It’s been a while since our last “and a pony” post, calling out bills in Congress that overpromise what our federal legislature can do.

“Congress is gonna give you a pony, too, sweetheart.” Get it?

Anyway, a clear candidate for the “and a pony” designation was introduced in the House yesterday. It’s H.R. 3725, a bill whose aim is, quite simply, “to relieve traffic congestion.”

Well! Thank goodness that’s done! Now if someone would just introduce a bill to cure cancer.

Actually, the “National Highway Chokepoint Congestion Relief Act” would create a Department of Transportation program to give grants to state departments of transportation in areas where traffic was really bad.

Strange set of incentives there, don’t you think? If a state fails to maintain its traffic systems well, it gets “free” money from the feds—that’s actually money from taxpayers in their own state and others, with local officials relieved of the burden of raising taxes.

So if I were a state official looking at this program, I would immediately stop any efforts to improve traffic in order to collect the federal handout. (Well, not immediately. Slowly and quietly, though . . . .)

Congress to the rescue! It’s going to solve those traffic problems, and, yes, get you that pony you always wanted.

Here’s the current vote on H.R. 3725, the National Highway Chokepoint Congestion Relief Act. Click to vote, comment, learn more or edit the wiki article about the bill.

I’ve been poring over the earmark request data we collected in our big contest, and working to correlate it to the earmarks that made it into bills. It’s slow going, so far . . .

But the excitement level sure builds when you take a look at what the money’s going to!

Do you have your tickets to the Pendleton Round-Up yet? It’s going on right now!

And you stand to contribute $500,000 to Pendleton Round-Up Foundation, which puts it on, thanks to an earmark in the Senate version of H.R. 3288, The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.

Senator Wyden (D-OR) requested $3.5 million for the facility where the rodeo is held. Senator Merkley (D-OR) requested a modest $365,000.

The report for the bill has the federal government sending $500,000 to the Pendleton Round-Up Foundation for “reconstruction and construction needs of facilities which are critical to the local economy.” That’s right: The folks in Pendleton, Oregon want you to send them a half-million bucks for their “critical-to-the-local-economy” rodeo ring.

The people in Pendleton probably love their rodeo, and they’re entitled to! But it’s an open question whether they should be entitled to use your money in putting it on. For my part, I say horse hockey!

Happy Fourth of July!

What better way to celebrate the founding of our nation than . . . um, by . . . blogging?

Those were the words that introduced the WashingtonWatch.com blog one year ago yesterday – well, one year and two days ago.

That’s right, this blog debuted exactly one year ago, give or take a day. For reasons I don’t recall, the introductory post saluting our nation’s founding went out on July 3rd in the evening, rather than the actual 4th of July. So, why not, let’s celebrate our one year anniversary on the 5th!

It’s been a fun and interesting year of blogging. We scored some early blogging success by calling out the big bedbug issue. It’s an example of Congress getting into just about everything, and we’ve dedicated a whole set of posts to that kind of thing, which we call Jack of All Trades, Master of None.

Needless to say, there are people that disagree – they believe that Congress should handle this issue. Their comments are important and welcome.

Another fun category is something called “And a pony . . .” In it I’ve pointed out bills that over-promise what Congress can do. Everyone gets a pony!

But those fun categories were overtaken in the past year with lots and lots and lots of writing about the financial services bailout and economic stimulus bills. It’s been a huge year for big, expensive legislation.

We worked hard to get the bailout text up online as quickly as we could. Our bailout scandal post got some of the most traffic the blog has seen. (More posts on bailouts here.)

But the highest traffic has been for our post containing the text of the stimulus bill. It seems that people want to know what goes on in Washington. (More posts on the economic stimulus here.)

And the people – you – how you like to be heard. The comments on the site are in the tens of thousands each year. As we detailed in our 2008 year-end post, there were about 19,000 comments that year. As we’ve pointed out here, there is lots of entertainment in the comments. There’s ugliness too, as we highlighted in a post called “Racism Exists.”

Speaking of numbers, we’ve had about 150,000 visits to just over 450 posts here on the blog. Hopefully, the posts have helped to weave the bills in Congress together with the real world. It’s all a part of making Washington, D.C. a little more accessible to the people whose money it spends.

Speaking of money, there are endless things we would do to improve this site if money grew on trees. It doesn’t. But it does trickle in when more people visit. WashingtonWatch.com is advertising-supported (for the most part). So we need more visitors.

If you like what you find here – if you care enough to have read this whole self-congratulatory blog post – please take a little time to tell your friends about WashingtonWatch.com and how they can use the site to be better citizens – to be a little more like you. Thanks for reading!

There’s no higher goal than empowering women so they can live with equal status to men the world over, but that’s easier said than done.

H.R. 2214 is a bill “to empower women in Afghanistan.” If you think that the U.S. Congress can pass laws to make something like that happen, you’ve got another thing coming. Like a pretty pony!

Much as we would like to have the results Members of Congres claim, Congress over-promises what it can do altogether too often.

Since we’ve been in big economic stimulus bills and such up to our necks, I haven’t had time to call out the really fun legislation that gets introduced all the time in Congress.

One of my favorites are the bills that make dramatic claims about what they can achieve. And health care is one where the need for achievement is only outstripped by the claims of Congress to be able to do that.

Witness S. 391, A bill to provide affordable, guaranteed private health coverage that will make Americans healthier and can never be taken away. That’s right. The description of the bill says it “will provide affordable, guaranteed private health coverage that will make Americans healthier and can never be taken away.”

And it will give you a Thermos full of hot coffee or cocoa, whichever you prefer.

Plus the weather will always be good.

And s’mores every day!

And people will like you no matter what. You’ll lose ten pounds.

But best of all . . . you also get a pony.

More than 350 bills were introduced in Congress on its first day yesterday. At that rate, we’ll easily rocket past 10,000 bills, and past the last Congress’ record of over 11,000 bills. (And of course that rate won’t actually continue.)

We’ll be adding the new bills to the database throughout the day, but what an impressive array of issue Congress is claiming to address.

H.R. 17 would protect gun rights.

H.R. 15 would create a national health insurance system. S. 4 would do something similar: “guarantee affordable, quality health coverage for all Americans.” (Pony, anyone?)

H.R. 24 would rename the Navy.

S. 5 would end the United States’ dependence on foreign oil.

S. 1 would do it all: create jobs, restore economic growth, and strengthen America’s middle class through measures that modernize the nation’s infrastructure, enhance America’s energy independence, expand educational opportunities, preserve and improve affordable health care, provide tax relief, and protect those in greatest need.

S. 2 is similar, but it’s for the dreamers. It would “improve the lives of middle class families and provide them with greater opportunity to achieve the American dream.” I feel better already!

There are an endless array of subjects that the new Congress is going after. Thumb through the bills and take a look.

When you do, you may notice that there’s no H.R. 1-10. There’s a practice in the House of reserving the first 10 bills or so for “marquis” legislation. Leadership will decide what bills get to have single digits. So we’ll be watching for those to come in too. Might take a while.

The 111th Congress is roaring out the gate!

It’s probably a little late in the day here on Thanksgiving for you to use this recipe – but it’s darn good, mainly because of the cream cheese (which is also why they call it the “sinful” mashed potatoes recipe.)

“Sinful” Mashed Potatoes
(serves 6-8)
2 C hot or cold mashed potatoes
1 large package (8 oz.) cream cheese, room temp
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 eggs
2 T flour
salt and pepper to taste
1 can 3.5 oz. French-fried onion rings

Put potatoes in a large mixing bowl. Add cream cheese, chopped onion, egg, and flour. Beat at medium speed until ingredients are blended, then high speed until light and fluffy. Taste, add salt and pepper if needed.

Spoon into greased 9-inch-square baking dish. Distribute canned onions evenly over the top. Bake, uncovered, 300 degrees, for about 35 minutes.

Delicious! But wait! Before we eat, let’s think briefly of others less fortunate than ourselves.

Members of Congress do so on your behalf, and there are several bills in Congress intended to alleviate hunger. Would they succeed? Finding solutions to hunger and poverty is obviously more easily said than done.

There’s S. 1172 and its House counterpart, H.R. 1938. Both are called the “Hunger-Free Communities Act of 2007.” The brief legislative summaries of these bills say they would “reduce hunger in the United States.” (Oy. Grand claims like that put these bills in the “and a pony” category.) Basically, the bills would make grants to various anti-hunger organizations and programs.

H.R. 206, the Anti-hunger Empowerment Act of 2007, would reduce red tape in the food stamp program and give grants to nonprofit anti-hunger groups for a “Beyond the Soup Kitchen” pilot program.

S. 3108 and H.R. 6127 are both called the “White House Conference on Food and Nutrition Act.” They would require the president to call a White House Conference on Food and Nutrition. (Well named bills, don’t you think?)

S. 1575 is the FEED Act of 2007. It would give grants to public agencies and nonprofit institutions “to encourage the use of community resources to combat hunger and the root causes of hunger by creating opportunity through food recovery and job training.”

Finally, there’s H.R. 2129, the Feeding America’s Families Act of 2007. It would “strengthen” the Food Stamp Act of 1977 in various ways. Take a look at the wiki article for the bill to see them all.

It may not be that you want to support these programs, but it is a day to be thankful and to think of those who have less bounty than we do.

And do keep in mind the old saying, amended for this day, “Give a man a turkey and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to turkey and you – no, wait . . . teach a man to fish – yeah, that’s it, fish – and you feed him for a lifetime.”

This time it’s not a politician to blame for making exaggerated claims. It’s one of these coalitions that spring up when a certain set of people want a certain set of goodies from the government.

The Coalition for Free Broadband Now wants the Federal Communications Commission to auction of some of the electromagnetic spectrum under rules that would provide for free, “family friendly” wireless broadband service.

It’s touting a pair of bills, H.R. 5846, the Wireless Internet Nationwide for Families Act of 2008 and S. 3420, the Open Wireless Internet Act.

The FCC probably should get this spectrum out there for better use, but this really sounds like industrial planning. Just let it be bought and sold an a spectrum market like land is bought and sold so that it can find its most valued uses. OR put it out there for use by anyone – like they did with the spectrum that wifi works on.

Two things are for sure: 1) Somebody’s going to pay for it. There is no free lunch, and there’s no free broadband. 2) It’s not going to happen now. It’s now right now, and that free broadband isn’t here.

Free broadband? Yeah. And a pony.

Here’s the current voting on H.R. 5846, the Wireless Internet Nationwide for Families Act of 2008 and S. 3420, the Open Wireless Internet Act. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki articles about the bills.

Before leaving for its August recess last week, Congress saw the introduction of its 10,000th bill. Meanwhile, not a single one of the twelve annual bills that direct the government’s spending priorities in 2009 has passed the Senate and only one has passed the House. Congress is neglecting its basic responsibility to manage the federal government, and is instead churning out new legislation about everything under the sun.

The current Congress is on pace to easily beat the record 10,537 bills introduced in the 109th Congress. In the 109th (2005-2006), the 10,000th bill was introduced on September 18th, well after the August recess.

The number of bills introduced in each Congress has been rapidly increasing over the last twelve years. In the 104th Congress (1995-1996), there were 6,542 bills introduced. In the 105th (1997-1998), 7,529. The 106th (1999-2000), 107th (2001-2002), and 108th (2003-2004) saw bill introductions in the high 8,000s, and in the 109th (2005-2006), the number of bills first pierced through 10,000.

Yet, each year, Congress has failed to timely complete the annual appropriations process, which divides taxpayer dollars among different federal agencies and programs, guiding the government’s priorities.

The current 2008 fiscal year began on October 1, 2007, but Congress didn’t finish the spending process until nearly three months later, on December 26th. Congress didn’t finish work on the government’s priorities for fiscal 2007 until mid-February of that year, more than a third of the way through the fiscal year. Currently, congressional leaders may already be planning on letting the spending process collapse.

So what is Congress focused on instead? We’ve been cataloguing a few of them here.

Our “Jack of All Trades – Master of None” series has been listing bills where Congress is wandering away from the basic responsibilities of the federal government or into trivia. The latest example? A bill that would require the postal service to issue a commemorative postage stamp on the subject of inflammatory bowel disease.

Our “. . . and a Pony” series point out where Congress overpromises what it can do. There seem to be a lot in the area of health care these days. Health care for all Americans! – as if saying it confidently enough will make it so. Members of Congress should be getting back to basics and passing spending bills on time – not posturing or introducing fanciful bills.

A particularly annoying recent bill was introduced simply for political posturing. It would have moved the detainees from Guantanamo Bay to the grounds of the Supreme Court. This is not a Congress that takes its job seriously.

In case you’re curious, H.R. 6641 was the 10,000th bill introduced in the current Congress. (We didn’t count joint resolutions, concurrent resolutions, and all the rest). The bill would put small businesses in the queue for federal largesse if they’re in an area that has suffered a disaster. The bill was introduced by the five members of Congress representing Iowa. Y’know, the Iowa that just saw all the flooding. What the state lost in corn may be made up in pork.

Something about health care seems to bring out the braggadocio in Members of Congress. (Braggadocio? – big word! How about “exaggeration.” Wait! I’ve got it – “boasting.”)

Something about health care seems to bring the boasting out of Members of Congress. Last time it was “personalized medicine.” This time it’s primary health services.

The author of S. 3412 promises that it “would achieve access to comprehensive primary health care services for all Americans and improve primary care delivery through an expansion of the community health center and National Health Service Corps programs.”

It wouldn’t just help improve access to health care. It wouldn’t deliver more health care. No, this bill would “achieve access to comprehensive primary health care services for all Americans.” And a pony.

There are lots of problems with the health care system. There are some things that the government might not even be able to change, much less fix. So it’s nice to set goals and everything, but don’t go telling my people – that’s right, I’m looking out for all America now – that you’re going to achieve access to primary health services for all.

Here’s the current vote on the bill. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.