POLITICS - Feign shock while you read this: the latest Rasmussen Reports survey finds just 5 percent of “Likely Voters rate the job Congress is doing as good or excellent.”
Yes, 5 percent of Americans think Congress is doing a good job. Which means 5 percent of those polled didn’t understand the question.
Right after taking his comically oversized gavel, Speaker of the House John Boehner stated, “Hard work and tough decisions will be required of the 112th Congress. No longer can we fall short. No longer can we kick the can down the road. The people voted to end business as usual and today we begin to carry out their instructions.”
Translation: All the other Congresses have fallen short. We are going to be better than all of them. Hilarious foreshadowing ensues.
Boehner’s first act was to have (parts of) the U.S. Constitution read out loud on the floor and the entire (non-amended parts) of the document put into the public record for the first time. Why hasn’t it been done before? Maybe because it took 90 minutes of precious session time to not accomplish anything. Sense a theme?
On that same day incumbent Congressman Pete Sessions (R-TX) and freshman Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA) took their oaths while watching C-SPAN at a fundraiser. They had to be sworn in later since it violated the Constitution to just raise your hand at the TV.
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So this devotion to the founding document was all for show – a way to waste time giving lip service to patriotism while giving real fidelity to money. That’s the theme.
A theme consistent with pizza being a vegetable because Congress is an over-boiled, over-processed, unappealing lump.
The 112th Congress is at its halfway point. And even if you don’t care about opinion polls and refuse to believe more people approve of scabies in principle – look at their track record: This Congress is only responsible for passing 80 laws so far. That’s it. Eighty. And 13 of those “laws” were naming courthouses and post offices. Other Congresses have passed five times the amount of legislation in their tenures. The 108th Congress with Republican majorities in both houses wrote 498 laws in their two years. The 111th with Democratic majorities made 383 public laws.
We’ve had to endure the threat of a government shutdown every three months. Think about it: April the government was going to shut down over defunding Planned Parenthood. Again in August over the debt-ceiling. In September it was to hold up disaster relief. And another shutdown was barely averted in December with a spending bill attached to the payroll tax cuts. As a direct result of this Congress’ squabbling our credit rating was downgraded by Standard and Poors. That is, in fact, “ending business as usual.”
If we take out all the partisanship – all the pontificating of what Congress should or should not do – the facts are they’re doing NOTHING but filling space, waiting out the clock and still threatening a work stoppage. Basically the worst of public salaried workers is the 112th Congress on a productive day.
And this “nothing” is not appealing to Republican voters. It’s not making Democratic voters happy. It’s not making Independents overjoyed. In fact it’s uniting us all to a solid voting bloc – 95 percent of the country – who thinks this Congress has failed to do its job.
It’s failed America.
How do you get a Congress that is unanimously reviled? It’s simple: get voted in by the American people only to adhere to the needs of lobbyists and moneyed interests justified with cockeyed ideology passed off as “principles.” Oh and do it during the worst economy in several generations.
How’s that working out?
(Tina Dupuy is a nationally op-ed syndicated columnist, investigative journalist, award-winning writer, stand-up comic, on-air commentator and wedge issue fan. She blogs at tinadupuy.com.) –cw
Tags: Congress, Pete Sessions, Americans, John Boehner, 112th Congress, Republicans
CityWatch
Vol 10 Issue 2
Pub: Jan 6, 2012
