existence of WMD’s. And there were plans to use them. No arguement here.

not having a plan to counter rising medical costs - they’ve increased 50% while he’s been in office and he’s taken no action

Blame the fat people, smokers, and lawyers. Not Bush. The system continues to need a housecleaning. Its incredibly inefficient by design. This may be because of its change to a profit based industry instead of a care based industry. I still blame the fat people, the smokers, and the kids that play their car stereos too loud (am I allowed to shoot at them?).

let the oil & gas companies write our energy policy, behind closed doors.

*Nonsense. Energy is a commodity and is consumer driven. * ** Correct it is a commodity, but, the energy companies continue to have ample room to manipulate the true cost of the products. Technically speaking, oil contracts that are effective 6 mos from now should not have a direct impact at the pumps today. This is nothing more than price gouging. If the price was allowed to float based on demand we should be paying less than we are based on total demand in the US.

record deficits!

9/11, war in Iraq, a recession, dot com bust…all beyond his control. The recession was the shortest in the history given these huge problems which shows how well fiscal policy worked. Agreed, however, spending should have been kept in check. Its not a comfortable feeling that my kids (and perhaps grandkids) will be paying for our current excess. Overall we are spoiled as a country, our congressional leadership holds the ball in this case. If we were going to spend more money, we should have tightened our belts in other areas. Kerry would (or his campaign advisors) would like to point their fingers at the Iraq issue and claim that this is the root of the economic problem in this country. It is a broader issue than that, however, most americans do not take more than a superficial look, moreover, Greenspan is manipulating monetary policy in a way that has an impact of fiscal policy. I believe he is doing this because he believes that there is a lack of direction and accountability with our fiscal policy. This is good stuff, I’d love to debate it more, but I have to make some money for my employer. Rocketboy

13

Nary a day goes by that some bad news doesn’t come out of the White house. Today it’s “U.S. budget deficit expands to $412.5 billion.”

WASHINGTON - The U.S. budget gap expanded to $412.55 billion in fiscal 2004, marking the Bush administration’s second-straight record deficit, the Treasury Department said on Thursday.

Though the final 2004 figure was the largest budget deficit in U.S. history, it was smaller than the White House’s most recent forecast of a $445 billion shortfall given in July and well below the $521 billion it foresaw early this year.

You can already hear the spin machine revving up. “We’re making progress”, they’ll say, “the deficit is 32 billion less than we had projected”, they will crow, as if that is something to be proud of.

“It’s hard”, Bush will say, “it’s not really my fault. I inherited a recession, you know, and the war in Iraq cost a lot of money”, as if somehow, he himself wasn’t responsible for the war in Iraq (was there anyone else who was pushing for a war?).

Despite all the bad news, millions of voters will trudge to the polls on Nov. 2 and pull the lever for Bush/Cheney, even though as many as 58% of those voters have indicated they want “major changes” in Bush’s polices. They’ll pull that level and endorse the last four years as a good thing, even if they don’t agree with it, for varied reasons, such as “I’ve always voted Republican” or “Kerry looks French” or any number of other reasons (some valid, some not).

I’m going on vacation for a week to Wisconsin, leaving in a couple hours. It should be pretty interesting to see what’s going on in a battle ground state right now. Maybe one of the candidates will swing through and I’ll get to see one, though I understand Bush doesn’t allow un-screened non-Republicans into his rallies, so I guess I won’t make that cut.

See you in a couple weeks.

14

Bush is willing stand up, stand by his record, try to explain to those of you who:

  1. Big Pile of Steaming Shit ------------------------------------- 2. Can of Shinola

-can’t tell the difference between the above two above items that he has brought the country through a recession the he INHERITED from the Clinton Administration, put us back on the road to prosperity (the unemployment rate’s at 5.4%, lower than it was when Billy Bob was gettin’ b.js in the Oval Office (not that that’s a bad thing :wink: and that anybody who wants a job can get a job, took us on the offensive over the GREATEST SINGLE ATTACK BY AN ENEMY ON OUR SOIL and has prevented ANOTHER ATTACK from occurring on our soil since 9/11.

All Huey Long, uh…I mean John Kerry has done is be continuously logically inconsistent in every single utterance that me makes.

Example: “Everything I do in my public life is guided by my faith”. But then, he goes on to say that he won’t impose what supposedly GUIDES him in HIS life onto others. Excuse me…I thought that that’s what you do in your PUBLIC LIFE when you’re a politician: you pass laws (which is a form of coercement, wouldn’t you say?), which aren’t formulated out of your head on the basis on nothing (but wait, we’re talking about John Kerry, so maybe they are formed from nothing ;-). Maybe he meant that he’d only let his public life be guided by his faith whenever it’s not inconvenient to the liberal left-wing loonies that have taken the Democrats hostage over the last two elections? Probably so.

Kerry is an empty shell. He becomes whatever it is that the room full of people to whom he’s talking wants him to be. There is NO SUBSTANCE but that which he projects at that particular moment.

At least Bush got up at the end of the other night’s debate and flat-out asked everybody for their votes. Mr. Kerry, with his Back Bay patrician manners and his manicures and his excrutiatingly phony photo ops (anyone catch him riding a new Serrotta bike, with his helment on the drops and the cell phone in his ear?)wouldn’t even deign to do that. He does nothing but take up more empty space in the Senate to which the good people of TAX-achusetts have returned him every election since '84. Like P.T. Barnum said: “There’s a sucker born every minute”.

No thanks. I’m going with the Devil I know. Kerry is nothing but bad ju-ju, and if by some miracle he were voted into office, we’d all regret it and find ourselves wishing for the good old Jimmy Carter days, because that’s how bad this guy would be for the country.

Now, I’ll go sit by my dish until I get set loose of my leash again;-))