The Congressional Report Card

By Jay Newton Small

Voters handed Congress back to Democrats last November with a mandate for change: change the course in Iraq, clean out the ethics "swamp" and end partisan arm wrestling. But accomplishing all that is tricky when the opposition party still controls the White House. So far this year, President George W. Bush has vetoed war-funding legislation that included a timeline for withdrawing troops from Iraq and federal funding for stem-cell research--and he has issued veto threats for 77 other bills.

The result is that Congress appears as tied in knots as usual. Its approval ratings hovered around 18% in a mid-August Gallup poll, making even Bush's dismal numbers seem positively sparkling. But does Congress deserve such low marks? Democrats and Republicans will spend the fall tangling over Iraq, the farm bill, energy policy and other contested issues. As members of the 110th Congress head back to work after summer vacation, we take a hard look at their record thus far.

Oversight hearings

For six years, Democrats charged that Congress was neglecting its constitutional responsibility to oversee the activities of the Executive Branch. No longer. In the first eight months of 2007, congressional Democrats held 913 oversight hearings--300 more than GOP leaders had presided over during the same period in 2005. Wielding subpoenas to investigate everything from the treatment of returning soldiers to waste in government contracting to the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys, Democrats have enthusiastically embraced their new role.

THE GRADE: A

Substantive legislation

Having spent significantly more time at work than the 109th Congress (1,967 hr. vs. 1,433), this Congress has also managed to pass more legislation. Some of those bills count as real accomplishments. Between the House and the Senate, Democrats have passed 122 substantive bills (compared with 77 by their GOP predecessors), including lobbying and ethics reform and an expansion of children's health insurance. But they've also done a lot of speechifying. The number of purely symbolic measures passed by Congress has nearly doubled in 2007.

THE GRADE: B--

Democratic agenda items

Hoping to duplicate the electoral success of the Contract with America, Democrats ran on a platform of "Six for '06." As of late summer, two of the items--9/11 reforms and an increase in the minimum wage--had become law, while Bush had vetoed funding for stem-cell research. Proposals to reduce subsidies for oil companies and expand Pell grants remain tied up in conference committees; a bill to fix Medicare's prescription-drug problem has stalled in the Senate. Still, the GOP passed only two of the 11 Contract with America items in its first year back in charge.

THE GRADE: B

Judicial confirmations

The Senate has approved Bush's nominees for district-court judgeships at a clip that equals previous confirmation rates. Not so his nominees for the U.S. circuit court, only three of whom have been confirmed in 2007. In the spring, in an episode recalling the 2005 "nuclear option" showdown that required a brokered deal on judicial nominees, a tense fight broke out over Judge Leslie Southwick, Bush's pick for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Democrats finally agreed to vote on Southwick after Republican leader Mitch McConnell threatened to bring the Senate to a standstill.

THE GRADE: C

Playing nice with others

The biggest fight in the Senate this year hasn't been over immigration reform or Iraq but over the right to debate. Democrats accuse Republicans of excessive filibustering. Republicans say that they're just trying to discuss important policy problems and that Democratic leader Harry Reid has exploited a rule--known as invoking cloture--to cut off debate. So far in 2007, the Senate has voted on cloture 43 times. If that pace continues, it will shatter the record of 61 votes in a two-year Senate session, set in the 107th Congress. And ill feelings between the parties will further harden.

THE GRADE: D