house of congress

Now that we are 5 days away from Election Day, we need to start asking ourselves what our future holds. By all odds we are looking at Republicans regaining control of one house of Congress, if not both. But what are our new leaders promising us? Let’s look:

- Repeal healthcare

- Extend Bush tax cuts

- Cut spending, mainly on things like social programs and infrastructure.

- “Accountability”

But what are the alternatives to these items? Go ahead and repeal healthcare, but then we are left with the same problems we had before. How will the GOP fix our old, broken system?

And if we decide to cut spending on things like Social Security, unemployment, infrastructure and all those other “socialist” programs, what’s the outcome? Is America ready to face a tidal wave of growing homeless, seniors unable to afford to live and collapsing bridges? And even if we do massive cuts on all these items, it still will not offset the deficit increasing Bush tax cuts. In the simplest of terms this is stealing from the poor and giving to the rich, or stealing from the 98% and giving to the 2%.

Rule 21 of the Senate mandates that any time an issue is to be brought up on
the Senate floor that could reveal classified information that the cameras be
shut off, no electronic recording devices in the room and no staffers in the
room. It is done so to protect national security.

That is the reason Harry Reid called for a rule 21 hearing into the pre-war
intelligence failures in Iraq. It is also welcomed sign to Democrats around the
country that we will no longer stand by while the Republicans hijack our nation

.Republicans don't feel the same. They are calling it a political stunt to
shut down Senate. Bill Frist even complained about the courtesies involved in
this move by Senator Reid. Bill Frist told reporters that this kind of lack of
decency has never been done in either house of Congress. I guess he considers
illegally extending votes by the Republicans in the House ethically sound
actions.

Senate has come to an agreement in this situation. A committee of 6 Senators,
three from each party, is being empanelled in order to look into the reasons why
"phase 2" of the intelligence committee's report on the failure of intelligence
leading to the Iraq war has been stalled. This committee is to report back to
Senate no later than November 14.

Pat Roberts, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee stated that
they will hold hearings all next week to try and get this report concluded. The
initial phase of the report cited major failures in the pre-war intelligence of
Iraq's WMD program. Phase 2 is to look into the use of this failed data and see
if it was used to sway support for the invasion.