Next week is Keystone Cop week on Capitol Hill!

President Obama will be paying a visit to Washington, DC to deliver the State of the Union Address. I hope he still can find his way around Capitol Hill; it’s changed a lot since he was there last.

Reportedly Tuesday evenings address will likely touch on the nation’s financial health that remains fixed in the minds of most Americans, especially the unemployed ones. Expect the commander in chief to touch on political hot spots like taxes and getting the budget passed, Medicare/Medicaid, in other words nothing that will happen in 2012. After 1000 days, on this very eve, without a budget why would the Republicans cooperate now? As for that fact, most Democrats won’t cooperate either, especially the ones up for re-election this year.

The president will follow up his big speech before Congress with a five-state jaunt through the rest of the week. Obama will be making stops in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, Detroit and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on the three-day trip. More campaign stops designed as press conferences to promote his unattainable goals outlined in his in address. Oh, and by the way, he told a crowd in Florida yesterday that he had to get back to DC because he had so much work to do but I guess it can be done in one day.

Other happenings on Tuesday; the committee tapped to hammer out a year-long payroll tax cut agreement will meet for the first time. The 20 lawmakers that will take on that task also will be debating extensions to unemployment benefits and the reimbursement rate for physicians under Medicare, in what is thought to be one of the few “must-do” items for 2012.

On Monday, the House Rules Committee will be marking up a bill that gives congressionally-passed budgets the force of law. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the House Budget Committee will take over that bill along with bills that would change the way budgets are scored to give credit to growth due to tax cuts; eliminate automatic spending increases snuck into baseline levels; and put federal credit agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on the books. Here again this is a total waste of time unless they just want to get on record that these measure have been taken on and approved by the House. There is absolutely no way Harry Reid is going to let any of these bill ever hit the Senate floor.

Richard Cordray, who became director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by a “Recess Appointment”, will appear for the first time on Capitol Hill in his new role Tuesday. A House Oversight subcommittee has called on Cordray to testify about his new job, and also his view on recess appointment the president used to put him in place. For those of you who find his face familiar, he is a 4 time undefeated Champion of Jeopardy! He also served as an adviser to the Supreme Court during the Reagan administration and acted as the US attorney for the United States on cases for Bill Clinton and George Bush. By all accounts, from both sides of the aisles, he is considered to be an extremely bright man.

On the lighter side the Senate Budget Committee will launch its 2012 work with a hearing on Thursday examining where the economy is headed, tapping the expertise of three economists. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! I haven’t had a laugh like that in years! They don’t need economic experts, they need a plumber- it’s the toilet stupid!
After reviewing the up and coming week and all of the important things that need to get done, and since Obama will likely hardly ever be in Washington DC, why don’t we just give them the year off, with pay of course, and save ourselves the misery of watching this charade over and over for the next 8 months?

PH