Congressional roundup: 2009 in review

Photo by Gwyneth Doland

The year 2009 began with the swearing in of a new president, an all-new House delegation from New Mexico, and former Rep. Tom Udall’s move to the Senate. The tumultuous year ended with a rare Christmas Eve vote on health care reform. Here we’ll take you on a whirlwind tour of the year’s developments in Congress, with a particular eye on our delegation and issues important to New Mexico.

It all started on Jan. 7, when Martin Heinrich, Harry Teague and Ben Ray Lujan were sworn in as U.S. Representatives while Tom Udall joined Jeff Bingaman in the U.S. Senate. In mid-January, The Independent’s Gwyneth Doland traveled to Washington for the inauguration of President Barack Obama and profiled the state’s three freshman representatives.

Then the four, along with senior Senator Jeff Bingaman, began the hard work of legislating.

Rep. Martin Heinrich and Sen. Jeff Bingaman. Photo by Matthew Reichbach

The early days were filled with relatively easy victories, like the quick passage and signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act which assured that victims of pay discrimination don’t lose their ability to sue if they don’t discover the discrimination right away. That was followed by the expansion of a children’s health insurance program.

Democratic majorities in Congress meant that even the economic stimulus package passed with little of the extended, contentious debate that would become the norm in the final months of the year on health care reform, even though not a single House Republican voted for the stimulus package while just three Senate Republicans voted for it.

In May, President Obama visited New Mexico to hold a town hall event at Rio Rancho High School, where he extolled the virtues of a credit card reform bill that restricted what Obama called abuses of the credit card industry–and praised the work of New Mexico’s House delegation in passing the bill.  NMI webcast and live blogged the event with a panel of local and national experts. The credit card reform bill was signed into law a week later.

In June, the House Republicans voted en bloc against a climate change bill that narrowly passed the House. All three of New Mexico’s representatives in the House voted along with the narrow majority to pass the legislation.

Steve Pearce, right, and Harry Teague (Photos by Heath Haussamen)

Former U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce cited Harry Teague’s vote for the controversial climate bill as a major reason why he entered the 2nd Congressional District race against Teague, setting up one of the most closely watched races of 2010.

Climate legislation never made it to the floor of the Senate; in fact, Senate leaders could not agree on what such a bill would look like even late into the year. As of the end of the year it wasn’t even clear if such a bill would be brought up on the floor by Senate leadership in 2010. (Sen. Bingaman called it when he said in November 2008 that there would be no climate bill in 2009.)

And then came health care. The debate spanned much of the second half of 2009, and conservative anger over at Democrats’ proposals spilled over when Rep. Joe Wilson yelling “You lie!” at Obama during an address to Congress.  The House subsequently voted on a motion of disapproval of Wilson, but Rep. Harry Teague bucked his party to vote against the motion.

Rahm Emanuel and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan near Española

In November, after extended debate over abortion restrictions that pro-choice groups said infringed on women’s constitutional rights, the House passed a health care bill, which included a government-funded public option, on a near-party line vote; only one Republican (Rep. Joseph Cao of Louisiana) voted with the majority while 39 Democrats voted with the Republican minority.

Rep. Teague voted against the bill, saying it failed to do “enough to rein in insurance companies” and that he was “concerned that American taxpayers will end up footing a nearly $900 billion tab for a bill that doesn’t do enough to ‘bend the cost curve’ in a way that permanently reduces both costs and the national debt.”

It would be more than a month with many broken deals, much controversy and finally a rare Christmas Eve vote when the Senate version of health care reform — without a public option — passed on a 60-39 vote. Our sister site, The Washington Independent, called it a “historic, if diluted” bill.

Sen. Tom Udall with Sonia Sotomayor.

The Senate health care debate was highlighted by a disconnect between Senate leadership and conservative Democrats and the opposition from Senate Republicans. In the end, no Republicans voted for the bill and Senate leadership was able to wrangle every Democratic and Independent, vote for the bill after many compromises.

Now the health care reform bill will go to committee where the House and Senate will try to craft a final bill to send to the President.

On the foreign front, Obama announced in December that he would be sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan while earlier in the year, he outlined a plan to pull out from Iraq. However, the commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, said in October that there would be no acceleration in the removal of troops from Iraq to help provide troops for the war in Afghanistan.

There were other bills passed that fle under much of the radar of the general public; an expansion of a hate crimes bill to include crime based on sexual preference as well as the rejection of funding for the F-22 fighter jet never reached the level of attention as other high profile bills, but were still departures from the policies of previous administrations.

The year may be seen more for the dramatic partisan fighting and what was not accomplished (health care reform, climate change legislation and financial regulatory overhaul are oft-cited examples) than what was accomplished.