I am grateful that the New York Times is willing to report the objective truth about why so many members of Congress are miserable and don’t want to continue in their jobs:

More than three dozen members of Congress have announced they will not seek re-election next year, some to pursue other offices and many others simply to get out of Washington. Twelve have announced their plans just this month.

The wave of lawmakers across chambers and parties announcing they intend to leave Congress comes at a time of breathtaking dysfunction on Capitol Hill, primarily instigated by House Republicans.

To be honest, the House is so pathetic that it makes service in Congress hard to bear even for senators. It’s just difficult to get anything enacted into law. The only way the government is able to operate at all is simply by extending already existing programs at their current levels. That’s what the continuing resolutions do, and it annoys hard right House Republicans because those levels were set when Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the House, but it annoys all appropriators from both chambers because none of their work can come to fruition.

Here and there, there is a trickle of bipartisan legislation passed unrelated to spending, but it’s hard for most lawmakers to convince themselves that they’re making a difference. At best, their presence in Congress takes up a spot that at least theoretically might be occupied by the opposing side, but even that is rare due to the uncompetitive nature of most seats. The truth is, these members can retire and in most cases no one will notice and it won’t make a lick of difference.

And, yes, this is entirely the fault of House Republicans. Kudos to the New York Times for stating this plainly and without caveats.