At times like these, it’s easy to get down on the American voter:
A plurality of Americans, though, perceive this Congress as having done less than usual. I’m not even sure how a political system is supposed to function with an electorate so far detached from reality.
I’m not sure that polling of people’s opinions on the issues even has any meaning. I mean, if there is one thing I am fairly confident about it’s that the Republicans made a winning argument that the government was doing too much. It’s not that people might not think Congress has done too little to get the economy moving, but they saw the government’s fingers in the auto industry, in the banking industry, in the health care industry, in the mortgage industry, in the insurance industry, and it seemed like a lot was going on.
As a purely factual matter, the present Congress has been more productive in terms of passing meaningful legislation than any since LBJ’s 1965-66 Congress passed Medicare, the Voting Rights Act, and a plethora of other landmark achievements. Here’s a list of the major bills passed by the 111th Congress.
Acts of the 111th United States Congress
January 29, 2009: Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, Pub.L. 111-2
February 4, 2009: Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, Pub.L. 111-3
February 17, 2009: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Pub.L. 111-5
March 11, 2009: Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, Pub.L. 111-8
March 30, 2009: Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, Pub.L. 111-11
April 21, 2009: Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, Pub.L. 111-13
May 20, 2009: Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009, Pub.L. 111-22
May 22, 2009: Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of 2009, Pub.L. 111-23
May 22, 2009: Credit CARD Act of 2009, Pub.L. 111-24
June 22, 2009: Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, as Division A of Pub.L. 111-31
June 24, 2009: Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009, including the Car Allowance Rebate System (Cash for Clunkers) Pub.L. 111-32
October 28, 2009: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, including the Matthew Shepard Act, Pub.L. 111-84
November 6, 2009: Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009, Pub.L. 111-92
February 12, 2010: Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act, as Title I of Pub.L. 111-139
March 4, 2010: Travel Promotion Act of 2009, as Section 9 of Pub.L. 111-145
March 18, 2010: Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act, Pub.L. 111-147
March 23, 2010: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Pub.L. 111-148
March 30, 2010: Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, including the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, Pub.L. 111-152
May 5, 2010: Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010, Pub.L. 111-163
July 1, 2010: Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010, Pub.L. 111-195
July 21, 2010: Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Pub.L. 111-203
August 10, 2010: SPEECH Act of 2010, Pub.L. 111-223
October 7, 2010: Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010
October 8, 2010: Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Reauthorization Act of 2010
If Congress had passed nothing more than the health care bill and the Wall Street reforms, this Congress would have been more significant than any since 1965-66. But they did a lot more than that. Perhaps the best piece of legislation was the Credit CARD Act. The public lands bill was very significant. The creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency was huge. Little noticed was the fact that the Dems finally got a patient bill of rights bill though, finally passed a hate crimes bill, and finally cut out the middle man on college loans. Veteran’s did extremely well in this Congress, which the American Legion readily recognizes.
Never mind that the president stopped the freefall of the economy, saved the auto industry, and secured subsidies for all those who can’t afford health insurance, he and this Congress have been extremely productive on other fronts. That the American people could tell pollsters that this Congress had done less than usual is not just bizarre. It doesn’t even make sense.
Policy is way too complicated and boring for the American public. The Republicans know this perfectly well. That’s why they stick to simplistic jargon of the “Two legs bad, four legs good” variety.
Wrong and slanderous. Policy is NOT ‘way too complicated and boring for the American public.’ Watch one of those town hall debates or stand in an Iowa living room before the Caucus. The American public asks excellent policy questions when given the chance.
Policy is way too complicated and boring for the American MEDIA – which is why no one knows that this was a very productive session of Congress, that Democrats lowered their taxes, that Tea Partiers all talk errant nonsense about an imaginary Constitution, and so forth. They would rather hurt themselves than have to deal with policy issues. They have trivialized democracy to death.
We have the usual “what has the guvmint done for ME?” attitude. With all of the things that got done, how much of it actually affected us, our neighbors and friends?
HCR is too big, too complicated to even deal with. I would not have a clue on where to go in VA to take advantage of the few things that kick in before 2014.
Folks are still being kicked out of their homes at an alarming rate-some for no reason at all. We see no one going to jail.
Wall St. is worse than ever. Big salaries, big bonuses still.
Unemployment not coming down. The only thing in 2 years that has affected me personally is the unemployment extensions which my guy Perriello voted for. So I will get out and vote for him on Tues.
Many of our people are detached. A whole lot more are just plain pissed off. Even with all the legislation passed, for normal people things aren’t getting better. At all. Corporations are buying elections, sitting on trillions and not hiring.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t vote-they should because if the thugs get in power, we’re going to be a whole different country by 2012. We’ll be looking at 2010 like the good ole days.
In Virginia, regulation under the healthcare reform act will be through the Virginia State Corporation Commission, Bureau of Insurance. The Commissioners are elected for six-year terms, and it would be good to follow the 2012 race; apparently the vote occurs along with the party primaries.
The Implementation Center section of http://www.healthcare.gov can tell you what has been implemented in Virginia.
Its section Regulations lists the regulations that have been issued already and the requests for comments on the upcoming regulations on health insurance exchanges.
And the overall http://www.healthcare.gov site has a lot of information to guide people in dealing with their particular situations, including coverage and pricing options. That more than anything else can help your friends, neighbors, family, and co-workers understand what the healthcare reform act does for them.
OK. I consider myself a high info voter but where did you get all this info? The state of VA website? If I didn’t know where to go for this info–and I thank you for telling me-how do you think the low or no or wrong info voters would go?
And of course, being unemployed with no income this doesn’t help me at all. So I guess til 2014 we the unemployed will continue to go to the ER. I am fairly sure the $ has not come through for low income or no income Virginians.
Which makes my point about “what has the guvmint done for me?”
(1) Jon Stewart’s interview with Obama. Obama said that state insurance commissioners would have responsibility for enforcing the regulations and have already rejected some rate increases in some states.
(2) http://www.healthcare.gov, which Obama promoted with a demonstration on YouTube about two months ago.
If you have a child you may be eligible for the TANF program. You may also be eligible for assistance in paying your [medical bills https://jupiter.dss.state.va.us/EligibilityScreening/DisplayQuestionnaire.do%5D.
If voters’ preferences were grounded in an informed view of past and future policy outcomes, then sure, they’d vote Dem. But I think that’s a huge assumption that you really need to get out of your head booman, although i find posts like this a beacon of sanity in a world turned upside down.
I think our current electorate is (roughly) 35/35 split between self-identified dems and republicans. I think a good 30% of the electorate “watches” or “consumes” politics much like they do any reality TV show- whether the contestants are fashion designers, singers, chefs or obese people, its all the same formula for success: the person the judges and the audience reward is always the one who “plays the game” the best. Unfortunately, in this analogy, the “judges” are the Village so that’s who these people take their cues from. SO regardless of his accomplishments, Obama and the dems aren’t “playing the game well” and that’s why these 30% independents are going to stay home or vote republican. The Party of No strategy of the GOP wasn’t enough to stop major legislative achievements, but it was enough to make winning for Obama extremely ugly in the process. The election of Scott Brown made the GOP the scrappy upstarts- OBAMA GOT PLAYED – you can hear people mouthing before they flip back to see what happened at the last tribal council meeting on Survivor. Its the same dynamic that ruined Carter and saved Clinton- Obama needs to make the narrative about him outfoxing and outmaneuvering the GOP-tactically and strategically, not about what he actually gets done. Obama put away such childish things in his first 2 years to get a lot done and pull the country back from the brink of a depression. Now he needs to start figuring out how to not get voted off the island.
I agree that it is disheartening that many American voters are so uninformed. However, I think the blame lies less with them and more with:
I would say a progressive movement that has ducked and covered when their right-wing relatives bully their moderate thinking relatives into believing what they heard on Rush Limbaugh. And has not as progressives provided reasonable arguments and fact to their moderate relatives but wasted their time trying to convert their wingnut relatives.
Or has been complacent within their progressive enclaves.
The circular firing squad has mostly been a blog phenomenon and has little impact outside of blogs. And very little there.
I agree with all three.
When you have a dishonest media, it is difficult for the President to break through about his accomplishments.
The fact is that voters do not understand economics and the appeals that they think of the federal budget like their own checkbooks is wrongheaded. And it ignores the fact that most folks are in hock worse than the federal government is — with relatively fewer assets to cover that debt.
They want a demand-driven recession and recovery begun without government spending. It’s not gonna happen. And what the Republicans will do is increase the budget for the Defense Department in order to stimulate the economy. And then claim their restraint of Democratic spending and push for tax cuts is what stimulated employment growth. If they do otherwise, they are dead as a party in 2012. Their fingerprints will be on the gun that killed the economy again.
I don’t understand what exactly was won with regard to the student loan bill. I get that we’re saving money, but the middle man is still very necessary to go to college, and they’re still guaranteed money from Uncle Sam to give kids loans.
I still needed a shit ton of private loans for this year…$8,000 in fact, and this is a public university.
Here’s some info re: what do we get.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/10/28/college-board-report-shows-decrease-net-tuition-due-studen
t-lending-reforms
I get that we saved money and were able to give to more people with increases in grants and such, but my point is that the middle man is still there, and our approach is piss-poor. Other countries school is either free, or the loans are zero-interest.
It’s not so much that Congress didn’t do much (as you noted they did) it’s that none of the stuff they did made fixed the economy. It kept the economy from imploding into a black hole, and I guess we are forecasted for 2% growth but that is not enough to make things “good.”
So a more accurate thing to say would be that Congress has not done enough to fix the economy. Of course most people aren’t actually thinking of it that way, but that’s the actual problem.
Well…DUH!!!
A population detached from reality is more like it.
Left, right and center.
Forcibly detached by subliminally applied media efforts over about 60 years.
(Google <Operation Mockingbird> for more on that subject.)
A population of which the very definition of reality is the total unreality of corporate-owned television.
Can’t have an electorate in touch with reality if you have a population that watches network news, patently false advertisements and an “entertainment” culture that is almost totally degraded.
You’re barking at the wrong end of the dog, Booman.
This really is the only long-term solution.
Station WTFU once again signing off.
Sighning off, actually.
Sigh…
AG
Good link. Wikipedia has a very lengthy article about Operation Mockingbird. It looks like it was the model for the great Republican Wurlitzer that David Brock describes in his Blinded by the Right.
I think back to that wonderful Carlin bit about how the problem with our country isn’t the politicians but the public:
“Now, there’s one thing you might have noticed I don’t complain about: politicians,” he explained in a routine that challenged all the premises of today’s half-a-loaf reformers.
“Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don’t fall out of the sky. They don’t pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It’s what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you’re going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain’t going to do any good; you’re just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here… like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There’s a nice campaign slogan for somebody: ‘The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'”
I completely agree with you.