One of the first things the liberal Congressional leadership will do is attempt to buy some support from Americans. And they will come up with some really good ideas (ones which the House Reps should have pushed, but didn’t) which will give the American people some false confidence the liberal core of the Democrat party is under control. It’s the same old saying from Mary Poppins: “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down”. Here is the sugar, which I heard Stenny Hoyer push on This Week (ABC) this morning:

Their initial proposals, laid out earlier this year, would prohibit members from accepting meals, gifts or travel from lobbyists, require lobbyists to disclose all contacts with lawmakers and bar former lawmakers-turned-lobbyists from entering the floor of the chambers or Congressional gymnasiums.

OK, I am not sure about why there is a ban on the Congressional gymnasiums, and I probably don’t want to know. But the idea of banning travel from lobbyists is the perfect answer to what ailed Rep Ney in OH. Lobbyists should be able to make their points without layering them in money. The can bring votes and pool like minded donors – but that should be the extent of it. I like this and I think America will applaud the Democrats for this move. Bush Conservatives will and Bush will probably sign it into law. The question is whether he anti-Bush Republicans will succumb to their own BDS issues and fight this ban. We shall see.

So where is the medicine? Well, that is the big question and there are, unfortunately, a myriad of issues for them to push that are not in the best interest of this country. One example is messing with energy prices and taxes at a time where we need to exploit more oil deposits (like the one we found in the Gulf of Mexico which could rival Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves) and invest in new energy approaches. But what do the Liberals do? They focus on taxes and just the opposite of what we need. Check out these tax incentives they want to repeal:

For the most part, the tax benefits are ones that lawmakers talked of repealing this year when Congress struggled to respond to the public outcry over soaring summer fuel prices and oil companies’ huge profits.

Topping the list for repeal are:

-Tax breaks for refinery expansion and for geological studies to help oil exploration.

-A measure passed two years ago primarily to promote domestic manufacturing. It allows oil companies to take a tax credit if they chose to drill in this country instead of going abroad.

These are the kinds of things which will remove our alliance on foreign oil and help stabilize fuel prices – and therefore our economy. There are some common sense efforts which would close loop holes in tax revenues left by the Clinton administration – like these.

The Senate, White House and House members are turning their efforts toward convincing the House, where conservatives want to open most of the nation’s coasts to exploration, to pass a version of the more limited Senate bill that will open more area of the Gulf of Mexico to drilling.

Another area on which there may be an agreement is fixing the 1998 and 1999 oil-leases glitch made by a U.S. Mineral Management Service bureaucrat that has allowed oil companies to avoid paying any royalties on $11.2 billion. Louisiana’s congressional delegation hopes to capture about $2.5 billion of that for the coastal effort.

It is a wonder how many opportunities the House Reps ignored in their battle against Bush. Are these imperfect – of course. What isn’t coming out of DC. But to close a tax loop hole and re-invest that into our environment is not a policy that should be limited to liberals. And apparently it isn’t if the White House is involved.

The American people were right – the Republicans needed a time out to re-think their focus. We do have to watch what is happening and make sure we do not see things from liberals that too are bad partisan ideas. There are opportunities where bipartisanship can fix things for the better.