House Republicans passed a bill on Thursday that calls for a budget bill containing $61 billion in cuts to become law if the Senate does not pass a spending plan by Wednesday. Bachmann, along with all but 15 Republicans, voted for the bill that would “deem” the budget bill into law, also known as a “self-executing rule.” One year ago, Bachmann called a similar bill “violence to the Constitution” and suggested impeachment if Democrats “deemed and passed” health care reform into law.

The move was not unanimous among Republicans. Libertarians such as Rep. Ron Paul of Texas voted against it, as did fellow Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert, who said the bill “violates my conscious and the Constitution, and I cannot vote for it.”

All of Minnesota’s Republican members of Congress voted for the self-executing rule.

On Sean Hannity’s Fox show last year, Bachmann said of the deem-and-pass strategy and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, “That should laugh her out of the House and there should be people that are calling for impeachment off of something like this. That’s how bad this is. I mean, trust me, Dennis Hastert never could have gotten away with this.”

In fact, Bachmann took to numerous media outlets to oppose the strategy, which Democrats soon dropped in favor of an up or down vote. The measure at the time was being proposed by New York Rep. Louise Slaughter.

“They use the Slaughter rule in the House, something that hasn’t been done before,” Bachmann told NewsMax’s Ronald Kessler.

And on Fox’s Red Eye, Bachmann told the host, “It does great violence to the Constitution. We call it the ‘slaughter the House rule.’ It’s never been done before in the history of the Congress.”

Bachmann was rebuked by fact-checkers when she made the claim that deem and pass was never used before, and she quickly backtracked.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, criticized Bachmann on the House floor on Thursday over the bill.

“But they pretend in their language what is clearly contrary to the Constitution. Because they say, if it doesn’t pass, the provisions of H.R. 1, the bill they’ve sent to the Senate, passed by the house on February 19, 2011, are hereby enacted into law. In other words, we’re going to deem it passed,” he said. “Michelle Bachmann, apparently may be a candidate for president said this, that deem and pass ‘ignored the constitution and warranted the impeachment of the House Speaker… there should be people that are calling for impeachment off of something like this.’”

Rep. Michele Bachmann MnIndy file photo

Minnesota figured big in a press conference with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., on Tuesday. The senior lawmaker called out Minnesota radio host Chris Baker of KTLK and Rep. Michele Bachmann for statements they made at last week’s campaign event with Sarah Palin.

Hoyer took issue with Bachmann’s assertion that civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., made up a story about racially-based name-calling during a Tea Party protest in March.

“I think it undermines the credibility of somebody who’s a denier. People denied a lot of things happened, bad things that happened,” Hoyer said Tuesday, according to the Hill.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that what John Lewis said happened and what others saw and heard happen did, in fact, happen. That’s why I think the credibility of that assertion is questionable.”

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer chastised talk radio host Chris Baker for calling Democrats a “lying, thieving … bunch of commies.”

“I don’t think that’s very useful. Not only do I not think it’s useful, I think it creates an atmosphere and a debate that is neither constructive and can sometimes be dangerous,” Hoyer said, according to Politico.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) (WDCpix)

As Washington policymakers screamed bloody murder last month over bonus payments for a few hundred AIG employees, another much larger scandal flew virtually unnoticed on Capitol Hill: The divide between the wealth of blacks and whites — already gaping — grew again. Now, as Congress prepares to consider a series of consumer-friendly finance reforms, some minority advocates, researchers and lawmakers are pointing to that startling trend as another reason the reforms are urgently needed.

“We need to work together to begin to attack the institutional and structural reasons why communities of color continue to lag so far behind white families,” said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus.

The concerns were justified last month. According to the Federal Reserve, the net worth of the typical African American family in 2007 was just 10 percent of the net worth of the typical white family — down from 12 percent in 2004. Put another way: For every $1 held by whites five years ago, blacks had 12 cents. Three years later, they had a dime.

“This is not just a gap. It’s a deepening canyon,” Meizhu Lui, director of the Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Initiative at the Oakland-based Insight Center for Community Economic Development, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last month. “The overhyped political term ‘post-racial society’ becomes patently absurd when looking at these economic numbers.”

The staggering statistic has taken some powerful lawmakers by surprise. Participants in a wealth gap summit on Capitol Hill last month said that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who attended the event, was shocked to learn the extent of the disparity.

But incredulity is one thing; closing the gap is another. And congressional lawmakers with that goal in mind face a series of barriers to getting the job done. Not only is there little recognition that such a divide exists, but the causes, according to reform advocates, are so rooted in history and engrained in policy that they’re tough to iron out. Furthermore, the solutions reside largely in tax code reforms — among the thorniest issues to tackle on Capitol Hill. Advocates for closing the wealth gap say that congressional lawmakers are well behind the curve.

“In terms of them really grappling with it,” Lui said Friday, “I don’t think they’ve done that yet. There’s plenty of room for them to address this further.”

It won’t be easy. Advocates are pushing to reverse the Bush-era tax cuts, like those slashing the capital gains and estate taxes, which provide handsome benefits to those with accumulated wealth, but do almost nothing to help Americans of color, whose assets are a fraction of those held by white’s.

“People aren’t thinking in terms of wealth, it’s always about income,” Lui said of the public policy focus. “But income alone won’t do it.”

Thomas Shapiro, professor of law and social policy at Brandeis University, said additional tax reforms could include a shift in the mortgage interest deduction to benefit lower-valued homes and the creation of another deduction for renters — controversial ideas that “no one’s really talking about,” he said.

“When the issue is something like the racial wealth gap,” he said, “it’s very difficult to think of policy levers [as solutions].”

That the wealth disparity is so wide is largely attributable to prejudiced policies both public and private. Advocates and academics point out that some of the largest federal benefit programs of the last century propped up whites but largely excluded minorities. The G.I. Bill, for example, provided $120 billion in low-interest mortgage loans to servicemen after World War II, yet less than 2 percent went to minorities before 1962, Liu found. And the Depression-era Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, created to modify mortgages to prevent foreclosures, benefited no minorities whatsoever, she said.

More recently, Harvard University discovered that, among blacks and whites of similar incomes, lenders targeted blacks more often for sub-prime loans, even when those minority borrowers were eligible for less risky arrangements.

To combat that trend, advocates and some Democrats are pushing for the creation of a Financial Products Safety Commission, a concept championed by Elizabeth Warren, who chairs the congressional panel created to oversee the Wall Street bailout. A Senate bill, sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) would do just that. The commission would regulate financial products, like mortgage loans and credit cards, much the same way the Consumer Products Safety Commission protects buyers from faulty coffee makers and lawn chairs. Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) have also sponsored the bill.

The release of the Fed’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances, a triennial assessment of American financial trends, reveals that such policies have taken their toll. The report found that, as a group, people of color held roughly 16 cents for every $1 held by whites in 2007. For Hispanics, the figure was 12 cents. For blacks, a dime. And those figures were crunched before the collapse of the economy. Advocates fear that the gap probably widened since then because, while fewer minorities than whites own their homes, minority homeowners tend to have a higher percentage of their wealth wrapped up in their homes.

Similarly, blacks and Hispanics have fewer credit cards, but tend to drive up higher debts per card. As a result, said Jose Garcia, associate director for research and policy at Demos, a liberal policy group, “more of [minorities'] income goes to pay debt, and less goes to buy assets.”

Minority advocates are also wary of payday lenders, who tend to charge exorbitant rates and target minority communities where traditional banks are often scarce. “Billions of dollars are being taken out of low- and moderate-income communities as a result of these alternative financing schemes,” Shapiro said.

Not that Congress isn’t doing anything at all. Legislation to help homeowners by empowering bankruptcy judges to alter mortgage terms passed the House last month, though it’s since stalled in the Senate. Democratic leaders are also preparing to take up bills tackling predatory lending and  credit card abuses. Another proposal to rein in payday lenders is also on the Democrats’ radar screen.

Speaking at the wealth gap summit last month, Lee said that reforming these industries to protect minority communities is long overdue. “Too many communities do not have access to traditional banks and rely too heavily on payday lenders and check cashing stores that charge uncontrolled fees and out of sight interest rates,” Lee said. “We must work together to use this financial storm to demand the institutional reforms that will begin to lift all American families out of this crisis.”

Reform advocates say they’re heartened by such statements coming from Capitol Hill, but many remain wary that few lawmakers are sticking their necks out to close the wealth gap.

“They were very friendly and very encouraging,” Shapiro said of the congressional participants at the summit, “but nobody was stepping up and saying, ‘I want to be the champion of this.’”

Mike Lillis is Congress reporter for the Washington Independent.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (Md.), Majority Whip James Clyburn (S.C.), and House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) have contributed thousands of dollars, held countless fundraisers and traveled across the country for Democratic candidates.

In Minnesota, Democratic leaders are campaigning hard for Ashwin Madia, as he vies for the open seat held by Rep. Jim Ramstad, who is retiring at year’s end.

Pelosi has contributed $14,000 from her campaign war chest and her political action committee to Madia’s effort, according to the latest FEC reports.

Hoyer has campaigned for Madia and has contributed $12,000; Clyburn has given $12,000; and Emanuel has campaigned, contributed $7,500, and raised money for Madia, too.

A recent poll conducted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has spent more than $1.3 million to help Madia win, showed him leading by five points.

Stuart Rothenberg, the author of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Report, wrote that the race “now leans toward Madia … the race is still close, but the political environment is awful for Republicans and the DCCC is in big time for their nominee.”

Despite the communal effort by party leadership to increase the size of the Democratic majority, self-interest is at stake, too.

Pelosi, Hoyer, Clyburn and Emanuel are all campaigning hard to curry favor with future colleagues who will have a say in whether they remain Democratic leaders.

In the weeks after the election, Democrats will meet in Washington, D.C., and hold internal party elections (Republicans will hold their own elections, too). When Congress meets in early January, House members will vote to determine who will be Speaker of the House. The vote normally is split along party lines, so Pelosi will be reelected easily if all Democrats support her.

But leadership races are often contentious, revealing a party’s inner turmoil as well as a lawmaker’s political skills. So the allegiance of incoming freshmen can be crucial.

Perhaps no recent Congressional leader was better at the care and feeding of future members of Congress than former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who campaigned tirelessly in 1994 for Republican candidates who eventually won.

He not only raised and contributed money to them, but also sent them care packages full of office supplies, toiletries and snacks. The loyalty he won from GOP candidates helped propel DeLay past then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s favored candidate to become the majority whip.

In the case of today’s Democrats, the current leadership has worked well together during the past two years and the leadership team will remain in place during the 111th Congress. But leaders will face a big test in 2010, when Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the Democratic Caucus chairman and fourth ranking member of leadership, reaches his two-term limit as caucus chair. It’s either up or out for Emanuel at that point.

Emanuel, a former senior aide to President Clinton before winning a seat in Congress in 2002, led the Democrats to victory in the 2006 mid-term elections as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

What Emanuel chooses to do after the 2010 midterm elections, as well as how he manages his relationship with a President Obama, could have far-reaching consequences for the party’s leadership. He normally chooses the most aggressive and ambitious course of action and has let reporters know that he wants to be the first Jewish Speaker of the House.

“Both Pelosi and Hoyer are same age, both love their jobs, and both could be there for another six years,” a Democratic lobbyist with close ties to House leaders said. “No question that if [Emanuel] stays he will be speaker. The question is whether he can wait.”

“He’s on a path to someday be speaker,” another Democratic lobbyist said. “It’s a question of what are the stepping stones along the way and how long will it take?”

With days to go before the 2008 election, speculation about the 2010 midterms and future party leadership might appear pointless given how much can change.

But leadership races determine who sets the party’s message and agenda in Washington, as well as who advises the Speaker and majority leader. So until the moment comes when Emanuel has to give up his post as Democratic Caucus chairman, he and the other House leaders are busy collecting chits and building new relationships with possible newcomers like Madia.

Jonathan E. Kaplan is the Center for Independent Media’s Washington correspondent.