Dems Deny ‘Secret Plan’ For Lame Duck Session

The head of House Democrats’ campaign committee tried Tuesday to tamp down speculation that the party would try to push through major legislation during a lame-duck session of Congress this fall.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the assistant to the Speaker and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), said “no one should think there’s some secret plan for after the election on big issues.”

“There’s no secret or overt plan to do something like that,” he told MSNBC.

But Democrats will face a lot of unfinished business when they return to Washington after November’s elections — likely with a smaller majority or even possibly having been relegated to the minority for the 112th Congress. They have yet to tackle immigration reform, climate change and so-called card-check legislation on union organizing, a bill that’s strongly opposed by Republicans.

Another major issue: the George W. Bush-era tax cuts set to expire at year’s end. Because of the political difficulty of tackling tax rates, it seems likely the issue will be taken up only after voters have weighed in at the ballot box.

GOP leaders and conservative activists have increasingly warned that Democrats, who seem likely to lose seats in both the House and Senate, could use the year-end session to ram through big-ticket legislative items that probably wouldn’t pass once the new Congress is seated in January.

Led by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Republicans on Tuesday called on voters to pressure rank-and-file Democrats to swear off doing just that.

Boehner asked Democratic members’ constituents to use town hall meetings and other opportunities during the August recess to confront them on their post-election legislative plans.

“We should all be calling on the Democrats to pledge that they won’t do this,” the minority leader said at his weekly press availability.

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