agenda if dem's take both houses

[dazzlerazzle]

I realize that a super majority is not likely, but what should we be pushing if we take both the senate and the house? No reporters at news conferences ever ask about the monetary cost of the war, the national debt and what to do about the problem. Everyone should have concern about a communist country financing our government, but the subject seems to be taboo, just like agent orange, savings and loan failure, trade agreements, etc.

[Lexingtonian]

1. Will there be a whole lot of options?

I think in 95% of stuff during the first year there aren't going to be lots of options and philosophical decisions- there will be so much to do that will be utterly obvious and popular that the Pubbies simply refused to do. In a sense we don't even know how bad (or rather, pathetic) things are going to be when our team shows up- we can be pretty sure, but there's simply an awful lot of just plain old work to do to get up to speed and revive stuff that is utterly neglected that people on the street don't even know about. I mean, you don't think average Pubbies in Congress showed up and did 40 hours of honest and real work for The People a week for the past couple of years, do you?

The "first 100 hours" plan thing is a place to start.

You should have a look back at what the Clinton people found out and had to do in the six months after winning in November 1992. They found a federal government where Bush political appointees had lost track of and not bothered with or cut off a lot of what their agencies were doing, memos and budgets were a mess (no one on Team Bush did anything much except help themselves during the lame duck period), there were $50 billion in additional debt that the Treasury Department had hidden from the public accounting on orders from the Administration, the West Wing offices were in physical disrepair, computer switchover was a dysfunctional mess (and most paperwork and hard disks destroyed), lots of bad contracts were being paid and nothing delivered, and most Bush people refused to be of any help in sorting out the wreckage. The Clinton people walked into a bankrupt company's office building is the way they tell it. Clinton was no optimist about the Bush people then, but even he was horribly shocked at the incredibly degenerated state in which he found the White House.

[Sensitivity]

2. Arrest the criminals. Any significant "Legislation" would be VETOED if not

compromized to the point of uselessness.