A Mad Duck Congress?

If the GOP wins large majorities in this November's election, could the Democrats presently in control of Congress become a "mad duck" congress.  That would mean that during the December's final session of the present Congress, they would pass all sorts of legislation that would be difficult or impossible to reverse, like granting anmesty to 20 million illegal workers, or Cap & Trade bill now stalled in the Senate.  How about a Value Added Tax (VAT). 

These are all presently on the Democratic leaderships agenda, but are stalled or not yet introduced as bills.  Would the Democrats actually attempt to implemeent these very unpopular proposals against the will of the people?  You betcha!  If they passed the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009 against the wishes of (as polls showed) 57% of the voting public, you can just about guarantee that they'll pass these items, as they've been on the liberal wish lists for decades.

Micky Kaus, a long time journalist from southern California, now running for the US Senate against Barbara Boxer, says,

The only sure solution to Mad Duckism that I can see is for the Republicans to not win too big, leaving at least a substantial number of Dems with something left to lose. ...

In my opinion, just the opposit should happen, the GOP should win such large majorities as to guarantee repealling all of these items in numbers large enough to over come the certainty of veto by this president (who has already proven to be a far left ideologue).    Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard thinks this is a likely senario as well.  In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Mr. Barnes comes to this conclusion,

It's unpopular, but one can imagine Democrats might seek to enact it. The president's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which began its work last week, is required to submit a plan for serious deficit reduction by Dec. 1, four weeks after the November election.


Its recommendations are non-binding, but a lame duck Congress would be in position to take them up, including a possible VAT. Should Democrats suffer a landslide defeat, their large majorities would still be in place for the lame-duck session. What would Democrats who'd been defeated for re-election have to lose by voting for a VAT? Not much.

This scenario isn't as far-fetched as you might think. In a speech at a Democratic reception in Boston on April 1, Mr. Obama boasted of his willingness to do the unpopular: "If you govern by pundit and polls, then you lose sight of why you got into public service in the first place," he said. His "job," he said, isn't to "husband my popularity [and] make sure that I'm not making waves. . . . So I resolved to do not necessarily what was popular, but what I thought was right."

Does Mr. Obama think a VAT would be "right"? Take a guess.

I think because this on that "wish list" of items Democrats want dearly, that this will likely be what happens.  If the GOP wins less than 100 seats in the House and under 10 in the Senate, that the present Speaker of the House and a lame duck Senate Majority Leader will convene a whirlwind session and attempt to pass as much of thier agenda as possible, without any bipartisan effort at all.   After all, with the passage of the extremely unpopular America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009 without ANY Republican votes, something unprecidented in our history, why would they shirk at the rest of their agenda?