Fun with Legislation!

Blog Obsidian Wings has done everyone a great service: they've actually gone through and catalogued legislation and amendments that both Obama and Clinton have been responsible for in their years in the US Senate. Its a useful reference.

But beyond that, the blog also contains some analysis about Obama's record. Here's some excerpts:

...I follow some issues pretty closely, and over and over again, Barack Obama kept popping up, doing really good substantive things. There he was, working for nuclear non-proliferation and securing loose stockpiles of conventional weapons, like shoulder-fired missiles. There he was again, passing what the Washington Post called "the strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet" -- though not as strong as Obama would have liked. Look -- he's over there, passing a bill that created a searchable database of recipients of federal contracts and grants, proposing legislation on avian flu back when most people hadn't even heard of it, working to make sure that soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were screened for traumatic brain injury and to prevent homelessness among veterans, successfully fighting a proposal by the VA to reexamine all PTSD cases in which full benefits had been awarded, working to ban no-bid contracts in Katrina reconstruction, and introducing legislation to criminalize deceptive political tactics and voter intimidation.

On his bipartisanship:

...all this bipartisanship stuff sounds very nice, but how do we know it actually works? Isn't this just happy talk that will evaporate in the face of reality? Or, alternately: doesn't this sort of thing involve selling our souls to our supposed partners in compromise? Curiously, Obama has an actual legislative record, and so it is possible for us to see both how he approaches bipartisan cooperation and what results it yields. And it turns out that Obama does achieve results by working with Republicans, and doesn't tend to compromise on core principles....Obama tries to find people, both Democrats and Republicans, who actually care about a particular issue enough to try to get the policy right, and then he works with them. This does not involve compromising on principle. It does, however, involve preferring getting legislation passed to having a spectacular battle.

And also contains a great rundown of his policies pushing greater transparency and accountability in government. Check it!

ALSO: This discussion of Hillary's record of "solutions":

...I don't see any significant legislation with her name on it...I don't see any accounts describing how she worked vigorously behind the scenes to further progressive goals - particularly on national security matters...in looking at her accumulated "solutions," I'm not seeing much. And that, of course, is the larger problem. Obama and Clinton's policies are pretty much the same - and they're both smart, capable candidates. The question is which one is actually going to stick out his or her neck to fight for, as they say, solutions. To me, the best evidence of future willingness to "solve" comes from past behavior. And "fighting for solutions" is not exactly how I'd characterize her 7+ years in the Senate. "Ostentatious centrism in preparation for a general election" seems closer to the mark.