The Progress Report:

GOVERNMENT

A Congress That Acts

The 110th Congress has now been in power for nearly six months. Despite facing critical challenges -- namely, a closely divided Senate and an obstinate, ideological president now eager to use his veto pen -- the new progressive Congress has achieved real, concrete results. The House of Representatives has passed all 10 bills it promised during the 2006 campaign, including enacting the 9/11 Commission recommendations, landmark lobbying and ethics reform, the first minimum wage increase in a decade, and a stem cell research expansion. The Senate has passed six of the 10; three others are currently being considered. (The White House has signed just two of the bills. It has vetoed or threatened to veto five.) Polls this week showed approval ratings for Congress sharply down after last month's controversial Iraq spending legislation. The country is undoubtedly frustrated that President Bush's conservative allies have blocked a major change in Iraq strategy. But on a wide array of issues, the 110th Congress is proving extremely effective at outmaneuvering conservatives, holding the Bush administration accountable, and winning key legislative victories.

PROGRESSIVES GETTING RESULTS: From tough new congressional ethics rules, bans on gifts from lobbyists, and the most transparent earmarking system ever established, Congress has honored its pledge for more openness and accountability. Both the House and Senate have voted to implement the critical recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which Bush and Congress selectively ignored for five years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, a cause that Bush has stubbornly vowed to veto for a second time. Congress is cleaning up the system in other ways -- creating new protections for government whistleblowers, requiring greater disclosure of presidential records, and more responsiveness from Freedom of Information Act requests. After a decade of delay, Congress approved a raise in the federal minimum wage from $5.15/hour to $7.25/hour, benefiting millions of Americans, and Bush signed the legislation last month. After the administration's mishandling of veterans care was exposed, Congress included billions more than the President requested for military health care and research in the 2007 Emergency Supplemental, which he also signed. The 110th Congress has restored necessary checks and balances, in contrast to the dangerous expansion of executive authority granted by previous Congresses. Just yesterday, Congress drove Bush to sign the Preserving United States Attorney Independence Act, which repeals an obscure PATRIOT Act provision permitting the appointment of interim U.S. attorneys without Senate approval, a provision which is at the heart of the U.S. attorney scandal. Congress is also examining new ways to curb Bush's warrantless wiretapping system, which even FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledges is laden with "abuses and violations" of authority.

AGGRESSIVE OVERSIGHT: "You must ask the questions. You must do oversight if we're going to keep people honest, if we're going to provide the checks and balances that our Constitution envisions," House oversight committee chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said in a recent interview with The Progress Report. In the previous Congress, oversight of the executive branch was woefully neglected by Bush's conservative allies. For example, in the 108th Congress, the House Government Reform Committee held just 37 hearings described as "oversight," including "only 12 hours of sworn testimony about the abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison." In the first five and a half months of 2007 alone, the committee has already held 33 hearings on previously ignored subjects such as, waste, fraud, and abuse in Iraq Reconstruction; political influence on government climate change scientists; and the reliance on private military contractors. Overall, Congress has held more than 200 oversight hearings on issues related to the Iraq war alone. Aggressive efforts by the 110th Congress have already resulted in a bevy of resignations by scandal-plagued members of the executive branch. At the Justice Department, three top aides to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have resigned as part of the ongoing U.S. attorney scandal investigation. A week before an oversight hearing, Julie MacDonald of the Interior Department resigned amidst allegations that she had censored scientists. Following the revelations of neglect and abuse at Walter Reed Medical Center, the new Congress swept into action with hearings and oversight, resulting in the resignations of the Center's commander, the Army Surgeon General, and the Secretary of the Army -- accountability that was unlikely to happen in the previous Congress.

THE IMPACT OF IRAQ: Six weeks ago, the congressional leadership had a 54 percent approval rating; that rating has now dropped to 44 percent. Conservatives have been gloating over these numbers, stating that they show large-scale disapproval of Congress's priorities. "Democrats who control this floundering and roundly disapproved Congress are paying a painful price for the pleasure of defeating everything that could be construed as in any way an achievement by the president," wrote conservative pundit George Will. But the public's dissatisfaction with Congress is bipartisan; the approval rating for Republicans in Congress is just 36 percent. And as ABC News notes, the recent decline is almost entirely among people who "strongly oppose the war in Iraq." Congress's approval rating began to drop only after May 1, when Bush vetoed the Iraq war funding bill that set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Congress's approval rating fell the most dramatically when it sent a new war funding bill to the President that did not contain a withdrawal timetable, a reality that congressional leaders now acknowledge. "It's the war, I believe so, it's the war," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who voted against the bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) noted, "I understand their disappointment. We raised the bar too high." Earlier this week, Pelosi and Reid recommitted Congress to changing course in Iraq in a letter to Bush. "In light of the additional evidence since your veto that your plan is not working, it is clear that a course correction in Iraq is needed," they wrote. "The American people cannot and should not have to wait until later this year for changes in your flawed Iraq policy. There is an obligation to act now."