Worse Congress Ever

Ezra Klein makes a strong case for the above. The current Congress is on track to be by far the least productive in terms of passing Bills. The public's approval rating is so low that it is less popular than the IRS, lawyers, Watergate, banks, the BP oil spill, Paris Hilton and communism. And most importantly, they have done measurable damage to the country. Regressives took us to the brink of default during the deficit debate last year. Monthly job growth was proceeding nicely but took a dive during the months of that hostage negotiation and picked up again immediately thereafter. Consumer confidence also dropped precipitously during the 'debate' and  also rose right after. The US lost its AAA credit rating for the first time in history. And it cost $1.3 billion in extra borrowing costs.

So is the entire Congress to blame? Can we ascribe responsibility to both parties? Klein interviews Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institute and Norman Ornstein of The American Enterprise Institute, who together wrote the book It's Even Worse Than It Looks. Here blame rest firmly with the regressives, who have become extreme. For them any compromise is anathema. Ornstein notes Republican leaders themselves provide direct evidence for their assertion. For example, Senator McConnell proudly exclaiming his number one goal was to make Obama a one-term President. He also made it clear that after the mid-term elections there would be no cooperation whatsoever so as to try to pin the blame for a sluggish economic recovery on the President and the Dems.

This also reflects in the regressive using the Senate filibuster an unprecedanted number of times to block any and every  reasonable proposal to help the American people. Mann discusses how the filibuster has allowed such obstruction by a minority party. In a parliamentary system we might have the same kind of partisanship we see in the US but only the majority party gets to decide. The filibuster though provides a means for the minority to block anything from happening. It was used carefully and selectively for many decades but now it is abused for pure political posturing to the detriment of the entire populace.

Klein wonders if the public will not see the above and merely blame the majority in Congress for their pitiable record. They surely should on the House side, since their votes on the issues are there for any to see. On the Senate side though the regressive minority are responsible due to the filibuster and their obvious obstruction. We are rightfully mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore. Solution? Vote out the regressive in both parties and support not just Democrats but progressive Democrats in the coming election. For not all Dems are progressive, and we need to root out those with regressive tendencies in that Party as well. Unfortunately as the above evidence supports, there don't seem to be any progressive Republicans whatsoever.