Clean Out The Congressional Asylum
With unemployment posting the largest one-month jump in 22 years in May and gas prices firmly ensconced north of the $4 a-gallon mark, one would think our leaders in Washington would be falling over themselves to provide relief for a beleaguered nation, right?
Right?
WRONG!
With President Bush busy haranguing Europeans over Iran’s nuclear program on his farewell tour of the continent, the White House has indicated it views House Democratic attempts to extend unemployment benefits as “fiscally irresponsible”. Signaling an impending veto should the extension reach the President’s desk, the administration has based its opposition to the measure on its provision of extended benefits across the nation, including in states with low unemployment rates.
So much for that whole compassionate conservatism we used to hear so much about.
Passing the measure with the support of forty-nine rogue Republicans, House Democrats handed the legislation off to their less than enthusiastic Senate colleagues. “We’re not wasting weeks on it,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said of the seemingly doomed bill. Assuring Senate Republicans he wouldn’t make them uncomfortable and won’t force the issue should they object, Reid said he would bring the House bill up for consideration nonetheless.
Kudos for standing up for your convictions, Senator Reid! Glad to know civility and decorum take priority over survival in your book!
In a half-hearted effort to placate House Democrats and millions of benefits recipients across the nation, Reid suggested Senate Democrats might later attach the benefits extension to an Iraq war spending bill. This comes in spite of White House opposition and threats to veto any such measure.
Meanwhile, as unemployment benefits are set to expire for millions, gas prices continue their unrelenting northern trek. Unmercifully buffeted by rising food and fuel prices, Middle Class America looks forlornly to Washington for help.
And the Democratic Congressional response? Tax Big Oil!
To Hell with taxes; Representative Maxine Waters, D-Cal., has menacingly suggested perhaps the time has come to nationalize oil companies. So, the answer to Big Oil is Big Government?! There’s an original and earth-shattering idea. As Jack Nicholson said, sell crazy some place else, we’re all stocked up here.
With no mention of establishing an independent commission to take politics out of its management and recommend when the hundreds of millions of barrels of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve should be tapped or any discussion about opening up ANWAR or the Outer Continental Shelf for drilling, Senate Democrats forced Republicans to rise to the rescue of their oil industry allies and block a windfall profits tax that would have repealed billions of dollars in tax breaks for the greatly maligned industry.
While doing nothing to increase the supply of oil or lower the price of gas at the pump, the measure was designed to spread the pain of rising energy prices to the energy suppliers themselves. Unwilling to take tangible efforts to assist the unemployed, Senate Democrats opted instead to spend their time on symbolic measures aimed at further villanizing the oil industry and their Republican colleagues. For their own part, Republicans remained steadfastly by their allies side in the face of mounting public outrage at rising gas prices and the inflationary ripples they continue to send throughout the economy.
Being failed by both parties in Congress on major issues of vital importance to the economic viability of the Middle Class, my attention is increasingly drawn to my hall closet. Perhaps the time has come to take out the old broom and sweep the halls of the great white asylum clean.
Asylum, you ask? Yes, because the Capitol is inhabited by a group of self-important, delusional sociopaths and their sycophantic servants that believe their bloviating bluster and partisan posing actually mean something in the grand scheme of things. Nurse Ratched to the House floor, please!
Republican and Democrat alike, they have displayed an unwillingness to put partisanship and pandering aside and concretely address the maladies that currently ail the republic. Accordingly, the time has come to give someone else a crack at it. The entire House and a third of the Senate is up and as far as I am concerned, they’re out. No incumbents, no matter their party, seniority, sex, race, religion, gender or philosophy.
Nothing gets done between the beginning of the next Congress and the 2010 mid-terms, I’m all ready for Round 2 with another new House and another third of the Senate being freshman.
Perhaps this will be the long-awaited wake up call that finally signals to Washington we’ve had enough and we’re not going to take it anymore! While I have serious doubts, there is always hope. However fleeting and limited it may be.
As Nancy Reagan so eloquently said, faithful readers, just say no! No incumbents, no way, no how! Stay tuned for further updates as the lunatics roam the halls and developments demand.
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