Congress, Government shutdown and Healthcare in USA

There is a possibility that the current budget crisis in the USA will lead to a government shut-down. The Economist has a long piece about it, here (although this may not be available to all). The issue is the Republicans are refusing to sign a new budget for the year ahead with funding for Obamacare. The Democrats are refusing to pay ball and, because both parties control a chamber of Congress, there is gridlock on the issue.

The BBC's Mark Mardell discusses it here.

One of the oddest recent parts of the debate was a 21-hour speech in the Senate by Ted Cruz (R) who was trying to stop a vote. For various technical reasons it was not a filibuster, but is a great example of the genre for G & P students studying Congress for Unit 4C. The highlight (if that's the right word) was the few moments the Senator devoted to reading Dr Seuss's "Green Eggs and Ham".



The BBC has a Q & A about the issue here.

If the issue hasn't been resolved by 1st October, the US government will shut down until a budget is agreed. We'll see what happens.

Ed Miliband and the Labour Party - Going left wing?

In brief, before I get round to dealing with Ed Miliband's recent speech at the Labour conference, the "Blighty" blog at the Economist has an interesting article summarising the Labour Leader's approach: not left-wing, but something much more nuanced.

Essentially, he has to build a coalition of voters who have very difference and mixed opinions on issues, and don't fit into a simple left-right scale.

Interestingly, and very useful for Units 1 & 2, is his announcement of an intention to lower the voting age to 16. This is a useful point to bear in mind when contemplating voting reform in the UK; mind you it may well not be an entirely self-less act. A quote attributed to Churchill goes something like this:

"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains."

The Huffington Post has a list of his announcements here.

How parliament works

I stumbled across a great clickable guide to how parliament works on the BBC web-site.

Check it out here.

Here is a video guide to Parliament:

Syria - US Congress

The Syrian crisis continues, but for G & P students there are some useful examples of Congress in action; Congress's vote on military action will happen soon, but there have been some developments.

First the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, an important body in the politics of these things, has supported military action. This is a good example of a Senate committee in action.

In addition, members of the Senate and the House are going around their constituents having "town hall" meetings to discuss the issue, as explained in this long piece by CBS News. Overwhelmingly, it seems that Americans are against military action - this does pose questions about the nature of representation by members of Congress; are they simply going to vote no because their constituents say so, or are they going to support Obama's view that it is in the nation's interest?

A classic Unit 4C question asks how representative Congress is - the events here are very relevant for this argument.

The BBC's man in Washington has a piece about it here - the implications could be profound for the political power of President Obama should he lose the vote next week.

[Picture - BBC News]

Syria - USA

The Syrian crisis is having an effect on the politics of the USA - President Obama won't have the military support of Britain, thanks to a recent vote in the House of Commons. Rather interestingly, he is trying to get a vote in Congress to support military action. The Independent makes the link between Obama's action and Cameron's failure to get a similar vote in the House of Commons, which I think is a bit of a stretch. The BBC's Mark Mardell has a piece about it here.

As A2 G & P students will know (or they will find out when they get to it in the syllabus), the President is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces in the USA, and doesn't need permission from anybody to send troops anywhere. There is a tension between this and Congress's power to declare war (last done after Pearl Harbor), and the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Presidents generally get permission for longer military engagements at some point, as President George W Bush did in 2002 in Iraq, but Obama did not in Libya in 2011 (although he claimed action there was legal because it was done through NATO and the US relationship with NATO was long-standing).

The vote (probably going to happen on 9th Sept) should certainly be a good example for any G & P student contemplating Presidential power and foreign policy, a regular topic in the Unit 4C paper.

Fox News has a blog post about Presidential power over foreign policy here.

[Picture - The Economist]

Syria - UK

Fascinating stuff is going on in relation to the Syrian crisis, and while there is certainly great human misery there, G & P students should bear in mind the domestic political reaction to these events when contemplating aspects of Unit 1 and Unit 2. In the UK, PM David Cameron recalled Parliament to debate the possibility of taking military action. Parliament does not get recalled very often, and then only in an emergency.

Cameron also wanted permission to send military resources into action - not an invasion, but rather a highly limited bombing of selected targets.

Interestingly, he failed to win the vote, and has ended up with a decision in the House of Commons which has meant (at least in the reading of most commentators) that he will not be able to take any military action at all in Syria.

This is an event without precedent - no PM has lost a vote about foreign policy actions in the modern era. Cameron's ability to act is not severely curtailed, and perhaps this will mean that in future PMs will have a similar restriction on their actions. Is the power of the PM now much weaker? Possibly. A Telegraph report is here, the BBC's Nick Robinson's piece is here, and the Independent discusses it here.

Depending on who you read, there are many different opinions; Cameron certainly seems weaker, but according to the Telegraph, so is the Labour leader Ed Miliband, who was thinking about domestic political advantage rather than about how to help dead Syrians. The normally left-leaning Guardian has a piece which says Miliband was weak too.

The Sun posted an obituary of the "Special Relationship", which I thought was rather funny (sadly I'm not able to show the picture here). There certainly are implications for Britain's status in the world, although this is rather beyond the G & P syllabus.

The Economist's Blighty Blog discusses the whole thing here.

[Picture - The Economist]