Over on our sister site, That’s My Congress, we’ve just finished a new look at the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the 111th Congress so far (from January 2009 through January 2010). We review all voting U.S. House members of the caucus, with special attention to the Military Commissions Act, the FISA Amendments Act, and our slate of 38 bills before the Congress that strongly intersect with progressive policy concerns.
You can read our findings in detail at TMC, but here’s a short summary:
* The Congressional Progressive Caucus has grown to 79 members in the House with full voting privileges.
* Only 12 of these members have lent their support to a bill that would repeal the Military Commissions Act, a declared CPC priority.
* Only 6 CPC members have thrown their support behind legislation to reform the FISA Amendments Act, another declared priority of the caucus.
* The average CPC member has taken progressive action on just 55.6% of our slate of 38 House bills relevant to progressive politics (with a median of 57%). A number of members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have taken progressive action regarding these bills less than 40% of the time.
The next time you find some right-wing spinmeister weaving a tale of relentlessly active, wildly radical commies in the Progressive Caucus or the Congress in general, cut through it all with a few of these facts. If anything, the “progressive” wing of the House of Representatives is overly sedate, complacent, and inactive.
the congressional progressive caucus is worried about their progress in the next election cycle.
Progressive is perhaps the wrong term…Any group who would glorify the failure of the new deal is regressive,anachronistic and obviously unaware that the “New Deal” was experiment in an American form of fascism which was only discarded as a result of the Second World War, which ultimately altered the American perspective on social experimentation and ultimately lead to the renunciation of government by Draconian decree… This current political cycle is now dragging out old uncreatve and mediocre concepts from the past hardly, “Progressive”. In the process our entire economy has been evolving from a robust competetive environment to a brave new world of simplistic solutions and flimsy concepts where a level playing field is only as level as the dumbed down public and the politicians wish it to be. For over twenty five years I and many others have watched the self serving vermin we elect to congress “act” like they are “doing something” while accomplishing little on behalf of thier constituents. And now… we have an act of political vandalism in which our own Constitution could be imperiled by a collection of anarchists and neoists, i.e.individuals who’s beliefs are good for about 10 seconds and who’s political posturing is a substitute for meaningful legislation. In all this, not one of our “wonderful” politicos has addressed our true ailment “fiscal responsibility” in all areas. Instead these scoundrels hide behind thier respective lobbies and fatten thier wallets at our expense… Progressive indeed ! Progressively worse with each preceeding administration.