The Stupid Pill

The last Congress was excoriated by the press, vilified by popularity polls as the greatest “do-nothing” Congress of all time. By this time in the last session of Congress, they had passed a meager 23 statutes. House speaker John Boehner, Tea Party aficionado and GOP leader, tried to explain that Congress should not be measured by how many laws it passed but by how many laws it repeals. Really? Yup, really! By the end of 2012, only 2% of bills proposed last year passed and down by a third over the laws passed the year before (also a do-nothing year). “These statistics make the 112th Congress, covering 2011-12, the least productive two-year gathering on Capitol Hill since the end of World War II. Not even the 80th Congress, which President Truman called the ‘do-nothing Congress’ in 1948, passed as few laws as the current one, records show.

“The difference between 1995 and now is that Republicans rebounded in the second year of the 104th Congress in 1996, churning out 245 laws with a Democratic president, including a tax cut package, a minimum wage increase, an overhaul of the nation's welfare system, and requiring law enforcement to disclose where sex offenders live.” USAToday.com, August 14, 2012. But since virtually none of the Tea Party GOP representatives is running against a Democrat in their Gerrymandered districts – the races are all focused in right-wing-skewed primaries which pit conservatives against each other – they are running for show, most certainly not to accomplish anything other than getting re-elected. Compromise just does not exist in the U.S. House of Representatives.

To prove the point, the House just sent another bill to the Senate repealing the Affordable Car Act (so-called Obamacare)… a bill which won’t even make it to the Senate floor. And the House knew that, but hey, it fills their hours and gives them fodder for their ultra-conservative Gerrymandered constituents. The House should list attempting to repeal this law as a hobby, since they do it more frequently than most of them probably have sex!!! This was the fortieth repeal effort from the House!!! And you wonder why this venerable (venereal?) institution has a 10% approval rating according to a recent Gallup poll?

So the 2012 Congress was completely ineffective, letting the Sequester stand, and pretty much chopping down stuff we really need. But 2013 is even worse! “Congress has only passed 15 bills that have become law this year, putting it on pace to be even less productive than the preceding Congress, from 2011-2013, when 23 laws were enacted. Congress continues to suffer from record-low approval ratings and partisan gridlock that stalls most legislation.” NBCNews.com, July 21^st. It took a threat of a “nuclear option” by the Democratically-controlled Senate – killing the right to filibuster against presidential appointments – to get a few appointments through the review (advice and consent) process to confirmation.

But we’ve got a very serious scenario approaching rapidly: in September, we face a government shutting down – AGAIN! – if the debt-limit is not extended. The Tea Party wants massive cuts to almost everything except defense or they will not vote to approve the extension. Expect brinksmanship and maybe a government shutdown to force the issues.

We sit on a fragile precipice. The “recovery” is nothing more than a soaring stock market that supports the one-percenters, a whole lot of people who have just plain given up finding a job and job growth statistics based on, for the most part, crappy, badly-paying jobs, many part-time or contractor work with any benefits. It doesn’t take much to plunge this nation right back into the kind of recession that we all dread. The Tea Party seems to be following in the steps of the German EU mandate for austerity that has actually placed most of Europe into precisely that kind of recession.

What happened to smart conservatives? Where did the right-of-center pragmatists go? Where are the GOP Dwight David Eisenhowers of tomorrow? The Tea Party minions – addicted to slogans versus solutions – are manning the shovels of destruction and represent one of least intelligent factions in American history. And rather than resist this malignant trend and find solutions and compromises, the Tea Party appears to be hell-bent on forcing a solution based on a failed state. They are also depriving the GOP of the ability to gather a national constituency sufficient to elect a president. And if New Jersey Governor Chris Christie thinks he can survive the GOP primary race in a Gerrymandered Tea Party land, there’s a nearby bridge I’d like to sell him!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I guess they wash down their daily stupid pills with lots of warm, gurgling tea!