Prez wrote on Nov 7, 2012, 12:12:

Wowbagger_TIP wrote on Nov 7, 2012, 11:44:

Prez wrote on Nov 7, 2012, 09:21:
Yeah I agree with that. What bothered me most about his first term is what he *didn't* get passed - no federal budget in 4 years ( 2 of them while Democrats contolled the Congress and virtually any budget he wanted would have passed with ease)

Please please please stop repeating this nonsense about Democrats controlling Congress for 2 years. It didn't happen.

This is a well-established misinformation campaign that started in the blogospere and has propagated for 2 years now. When both the house and Senate have majority leaders from the same party (as the Democrats did with Harry Reid in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House that party is said to have control of Congress. It has been that way forever. The difference is that they were not "filibuster-proof" (having the necessary 66 seats to break filibuster) , which makes things take longer but the Democrats unequivocally still had control. With the number of moderate Republicans in Congress at the time virtually anything that the President wanted would have passed without issue. If you'll recall, the hold-up on the Health Care vote was because Pelosi did have enough Democrat support for the bill because of their evangelical views. A simple re-write of the section in question and the rest was academic.

I find it pointless that every discussion devolves into semantics, but this has to be addressed. THE DEMOCRATS HAD CONTROL OF CONGRESS THROUGH SIMPLE MAJORITY. They simply lacked the precious 2/3rd's majority. If everyone on the majority side is of a like mind than there is nothing the minority party can do to stop legislation from passing, only delay it via filibuster.