The result this week was that America's automakers, already reeling from the hard economic times, got banged over the head with a hard lesson about legislative politics in Washington.
Last Monday, for the first time ever, developmental biologists sat down to a lesson in legislative affairs 101--a workshop presented at the 58th annual meeting of the Society for Developmental Biology (SDB) at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Early steps taken to protect the immigration executive action suggest that the White House has learned a lesson from legislative battles past.
"Big money drives legislation, that's the lesson," said Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, who expressed concern about the surge of lobbying money in Albany.
But the Obama administration's legislative successes have offered hard lessons to liberals as well.
"I learned some valuable lessons about the legislative process, the importance of bipartisan cooperation and the wisdom of taking small steps to get a big job done," she said.
The lesson of the legislative accomplishments of the lame-duck session is that early, visible and adamant engagement by President Obama makes a difference.
There are lessons from the 1986 legislative experience that can be applied to health care reform today.
To those who would assume that the opposite of limited borrowing is unlimited borrowing -- rather than no borrowing at all -- legislative leaders advise a quick history lesson on the intent of past county referendums.
Lessons From History Hotly contested legislative wars are traditional fare in Washington, of course, and bills are often shaped by the push and pull of lobbyists — representing a cornucopia of special interests — working with politicians and government agencies.
