Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Why can’t Congress just get along?

It’s not my headline.  I borrowed it from Ed Hornick of CNN, and I hope he doesn’t mind.  I tried…but there is no better way to say it.  It’s a question almost everyone is asking themselves, even the President of the United States, but no one has come up with an answer.  Mr. Hornick has written an excellent article on the issue using Mr. Obama’s American Jobs Act as the nucleus for discussion.  It isn’t a pretty picture.  The author calls the underhanded moves by the Republicans just more “political theatre.

I have done several articles on this dysfunctional body of bunglers you can see by searching “Congress” above.  The most recent illustrates the amount of confidence the public has in that branch of government.  “The American public has basically dismissed the U.S. Congress according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll,” posted on Oct. 13, reveals that only 14 percent of the public support this Congress, lower than just before the 1994, 2006 and 2010 elections, when the majority party was on the verge of losing power in the House.

 

In a vote last Tuesday that was apparently meaningless except to prove that the GOP and a couple of Democrats still won’t pass any bill presented by the President.  Now the Dems can use that against Republicans in 2012, but not without the latter claiming the Dems did it just for partisan spite.  Pathetic, says John Avlon, an Independent and CNN political contributor.  Avlon cites other divided governments that have worked together, which continues to give credence to the concept that the GOP just wants to get rid of Mr. Obama.

 

The jobs bill, opposed by the Republicans in its entirety, due primarily to the 5.6 percent millionaire tax, could pass in parts due to partisan agreement.  Does that mean the President will take everything he can get, then, when the obstructionist-right pooh-poohs the tax raise, the Dems tell the American public in 2012 the GOP doesn’t love you like we do?  There has to be a better way to convince the masses that the party of big business just doesn’t give a damn about them.

 

Avlon says the Republicans’ record of being the “party of no” has moved from just being a slogan to reality.  They are voting against legislation simply because it came from the President.  Political science professor, Gary Jacobson, at the University of California, San Diego, thinks the GOP ploy is “pretty transparent.”  Why would the Republicans want to decrease unemployment before the 2012 election?  Duh.  This places everything mouthed by Speaker Boehner, Sen. McConnell and their henchmen in the category of pure crap.

 

Especially McConnell’s continuous bellowing about Obama’s American Jobs Act being just a re-run of the 2009 Recovery Act, which he claims didn’t work.  Not so, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which claims it created or supported millions of jobs, keeping the unemployment rate from rising another 2 points.  The Recovery Act was supporting up to 3.6 million jobs in 2010, 2.9 million in 2011.  Moody’s Analytics says the American Jobs Act will add 2 points to GDP growth, add 1.9 million jobs, and cut unemployment 1 percentage point.


So why can’t Congress get along?  Maybe it should take its lead from the animal world where opposites do attract…like the following slideshow suggests:

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