As GOP Senate leaders prepare to deploy their “nuclear option,” a new Wall St. Journal/NBC News poll indicates that discontent with congress is approaching stratospheric proportions. The poll, conducted May 12-16, indicates that 65 percent of respondents agree that congress does not share their priorities, while only 17 percent of those polled say it does. As WSJ reporter John Harwood, puts it in his wrap-up of the poll’s results:

While the survey contains warning signs for members of both parties, it is especially problematic for Republicans as the party in power at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. The poll of 1,005 adults, conducted May 12-16, shows that the greatest erosion in congressional approval has occurred among self-described Republicans.

Harwood points out that, when asked “which party they want to control Congress after the 2006 elections, Democrats hold a 47%-40% edge — the party’s best showing since the Journal/NBC survey began asking that question in 1994.”
There’s much more in this poll that bodes ill for the white house and the GOP, especially with respect to the growing discontent of senior citizens, a key constituency, which Republican pollster Bill McInturff says “disproportionately turns out to vote in mid-term elections.”
With a little luck — and a lot of hard work — 2006 could be the year of the donkey.

The New Republic’s Noam Scheiber provides what may be the most thougthful critique to date of George Lakoff’s influence on Democratic Party strategy. Scheiber’s article, “Wooden Frame: Is George Lakoff Misleading Democrats?” nicely distills Lakoff’s ideas about “the subtle art of framing…evoking metaphors that leave voters with favorable impressions of your positions.” Says Scheiber:

Americans, Lakoff argued, vote their value systems. They care very little about individual issues; these things only matter to the extent that they reflect a voter’s worldview. The implication was that Democrats need to pay attention to the powerful, if not always obvious, signals they send about values through their choice of rhetoric and policies. Republicans have been doing this for years.

Scheiber limns Lakoff’s “Strict father” and “nurturant parent” analogs for the GOP and Dems, with swing voters embodying a combination of the two. Scheiber seems to believe that the concept has merit in helping to understand political attitudes. But, Scheiber, argues that Lakoff’s advice could be “a dangerously seductive tonic — the idea that the party can right its course merely by concocting better buzzwords.” Scheiber’s critique of Lakoff’s ideas echoes the DLC’s more conservative perspective:

Lately he [Lakoff] has begun promoting the idea that Democrats can regain their majority by embracing their more liberal impulses while emphasizing the values that underlie their positions. It is Democrats’ ineptness at showcasing their values, Lakoff says, not their liberalness per se, that has hurt them in the past. This has, not surprisingly, endeared him to the party’s liberal base. But, if this is the lesson Democrats take from Lakoff’s work, they could be in for a long, cold exile.

Scheiber takes Lakoff to task for naive tactical advice to various Democratic candidates and policy advocates. But he gives Lakoff due credit for awakening Democrats to some important insights, such as the need to avoid getting trapped in terminology that accepts “conservative premises” or false dichotomies (e.g. saving jobs or spotted owls). Scheiber concludes in agreement with Lakoff’s view that the GOP’s exploitation of the Terry Schiavo tragedy was a net loss for Dems, although opinion polls indicate they both may be wrong (see EDM’s March 8 post “New Poll: GOP Interferes In American’s Private Lives”)
All in all, Scheiber does a solid job of putting Lakoff’s influential views in a centrist perspective, and the entire article should be required reading for Dems of all leanings.

It’s a long way to November ’06, and a lot can happen between now and then to make predictions look silly. But if Democrats are serious about regaining control of congress, it’s time to focus energies on the strategy that can win and the work that needs to be done to make it happen.
For an expert analysis of the struggle to win control of the House of Representatives, no better place to begin than Alan Abramowitz’s EDM post “Seven Potentially Vulnerable GOP Incumbents.” WaPo columnist Terry Neal has a pretty good wrap-up of the challenges Dems face in winning back congress in “Political Horse Race Season Opens.” Neal transposed his numbers in counting the respective Senate seats defended by the Dems and Republicans. The correct figures are 17 Senate seats being defended by Democrats and 15 being defended by the GOP, according to the Senate’s webpage list. As a practical matter, Dems also must defend the Senate seat of retiring Independent Jim Jeffords, who votes with Dems.
An 18-15 Democratic disadvantage in seats to defend could spread Dem resources a little thin, and regaining control of the Senate will be a tough challenge. Yet historically, the party of the sitting President has lost an average of 6 Senate seats in off-year elections, and Dems have increasing grounds for optimism. As Neal quotes Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman Phil Singer:

“I’m not going to say we’re going to win back the Senate but we feel pretty confident about picking up seats,” Singer said. “With [House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay’s issues, and [lobbyist Jack] Abramoff, and Social Security, there’s a general discontent about the way Republicans are running Congress, and we’re waiting for a wave to emerge.”

Republicans, who enjoy a 55-44-1 majority, are already talking up their prospects for a net gain in the ’06 Senate races. For a look at the conservative take on the ’06 Senate races, read John J. Miller’s round-up “Springtime for Senators” in the National Review. Miller’s article has some interesting inside details about 25 of the 33 Senate races. As might be expected, however, Miller is a smidge over-optimistic about GOP prospects, particularly in Rhode Island, Maryland and Ohio, where Dems will run strong.
There’s no denying the GOP has a formidable advantage in 3 fewer seats to defend in ’06, and a net gain of 7 seats to regain control of the Senate is an ambitious goal for Dems. But polls are tilting nicely in the Dems’ favor, issues are breaking our way and the downside of one-party rule is becomming more painfully obvious every day.

Yesterday, I started discussing the new Pew Research Center political typology survey and what it tells us about Democratic potential among white working class voters. Here is the continuation of the list of the most relevant data points from the survey:
4. Pro-government conservatives (PGCs) believe, by 80-13, that “government should do more to help needy Americans even it means going deeper into debt” They also believe, by 83-11, that too much power is concentrated in the hands of few large companies and, by 66-27, government regulation of business is necessary to protect the public interest. Finally, the PGCs believe , by 61-32, that stricter environmental regulations are worth the costs, rather than that such regulations cost too many jobs and hurt the economy. (Note: no data available on these questions for Disaffecteds.)
5. Both PGCs (47-46) and Disaffecteds (53-31) put a higher priority on moving stem cell research forward than on not destroying potential life in human embryos.
6. Both PGCs (71-22) and Disaffecteds (78-13) overwhelmingly endorse the idea that outsourcing is bad for the economy because of its effect on jobs, rather than good for the economy because it keeps costs down.
7. The Pew report puts a great deal of emphasis on the centrality of national security issues in determining who leans Democratic and who leans Republican. Indeed, the report asserts:

Foreign affairs assertiveness now almost completely distinguishes Republican-oriented voters from Democratic-oriented voters; this was a relatively minor factor in past typologies. In contrast, attitudes relating to religion and social issues are not nearly as important in determining party affiliation.

In light of this argument, it’s interesting to note that PGCs and Disaffecteds do depart from the Republican-leaning consensus on some foreign policy issues. For example, Disaffecteds believe that the best way to ensure peace is through good diplomacy, rather than military force (49-38) and that relying too much on force creates hatred and more terrorism, rather than that military force is the best way to defeat terrorism (47-38). And PGCs think, by 50-40, that US foreign policy should account for allies’ interests, even if that entails compromise, rather than follow national interests even when allies disagree.
Of course, none of this means that white working class voters in these two groups will be an easy “get” for the Democrats. The Pew report provides abundant data on various pressures pushing these voters in the GOP direction.
Nor does it mean that simply invoking some of the issues on which these groups agree with Democrats will produce an automatic harvest of white working class votes. As Ralph Whitehead points out, reaching these voters is a great deal more complicated than that.
But it does indicate a serious opening for Democratic appeals among these voters. And it is important to stress that such appeals need not eliminate the GOP advantage among white working class voters or even come close. All that is necessary is to reduce their current landslide levels of dominance among these voters to dominance that is not quite so lopsided.
Keep in mind that Bill Clinton actually carried white working class voters in both his successful presidential campaign (by a single percentage point in both instances). But Democrats need not replicate that performance. If Democrats can simply keep the Republican margin among white working class voters to the low double digits (say 11-12 points), and maintain their margins from 2004 among college-educated whites and among minority groups (note that I assume no improvement from 2004 in the Democratic peformance among Hispanics, though I strongly believe that is likely to happen), my estimates indicate that the Democrats will win the 2008 presidential election by 3 points.
And if the Democrats can keep the Republican margin among working class whites to single digits? It’s lights out, GOP.

I’ve written quite a bit lately about Democratic woes among white working class voters. Clearly, Democrats can’t get very far without substantially improving their performance among these voters. But there is reason for hope. Two recent reports demonstrate there is considerable potential for Democratic inroads among large segments of the white working class.
The first report is a recent cover story in Business Week on “Safety Net Nation“. As the story points out:

The most predictable members of Safety Net Nation are liberals who favor activist government. The really crucial bloc, however, is made up of those who backed Bush in 2004. They still approve of his overall job performance but have soured on Wall Street and dislike the President’s approach to Social Security. This faction–estimates range from 17% to 22% of the electorate–rejects both traditional liberalism and conservative laissez-faire. In an era of rampant job insecurity, when employer-provided pensions and health coverage can no longer be taken for granted, they want a middle-class security blanket that gives them protection as they build wealth.

The story terms those Bush-backers who now think he’s gone off the rails on Social Security as “Safety Net swing voters”. And it is apparent from data provided with the story that these swing voters are primarily working class whites (especially men). I have flagged the potential for Bush’s Social Security plan to alienate Republican-leaning white working class voters (or “Sam’s Club Republicans”, as Reihan Salam, likes to call them) before and this is more evidence of the same.
The second report of interest is the new Pew Research Center 2005 Political Typology survey. This is a moose of a report and, while I generally don’t care too much for elaborate attitudinal typologies of voters such as the one used in this report, it still contains much useful data.
For our purposes, the most interesting two groups in their typology are “Pro-Government Conservatives” (PGCs) and “Disaffecteds”.
The PGCs, classified as a Republican base group, are 10 percent of voters. They are 85 percent white, 85 percent non-college-educated, 90 percent with incomes below $75,000 and 62 percent women.
The Disaffecteds, classified as a middle group (though they leaned strongly toward Bush in the last election) are also 10 percent of voters. They are 81 percent white, 89 percent non-college-educated, 87 percent with incomes below $75,000 and 57 percent men.
So both groups are clearly dominated by working class whites, though the PGCs are heavy on working class white women and the Disaffecteds on working class white men. And both of these white working class groups show considerable sympathy for Democratic approaches according to the Pew data. Here are a few of the most relevant data points:
1. PGCs favor a government guarantee of health insurance for all, even if it means raising taxes, by 63-33 and Disaffecteds favor such a guarantee by 64-26. The most economically conservative group in the GOP coalition, the “Enterprisers” (dominated by affluent, educated white men) opposes such a guarantee by 76-23.
2. PGCs favor raising the minimum wage, 94-5, and Disaffecteds favor it by 84-13.
3. PGCs, by 58-27, want Bush’s tax cuts either repealed completely or repealed for the wealthy, rather than made permanent and Disaffecteds endorse the same viewpoint by 51-33. Enterprisers, on the other hand, support making the tax cuts permanent by 82-13.
More on “Democratic Potential Among White Working Class Voters” tomorrow….

Daily Kos has an encouraging wrap-up of poll results evaluating the performance of Democratic Governors, vs. their GOP counterparts. Kos bases his wrap-up on SurveyUSA’s just-posted list of recent approval ratings for Governors of the 50 states. Kos quotes Chris Bowers of MyDD on the Govs’ respective approval/disapproval ratings:

The 22 Democratic Governors have a slightly higher approval rating than the 28 Republican Governors. The average Democratic approval rating is 49, with 39.5 disapproval. The average Republican rating is 47.9 approval, and 41.4 disapproval.

Even better, Bowers says:

Most potential Republican Presidential candidates look terrible. Bush (FL) is at 49/46, Romney (MA) is at 41/51, Barbour (MS) is at 37/55, and Pataki (NY) is at 36/56. Barbour is particularly toxic, considering how conservative Mississippi is… Even Schwarzenegger is at 40/56, and looking very vulnerable.

Bowers points out that, with the exceptions of Christine Gregoire of Washington and Oregon’s Ted Kulongoski, whose approval numbers are way down, western Democratic Governors are doing particularly well, with a 59/30 average:

Freudenthal (WY) is at 67/20, Napolitano (AZ) is at 59/32, Henry (OK) is at 59/30, Schweitzer (MT) is at 58/27, Sebelius (KS) is at 54/34, and Richardson (NM) is at 54/39.

Considering that Governors have historically been the more successful presidential candidates, the polls come as especially good news as Dems look to 2008.

A recently-released Washington Post/ABC News Poll reveals overwhelming public opposition to the GOP ‘Nuclear Option’ for confirming federal judicial nominees. The Poll, conducted on 4/24, indicated that 66 percent of respondents oppose “changing senate rules to make it easier” for Republicans to confirm Bush’s judicial nominees, while only 26 percent said they supported the proposal.
Informed that the Senate confirmed 35 of President Bush’s federal appeals court nominees, while Senate Democrats blocked 10 of them, 48 percent of the poll’s respondents said that Democrats were right to block the nominations, while 36 percent said they were wrong.

We’ve all had a chance to calm down since the polling controversies of the 2004 campaign. Where do we stand on the two biggest ones: party ID/party ID weighting and likely voter screens/models?
Party ID
The wild swings in party ID during the 2004 election campaign, particularly the huge Republican advantages that started showing up, were defended by Gallup and other pollsters as just reflecting actual changes in party ID as the campaign evolved. They took vindication from the exit poll results that showed an even distribution of party ID, rather than the 4 point Democratic advantage four years earlier.
But it doesn’t follow that, if there was a shift toward parity in party ID (leaving aside the turnout issue) in the ’04 campaign, that therefore the 6-10 points or more Republican advantages we were seeing at some points during the campaign were therefore real. Those still seem quite out of line, indicating levels of party ID movement among voters in short periods of the campaign that just don’t seem plausible.
The idea that sample bias couldn’t possibly have been a factor in some of those outlandish ’04 campaign results seems especially questionable in light of the fact that the NEP exit pollsters–paid-up members of the polling establishment–now maintain that the Kerry bias in their own poll stemmed from differential willingness to be interviewed on the part of Kerry and Bush voters. This is the same dynamic–differential willingness to be interviewed by a highly politically consequential variable–that myself, Alan Abramowitz and others thought could be causing some of the skewed samples during the election campaign.
Indeed, if the NEP pollsters are right, perhaps we had the mechanism slightly wrong on the pre-election polls: intead of differential willingness to be interviewed by partisanship, it was, more simply, differential willingness to be interviewed by Bush supporters and Kerry supporters. Such a differential could easily produce the sudden partisan skews we saw in some of these samples.
On party ID weighting, if sample bias has been and is a problem and all the party ID shifts we see aren’t completely driven by actual shifts in public sentiment (+ random sampling error), then there is still a case for party weighting. Weighting by the exit poll distribution is certainly a blunt instrument and I wouldn’t advocate it as a matter of course. But “dynamic party ID weighting” continues to be a very defensible idea.
The idea here, associated with political analyst Charlie Cook, is that polls should weight their samples by a rolling average of their unweighted party ID numbers taken over the previous several months. This would allow the distribution of party ID to change some over time, but eliminate the effects of sudden spikes in partisan identifiers in samples such as we saw during the ’04 campaign (and still see from time to time now in both partisan directions; there have been polls recently that have seemed implausibly Democratic, as well as those that have seemed implausibly Republican).
Pollsters don’t want to do this? Want to maintain there’s absolutely nothing wrong? Fine: just give the public the data needed to form independent judgements of their polls and conduct independent analyses (e.g., computing and applying dynamic party ID weights) if they wish to. Mark Blumenthal’s series on party ID disclosures by major pollsters is instructive. There is clearly progress here, but still considerable resistance. It’s still hard to find these data, even by pollsters (like Gallup) who say they are making it publicly available. If you read The Hotline, you can now get the party ID breakdown of nearly every poll. But very few people have access to The Hotline.
There is no reason why every pollster couldn’t fully disclose on a webpage somewhere on a public site: party ID and demographic distributions of both weighted and unweighted samples for every poll they do and for every type of sample they have: general public, registered voters (RVs), likely voters (LVs), etc. They have the information: let it free.
Likely Voters
LV samples appeared to do better than RV samples when predicting the election results right before the election. They should have; that’s what they were designed for. But it doesn’t follow that therefore, say, Gallup was fully-justified in using tightly-screened LV samples, with their very volatile results, weeks and, in fact, many months before the actual election. As academic analyses and common sense suggest, political movement indicated by such LV results are typically driven by voters moving in and out of the LV samples in the weeks and months before the election, rather than actual changes in voter sentiment. But Gallup’s LV results were shamelessly promoted during the ’04 campaign as indicating just that: real changes in voter sentiment. That’s not right and is a corruption of what LV models and samples were originally developed for–predicting the results of the election, right before the election.
It’s also worth noting that elaborate, tight LV screens like Gallup’s, that have the most volatility, didn’t do much better than weak LV screens in predicting the actual election outcome in the days before the election (see these data collected by Mark Blumenthal, keeping in mind that the final Bush-Kerry margin was about 2.45 percentage points, not the 2.9 points indicated in his post). So there wasn’t even that much of a payoff for their methodology there.
Pollsters don’t want to change their methodologies? That’s their prerogative, however much I may disagree with them. But they clearly should, at a minimum, publicly release their screening questions and methodologies and full results and demographic breakdowns of results from their screening questions, as well as the information called for above on the composition of the samples they produce by their pet methodologies.
In general on both the party ID and likely voter controversies: pollsters may not agree with the criticisms I and others have made, but by God there’s no convincing reason why they can’t release the sample data I outline above on a regular basis. Full disclosure, full disclosure, full disclosure! What are they afraid of?

Dan Balz discusses some possible lessons for Dems in the British elections in his Sunday WaPo article “Democrats Could Profit From Blair’s Labor: Prime Minister Shows Value in Hewing to Center.” Balz concedes that making any comparisons between the Labor and Democratic parties’ performance in national elections is fraught with problems. For starters, it’s impossible to sort out how much of the average Brit’s vote is for Prime Minister, since they don’t vote directly for the P.M., just their local M.P. Balz does believe, however, that among other factors, a thriving economy played a central role in Blair’s victory:

Under the guidance of Gordon Brown, Britain’s finance minister and likely prime minister when Blair steps down, Labor has made the economy its number one priority, supporting growth policies that have provided stability and prosperity….”No one really argued that there was no improvement in public services or the economy,” said David Miliband, a former domestic policy adviser to Blair who was named to a cabinet position in the new government. “People could say they wanted more, but they recognized that there was improvement.”

WaPo columnist Sebastian Mallaby sees huge economic problems looming for the U.K. in the near future. But he notes further in today’s column on “Blair’s Magic”:

Since Labor took power eight years ago, there hasn’t been a single quarter in which the economy failed to expand. Inflation has stayed out of sight. Unemployment, the bane of Britain 20 years ago, has fallen below 5 percent, marginally lower than in the United States and less than half the rate in France and Germany.

By contrast, Balz argues that the Democrats have failed to make the most of their successes as stewards of the economy under Clinton or the GOP’s failure to deliver economic security:

In 2000, Democrats surrendered their advantage on the economy when Al Gore decided not to make the economic record of the Clinton administration the central theme of his campaign for president. Democratic strategists believe that Bush’s economic record, particularly on fiscal matters, provides an opening to make the Democrats once again the party of stability, growth and fiscal discipline. But party leaders have yet to do so.

Balz doesn’t have a lot to say about the effect of the national security issue on Blair’s win. Clearly, the “Bush’s lapdog” critique had a very limited effect. Given the much stronger anti-war sentiment and movement in the U.K., however, it may account for the loss of Labor seats in Parliament. But Balz hit on something important in citing “the conviction Blair demonstrated in the face of rebellion in his own ranks.” And, Mallaby has noted Blair’s:

…willingness to espouse policies on frankly moral grounds have been a tonic for his country’s cynical culture, even if his perceived dissembling on Iraq has brought the cynics out in force again recently

Anyone who has watched Tony Blair holding forth on C-SPAN’s broadcast of “Question Time” in the House of Commons would likely agree that, like him or not, Blair doesn’t waffle on issues, particularly Britain’s involvement in Iraq. The big lesson for Dems in Britain’s elections may be that certitude, rightly or wrongly, is a key to winning uncommitted voters.

It appears that Democratic Party campaign strategists can now add Tom DeLay’s District to the list of possible wins in ’06. In his article “DeLay of the Land: Home Invasion,” in The New Republic, senior editor John Judis argues that changing demographics and a growing number of Republicans disenchanted with DeLay’s ethics problems and his pandering to religious extremists give Democrats a solid shot at winning DeLay’s house seat in ’06. Judis, co-author with Ruy Teixeira of The Emerging Democratic Majority, describes the dynamics of DeLay’s district:

DeLay’s 22nd district, which he designed in a 2003 redistricting effort that aimed to net seven more Republican seats in Texas, has also begun to change in ways that will not benefit an outspoken Christian conservative like himself. When DeLay first won office, the district was predominately white, with a few pockets of black voters. Because the area’s population has ballooned 18 percent since the 2000 census, there are no dependable figures about the district’s overall composition, but both Republican and Democratic leaders agree that, without losing its high levels of wealth and education, it is becoming a “majority-minority” district, in which whites are outnumbered by other ethnic groups. Latinos and blacks moved into the district in the late ’80s. And, in the ’90s, middle-class Indians, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, and Chinese immigrants began to pour in. Two Hindu temples now vie for attention with the Baptist megachurches.
Extrapolating from the census would put the African American population at about 10 percent, Latinos at over 20 percent, and the Asian population at close to 15 percent. The results in Fort Bend County are even more dramatic. In 1980, the area’s public schools, which attract all the area’s children, were 64 percent white, 16 percent black, 17 percent Latino, and 3 percent Asian. Today, they are 29 percent white, 31 percent black, 21 percent Latino, and 19 percent Asian.

Judis notes that DeLay received only 55 percent of the vote in his district in 2004 after outspending his relatively unknown Democratic opponent 5-1. The politics of demographic reallighnment in the 22nd offer hope that Delay’s excesses will translate into a Democratic 22nd district: As Judis points out:

Most of the black and Latino voters are Democrats…But the Asian vote is more complex. The Indians are the most Democratic. The Pakistanis used to be Republican, but, along with other American Muslims, turned to the Democrats in the face of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment after September 11. The Vietnamese and Chinese were also initially Republicans, but have become increasingly receptive to Democratic support for civil rights.
If you put the district’s disillusioned white professionals together with a majority of the Asians and large majorities of blacks and Latinos, you get a coalition that could unseat DeLay and, over the long run, perhaps, lay the basis for a Democratic resurgence in the area. This potential was evident in two races last year. In a state representative’s district adjoining Fort Bend County and somewhat similar to it in ethnic composition, Vietnamese businessman Hubert Vo, running as a Democrat with the help of Tameez, pulled off an astonishing upset over eleven-term conservative Republican Talmadge Heflin, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Vo won because he mobilized the district’s Asian vote, which is about one-fifth of the electorate. Says Texas Monthly executive editor Paul Burka, “That demographic tidal wave is headed Tom DeLay’s way.”

Nor will DeLay, who made himself poster-boy for political meddling in private family matters during the Terry Schiavo tragedy, find much encouragement in recent polls. As Judis reports:

A poll conducted this month by SurveyUSA found that 51 percent of the district’s residents disapproved of the job DeLay was doing in Washington…A Houston Chronicle poll this spring revealed that 68 percent of the 22nd district’s voters disapproved of government intervention in the Schiavo case.

Winning DeLay’s seat will not be easy, concedes Judis. And it will require some astute politicking to win the support of non-white voters, who are rapidly becomming a majority in the 22nd and Republicans concerned about DeLay’s ethics and financial shenanigans:

Whether Democrats can defeat DeLay will depend partly on their funding a credible candidate to run against him–one who will not scare away the district’s registered Republican majority. Says Leonard Scarcella, a conservative Democrat who has been mayor of Stafford since 1969: “Someone needs to park himself to the right, and take everything to the left of that. You don’t have to convince anyone on the left. You have to convince voters that you can represent conservative values on religion and fiscal stability.”

Political commentator and former Clinton advisor Paul Begala, who grew up in what is now DeLay’s district says the slogan of DeLay’s opponent should be “I’m a conservative, not a crook.”
Regardless of the outcome of the race for DeLay’s seat next year, the 22nd’s political and demographic dynamics are emblematic of what is happening in many districts across the nation, particularly in the south and west. If Democrats will pay attention and target their investments and resources carefully, they can end GOP domination of Congress sooner, rather than later.