“Lame duck” sessions of Congress are sessions of Congress that are convened after general elections and before the incoming Congress takes office. They’re most commonly convened to do the work that the Congress had refused to do before the election, especially spending bills to keep the federal government going, either by continuing resolution or by explicit spending bills.
However, it’s not uncommon that egregiously stupid things are done during lame duck sessions. Here are my picks for some of the dumbest things Congress has done during a lame duck session:
- The 103rd Congress implemented the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
- The House of the 105th Congress voted to impeach President William J. Clinton.
- The 107th Congress created the Department of Homeland Security.
- The 112th Congress allowed the moratorium on payroll taxes to expire.
I’m still taking nominations.
It’s not true that, “The 103rd Congress implemented the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade,” which had been in effect for nearly half a century. Do you mean NAFTA? Or did they implement the Uruguay Round, turning GATT into the WTO?
I know you’re not a Hamiltonian but I’ve always thought of GATT proper, at least, as highly beneficial.
Of course I meant GATT 1994—the Uruguay round.
I’m in favor of free trade. You can write a free trade agreement on the back of a napkin. The GATT isn’t a free trade agreement—it’s a managed trade agreement.
I’m generally skeptical of treaties and increasingly skeptical of multilateral trade agreements since I don’t think they work in our favor but rather are beards for mercantilism on the part of our trading partners who engage in massive infractions over the period of decades. Every single one of our major trading partners is holding more dollars than allowed under the treaty.
China has never lived up to the obligations it assumed when it joined the WTO. It should be ejected but that will never happen because Chinese trade has become so important, particularly to the Europeans who are the main boosters of multilateral trade agreements.