Congress can’t do much, but they did manage to send the president a bill today that will prevent the Highway Trust Fund from running out of money in August. That’s the good news, and the only good news coming out of Capitol Hill. The bill itself is ridiculous, which is what you would expect from something wholly created by House Republicans without any input whatsoever from the Senate. That didn’t prevent 81 senators from voting for it, however. Among Democrats, only Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware voted against it, presumably because it is such a stupid way to finance our infrastructure spending.
But at least Congress was able to kick the can down the road so that we can drive on it. They solved a problem. Not so for the tens of thousands of unaccompanied children who have arrived at our borders since last October. Boehner has a new majority leader and a new whip, but they aren’t any better at doing their jobs than their predecessors. Once again, Boehner had to pull legislation off the floor rather than see his own caucus vote it down. The House will convene tomorrow morning which was supposed to be the first day of the August recess. They don’t want to go home without giving the president any money to deal with the kids at the border, but they can’t agree on a bill that the Democrats might support. They can’t even agree on a bill that the Democrats won’t support. They are not capable of governing.
In the Senate, the Republicans blocked the confirmation of a bloc of State Department nominees, including the ambassadors to Guatemala, Russia, and South Korea. They did this because they’re still miffed about Harry Reid using the nuclear option. But, last I checked, Russia had just been involved in downing a commercial airliner, Guatemala was flooding our borders with desperate children, and South Korea was one of our closest and most important allies in the Far East.
Since the long-term unemployed aren’t about to form a Super PAC, they’re still screwed, too.
I remain guardedly optimistic that enough Americans will notice what is happening in Washington that the GOP will not be rewarded for this non-performance. But the fact that I have reason to doubt this is a pretty bad indictment of where we’re at as a country.
I think that optimism is misplaced for a couple of reasons:
Best case scenario: Democrats get in charge of house & senate, republicans go into overdrive about Democrats passing way too many wasteful laws and increase of big government. Lose both, just in time for the GOP presidency.
Worst Case Scenario: GOP gets House and Senate, sinks DNC, sinks economy, kills any chance for reforms w/ banks,corporations & we all become droogs from clockwork orange.
I think this is dangerous. Illinois did this “kick the can down the road”, the result was pensions being cut because they weren’t funded. Private companies have the added incentive of closing the plan and distributing the contents as management bonuses, ala Hostess.
I read once that Jackie Kennedy asked her husband how he would describe himself. His answer was “As an optimist without illusions.”
I’ve been trying to maintain that mode for what seems like a long time.
Great post, but you uncharacteristically blew the title. It’s not Congress that is the problem. It’s the GOP in Congress.
I know you know that, but really it must always be spelled out.
This is impossible, however, due to the lack of any meaningful difference between the parties.
The American public knows or cares little about what Congress is doing. I just read a headline in our local paper that Obama’s favorability in the public opinion poll has fallen again. I imagine that a large part of this is due to the refugee crisis and the Republican Party making hay. The public doesn’t understand the story behind this wave of Central and South American children being pushed into the country by their terrified families. They keep yammering about Mexicans and why we should be posting militia along the borders to shoot anyone crossing over. It’s sickening.
I wonder what future historians will make of these times, when a narrow-minded, prejudiced Congress did everything in their power to undermine a well-intentioned President and drove their own country into the ground for spite.
That they had a goal, and accomplished it.
Strong and wrong, baby. Mission-oriented. Focused.
I expect glowing reviews.
I wonder what future historians will make of these times, when a narrow-minded, prejudiced Congress did everything in their power to undermine a well-intentioned President and drove their own country into the ground for spite.
Oh, that one’s easy. Like with the Antebellum South and Reconstruction, they’ll refuse to connect the dysfunction with the ideology of those doing the sabotage. Thus:
1.) Hapless liberals and moderates clinging to the feel-good fiction that conservatism means ‘staid, skeptical incrementalism’ instead of ‘tribal, hierarchical domination’ will stupidly allow conservatives another chance to redeem themselves rather than casting them to the same ashcan as fascists and communists.
2.) History will see this period in history as a black swan created by Powerful Great Daddy Figures instead of a structural flaw in society and be completely blindsided by the next spate of conservative revanchism.
A May, 2013 Gallup poll on Americans’ rating of Congress included asking if the respondents knew the name of their Representative. Of those polled 35% said that they did. Even if those answers were honest, it means that close to two out of three Americans don’t know their Representative’s name, let alone how he or she is voting.
“The information of the people at large can alone make them safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1810. ME 12:417
We are so fucked.