Posted by
Always To The Right on Wednesday, October 29, 2008 2:41:34 PM
According to The Hill,
Democrats have their post-election agenda all set if they manage to win
the White House and extend their majorities in Congress. Card Check?
You bet. Expansion of S-CHIP to the middle class? That will get
revived, too. Expect a flood of social-engineering policies in the Age
of Obama — assuming it arrives:
A landslide victory next Tuesday would give Barack
Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats a
once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape government policy
dramatically.
By controlling the White House and expanding their Senate majority,
Democrats would remove the most reliable weapons used by the GOP to
block their agenda: the filibuster and the veto.
Those tools have thwarted Pelosi (Calif.) and Democrats since they
won the majority in both chambers, leaving bills affecting labor law,
healthcare and other issues to die in the Senate or on the president’s
desk.
With those obstacles removed, Democrats could quickly push forward
with legislation allowing labor unions to organize without
secret-ballot elections and a bill expanding the State Children’s
Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
Other possibilities include the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which
would overturn a Supreme Court decision restricting equal pay lawsuits;
a measure that would narrow the role of a “supervisor” for collective
bargaining purposes; and a mandate for paid sick leave for companies
with 15 or more employees who work at least 30 hours a week — all left
over from the last Congress.
The only restraint on Democrats after an Obama victory would be the
blame they will get when everything goes wrong. With large majorities
in both chambers of Congress and a Democrat to the left of
Congressional leadership, they will have no barriers to enacting
sweeping changes to American domestic and foreign policy. They will
also have nowhere to hide when these tax-and-spend policies hobble the
economy and weaken us internationally.
Will that give some Democrats pause? It might, but probably not
enough. In an Age of Obama, Democrats will claim victory as a healthy
mandate for leftward drift of American policy, and not without some
justification. We need only look as far back as the Jimmy Carter
administration to see where Democrats will go with such a grip on power . . .