House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic majority reached the end of their much-vaunted “First 100 Hours” having enacted major pieces of the agenda they promised to deliver prior to the November 2006 election.
To be sure, Pelosi demonstrated impressive command of the legislative process in her first performance at the helm of the lower chamber.
Unfortunately, the first 100 hours agenda ignored pressing priorities like reforming lawsuit abuse and securing America’s borders by fixing our broken immigration system. Some good progress was made on shining more sunlight on the operations of government with earmark reform, but on achieving energy independence, the Democrats just can’t seem to resist bashing the very industry that finds and produces the fuels that move America.
Other aspects of the first 100 hours were disappointing. Pelosi’s promise to implement all of the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission fell by the wayside in some important respects. The commission recommendation that Congress end the proliferation of committees and subcommittees with a hand in intelligence funding was ignored, as was the recommendation that all intelligence agencies be moved into the Department of Defense.
Democrat constituencies are cheering other actions taken during the first 100 hours like increasing the minimum wage, but the data clearly demonstrates over many decades that raising the minimum wage ultimately results in fewer jobs forthe very people who are the intended beneficiaries. The shrunken pool of high school kids who will get summer jobs at minimum wage will like the bigger paychecks, but what about the poor families who were supposed to benefit the most?
On the energy front, House Democrats insist on repealing energy industry tax credits so that ExxonMobil and other companies have to pay more into the federal treasury. The fact is the energy companies are already doing precisely that, with energy industry tax payments exceeding a record $71 billion in 2005, up from $48 billion the year before and $32 billion in 2003. The Democrats want to increase taxes on the ExxonMobils of the world, but such taxes are never paid by energy companies. They are passed on to and paid by energy consumers, so expect higher gas prices at the pumps.
Finally, the highlight of the first 100 hours thus far is passage of significant earmark reform. There is no doubt the Pelosi-backed reform will result in far more earmarks being publicly linked to their requesting members of Congress and that fact will be an incentive to seek fewer earmarks. We hope Pelosi and the rest of the House, Democrats and Republicans alike, will take the next steps on this issue, including applying the Freedom of Information Act to Congress, putting congressional travel, campaign donations and financial disclosure online and posting daily calendars on their Web sites.
