N.M. Delegation Sets Sights Low for 112th Congress

In recent election years, congressional productivity has been nearly non-existent.

In a divided Congress, members of both parties generally spend more time bickering and blocking the other’s legislative initiatives than finding bipartisan agreement on anything. The second session of the 112th Congress, which is slowly getting under way this month, is likely to be no different.

Last week I checked in with New Mexico’s congressional delegation to see what members hope to achieve legislatively this year. Each offered thoughtful priorities, but Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman, who retires this year after three decades in Congress, summed up the reality.

“Realistically, it’s very hard to see us making much progress in this upcoming session of the Congress,” Bingaman said. “Republicans have fairly effectively blocked much of the legislative activity we were trying to do in the previous session. They are not anxious to see President Obama achieve additional victories he could take credit for in the upcoming re-election campaign. It’s difficult to see how we get major proposals enacted.”

And there aren’t many Democrats in either chamber, or the White House, who seem willing to help Republicans achieve legislative victories, either.

Rep. Steve Pearce, the delegation’s lone Republican, is chairman of the House Western Caucus. He’s had a hard time getting much bipartisan traction on a package of 40 lands bills he said would relax environmental regulations and lead to job creation. Nine of those bills have passed the GOP-controlled House, according to caucus spokesman Jason Heffley. But the package’s fate in the Democratic-controlled Senate is uncertain. Pearce sent Obama a letter last year outlining the legislation, but 1600 Pennsylvania hasn’t shown much interest.

“We sent a certified letter to him and said ‘here’s a plan’,” Pearce said. “I think he’s simply playing politics.”

There are a few issues on which Democrats and Republicans might try to find some common ground: the federal debt, Pentagon spending and tax cuts. Under a federal debt-ceiling budget agreement Congress reached last summer, a so-called “supercommittee” of lawmakers was supposed to find ways to cut the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The committee failed, and as a result the government will automatically cut almost $500 billion from military spending, with an equal amount from nonmilitary programs, between 2013 and 2021. Meanwhile, the Bush-era income tax expires on Jan. 1, 2013. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said he expects Congress to find some kind of compromise.

“This was put together to put maximum pressure on the Congress to come up with a package, and I think it will do that,” he said. “It may be after the election. I hope we put something in place much, much sooner than that, but as we get closer to those deadlines, the pressure will build up.”

Pearce isn’t so sure. He said House Republican leaders capitulated to Senate Democrats on Pentagon cuts and he doesn’t see a viable way to reverse that.

“The Senate for some reason got our leadership to go along with it,” he said. “The supercommittee failed. It (the Pentagon cuts) is absolutely going to kick in … and our military is caught in the cross-hairs. I do not think there’s going to be some deal that is magically going to eliminate the cuts from our military.”

Udall also said passing long-term extensions of unemployment insurance and enacting additional incentives to promote clean energy should be priorities. Bingaman said he hopes Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will bring an energy package that has passed the energy committee to the full Senate..

Meanwhile, Reps. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Lujan cited a couple of their own pet projects as potentially gaining bipartisan support. Lujan is pushing a Bingaman-authored bill to provide money for uranium mine cleanup and working to ensure more job-creating cooperative research and development agreements between industry and the national laboratories.

“We want to make sure that businesses all around America are able to take advantage of the national labs,” Lujan said. “I think that helps New Mexico.”

Heinrich said he’s pushing a bill called the HEARTH Act – also championed by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, that would help Native Americans buy homes on tribal lands. The bill expedites the lease approval process by allowing tribal governments to approve trust land leases directly, rather than waiting for approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The bill has cleared the House Natural Resources Committee.

“At a time when we should be pushing legislation to help recover the economy generally, I think it fits in the overall scheme of places where we ought to be able find common ground,” he said. “I’ve actually got quite a bit of hope for (this).”