Lessons from Thirty-two Years in Washington

This will be the last installment for this reporter after roughly twenty years of preparing literally hundreds of these newsletters--and eighteen years with the U.S. Senate.

It is always a balancing act trying to be topical when the final draft is submitted over a month before publication, but let me make a few predictions on the headlines in the days and weeks before you read this:

• Congress and the president will have agreed, at the last minute, on a massive appropriations bill covering most of the discretionary functions of the government without having to shut down the bureaucracy. Particularly when combined with the anticipated supplementals, it will set record levels of spending. 
• Congress will have dragged on beyond its targeted adjournment date. In the waning hours, large numbers of senators will have taken the floor during interminable quorum calls to proclaim that, despite a $3 trillion budget, our country's government is worse than it has ever been. Democrats will blame Republicans; Republicans will blame Democrats; no one will blame themselves.
• The vicissitudes of presidential candidacies will rise and fall. As the first caucuses and primaries approach, contenders once thought to be inevitable will be sliding toward has-been status. Candidates once regarded as jokes will appear, for the first time, to be viable.

 Click here to read the full text of this Watch Report as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.