Obama’s legislative achievements
The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
As it happens, Obama does have substantive legislative achievements. I have written more about them here. A few highlights, all of which became law:
* Ethics Reform: Obama was the Senate’s point person on ethics reform, and sponsored or co-sponsored the bills that made up what the Washington Post called “the strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet.” I’m also a fan of this bill, which I think of as the Journalists, Bloggers, and Citizens’ Muckraking Empowerment Act: it creates a searchable database of recipients of federal grants and contracts.
* The Lugar-Obama initiative to strengthen the Nunn-Luger framework for securing loose nukes, and to extend it to securing and destroying stockpiles of conventional arms. (For instance, shoulder-fired missiles that could be used against passenger airlines, fired at our forces, or used to make any number of ongoing conflicts more deadly.)
* Various bills concerning the response to Hurricane Katrina, including an amendment putting strict limits on the use of no-bid contracts after disasters, requiring planning for the evacuation of people with special needs and senior citizens, creating a National Emergency Family Locator System, etc.
There are also a lot of good bills he worked on that did not make it, including the compromise immigration bill and a proposal to create an independent Congressional Ethics Enforcement Commission, and some that are on the Senate calendar now, like a bill to criminalize various deceptive election tactics, like deceptive robocalls, providing misleading information about where to vote or what conditions you have to meet to be eligible to vote, etc.
There’s a lot more. Honestly, there is. I wrote a summary here (and an earlier one here), and provided lists (1, 2, 3) of all the bills and amendments sponsored or co-sponsored by Clinton and Obama in the 109th and 110th Congresses, just so it would be as easy as possible for people to see for themselves. (Fun fact about each side’s legislative records: during the 109th and 110th Congresses (which is to say, the time that both Obama and Clinton have been in the Senate), only one sponsored a substantive bill that became law. Guess who it was? Hint: the bill concerns the ongoing conflict in the Congo.)
I didn’t copy all the links, nor do I care much for hilzoy’s “larger point” that all this is somehow Chris Matthews’ job. The role of the press is to be adversarial in some responsible and fair way, that is, press public figures of all stripes to make their cases, and to challenge them on it. No media outlet is obligated to present any candidate’s legislative history.
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