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| Chart by republicanjobnation.com |
Where's The Farm Bill, Immigration Bill, Jobs Bill, or Any Significant Legislation That Would Move the Country Forward?
Legislative bills that are normally passed without even a discussion were not passed because they were never even brought onto the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote. The real problem is that the Tea Party members and establishment Republicans can't seem to get anything significant done, House Speaker John Boehner has had to rely on Democratic votes to get bills passed.A major reason for the lack of legislating, of course, rests in the divided government re-elected in 2012. That left Democrats in control of the Senate and White House, with Republicans in charge of the House.
Sarah Binder, an expert on legislative politics at the Brookings Institute, says that other factors are to blame as well, like policy disputes between members of the same party and the dwindling number of moderates willing to mediate tiffs between warring factions.
Carrie Dann, a political reporter for NBC News states that the Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform legislation earlier this year but prospects for a vote in the House are slim. House Republicans have voted some 47 times to either repeal or somehow change the newly enacted health-care law, efforts that have been shelved in the upper chamber.
That sets the backdrop for an election year in 2014. With all 435 House seats up for re-election and 33 Senate seats at stake next November, the balance of power in Congress is very much in play. Read More: NBC Politics article about our "Do Nothing Congress" November 26, 2013
With only a handful of remaining legislative days on their calendar, this current Congress is on track to go down as one of the most unproductive in modern history. The paltry number of bills Congress has passed into law this year paints a vivid picture of just how bad the gridlock has been for lawmakers, whose single-digit approval rating illustrates that the public is hardly satisfied with their trickle of legislative activity.
According to THOMAS, the legislative tracking service, this Congress has passed just 52 public laws since it gaveled into session in January. Check the
At this point in George W. Bush’s second term as president, for example, 113 bills had been enacted into law, according to numbers crunched by Pew Research Center’s Drew DeSilver. In the same amount of time during the 110th Congress – from January until before the Thanksgiving recess of 2007 – that number was 120.
So far this year, the president has signed legislation to specify the size of commemorative coins for the Baseball Hall of Fame, to name a subsection of IRS code after former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and to honor baseball great Stan Musial with a namesake Midwestern bridge.
With the ceremonial measures excluded, according to DeSilver’s calculations, Congress has enacted just 44 “substantive” laws so far this year. That’s well below the average of about 70 substantive bills passed in the equivalent time period between 1999 and 2012.
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| Photo by Eric Wolfson |
U.S. House of Representatives John Boehner (R-OH)
Many in Washington say Boehner is to blame for his woes. Others say the fractious nature of the current Republican caucus might have undermined any speaker. Newt Gingrich, who held the post in the mid-1990s, says that Democrats’ control of the Senate and the White House has made Boehner’s job “10 times harder than mine was.” Boehner still plays a key role in Congress, but primarily by refusing to allow votes on measures supported by the Senate, like its immigration reform bill, which Democrats say would pass if it came to the floor. In fact, in a strange twist on bipartisanship, most of the must-pass measures adopted by Congress recently have gotten through the House only when Boehner has defied the wishes of a majority of his caucus and relied on Democrats. Those votes have been widely described as a sign of weakness. If that is so, that may be evidence that the problem isn’t purely Boehner’s own. His Democratic predecessor, Nancy Pelosi, turned to Republicans seven times for votes she couldn’t get from her own side. |
| Paul Ryan (R) and Patty Murray (D) working on budget deal. Photo by navytimes.com |
Obama vs. Boehner: Who Killed the Debt Deal?
In a New York Times Magazine Article in March, 2012 - Who Killed The Debt Deal? Almost immediately after the so-called grand bargain between President Obama and the Republican speaker of the house, John Boehner, unraveled last July, the two sides quickly settled into dueling, self-serving narratives of what transpired behind closed doors. In the months that followed, some of Washington’s most connected Democrats and Republicans told me in casual conversations that they didn’t know whose story to believe, or even what, exactly, had been on the table during the negotiations. Both sides knew that if the most crucial and contested details of their deliberations became public, it would complicate relationships with some of their most important constituencies in Washington — or worse. It’s one thing for a Democratic president to embrace painful cuts in Medicare and Social Security benefits, or for a Republican speaker to contemplate raising taxes, if they can ultimately claim that they’ve joined together to make the hard decisions necessary for the country; it’s quite another thing to shatter the trust of your most ideological allies and come away with nothing to show for it. Obama and Boehner have clung to their separate realities not just because it’s useful to blame each other for the political dysfunction in Washington, but because neither wants to talk about just how far he was willing to go. |
| Photo by jobsanger.blogspot.com |
December is for Deadline on Budget Deal:
December 13, 2013 is when House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R) and Senate Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D) are supposed to produce the compromise conference report on the budget negotiations; By the way, congressional appropriators are very itchy to get at least a topline number from Ryan-Murray to find out if Sequester 2 is really going to kick in.
Democrats are resisting a proposal to increase the amount federal employees contribute to their pensions, while Republicans are challenging the concept of trading spending cuts for promises of future savings. Democrats are also demanding an extension of benefits for long-term unemployment insurance, either as part budget deal or as a separate measure.
In case a budget deal isn’t reached, House lawmakers yesterday began discussing the outline of a short-term bill to fund the government, according to a Republican leadership aide. The bill would probably be for three months, after current authority expires Jan. 15. Read More: Bloomberg December 6, 2013 Budget Negotiators Seek Limited Deal as Opposition Mounts
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| Photo by obamacrat.com |
What America Needs as Opposed to What Political Parties Need
President Barack Obama Address on December 4, 2013 focused on his plan to grow the economy and the middle class. The unemployment numbers that came out on Friday were encouraging, 7%, the lowest in 5 years, since the financial crisis. This country needs significant legislation on many issues, the Farm bill (without $40B taken out of food stamps like the Republican Congress want,) Immigration Reform, Jobs, Women's Rights legislation, that stops the attack on women, Voter ID/disenfranchise laws stopped, it does not need the obstructionism, partisanship politics, misleading rhetoric and outright lies, selfishness, corrupt politicians, Tea Party members backed by the ultra-rich, corporations, and Super PACS (that are buying our elections and Representatives.) The TeaPublican/Republican Party needs to get those who treat the word "compromise" as a word that doesn't exist in the English language out of their elected offices. That's harder to do since the 2010 Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United. That's why we need a Constitutional Amendment to overturn that decision. The parties need to work together to solve issues and stop the racist, hateful, and obstructionism that just doesn't make any sense for anyone.
How Income Inequality is Holding Back Our Economy
In a Center for American Progress December 4, 2013 Article Ben Olinsky and Asher Mayerson explain how "Trickle Down Economics" didn't, and don't work. "For more than 30 years, conservative politicians have tried to sell Americans on the notion that giving tax cuts to the wealthy will spur economic growth and job creation, generating broad-based economic prosperity. Their marketing of this “trickle-down economics” has been successful: After decades of campaigning, many Americans now accept the oft-repeated assertion that lower taxes and less regulation leads to job growth. Congress followed suit, lowering tax rates sharply for the highest-income earners, while leaving tax rates relatively unchanged for other groups. When President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, the marginal tax rate for the highest income bracket was 70 percent, but that fell to just 28 percent by the time he left office. Even after modest increases since then, the top marginal tax rate for top earners today hovers at just more than half of what it was in 1980 (see figure 1). At the same time, Congress and the courts have taken repeated steps to roll back labor and financial regulation, further contributing to the skyrocketing wealth of the top 1 percent."Jared Bernstein explains the "Impact of Income Equality" in a Center for American Progress Article on "The Impact of Income Inequality on Growth" He says "Among the most important economic challenges facing the United States and some other advanced economies today is the increase in the inequality of economic outcomes. In the case of the United States, the distributions of income, wages, and wealth are more dispersed than ever. Though measurement issues abound, it is widely agreed that U.S. economic inequality is at historically high levels."
Jobs
The U.S. created 203,000 jobs and the unemployment rate falls to 7%, that's good news. It's the lowest it has been since the financial crisis occurred in 2009. In a Huffington Post December 6, 2013 article on the November Jobs Report the Associated Press "A fourth straight month of solid hiring cut the U.S. unemployment rate in November to a five-year low of 7 percent. The gains in the job market could spur greater economic growth." We need a jobs bill passed, infrastructure repair and replacement, and training to put people back to work who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and are not good candidates for the jobs that are available.much of our infrastructure is in dire need of repair, the amount of bridges that hundreds of thousands of American families drive over daily, that have failed inspections is unbelievable in a country like ours. Pass a damn jobs bill and let's get the infrastructure repair5s and replacement underway. |
| Photo by iowarepublican.com |
Immigration Reform
In a Washington Post Opinion on December 6, 2013 famed Chef Jose Andres said "The first time I saw America was from my perch on the mast of a Spanish naval ship, where I could spot the Statue of Liberty reaching proudly into the open, endless American sky. At night, I would often wonder whether that sky was the explanation for the stars on the American flag — put there so the world would know that this is a place of limitless possibility, where anyone from anywhere can strive for a better life."He recalled that starry sky on Nov. 13, when after 23 years in America, my wife, Patricia, and I were sworn in as United States citizens. The naturalization ceremony in Baltimore, attended by 72 other tearful immigrants from 35 countries, was a moment I had dreamed about since the day I arrived in America with little more than $50 and a set of cooking knives, determined to belong. I eventually settled in Washington, where my partners and I have been fortunate to build a restaurant business that now employs thousands of Americans across the country.
Because many of us took great risks to come here and support our families, immigrants tend to have an especially strong work ethic. My friend Rodolfo started his career in America tiling the floors at Jaleo, our first restaurant. But he soon began washing dishes and baking bread overnight, sometimes holding two or three jobs while he learned how to cook. And today, that construction worker from Bolivia is a head chef, a restaurant investor, a wonderful father and a proud American citizen.
If other immigrants had the chance to pursue their dreams like Rodolfo, all of America would benefit. As legal residents, immigrants would contribute more in taxes, spend more at our businesses, start companies of their own and create more jobs. Immigration is not a problem for us to solve but an opportunity for America to seize.
Right now the legislation is stalled in the do-nothing-Congress. The Senate bill S 744, the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act" introduced to the Senate on April 16, 2013, by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) passed the Senate on July 27, 2013. In the U.S. House of Representatives there numerous bills related to the Senate bill;
H.R. 3568: Training Highly Skilled Americans Act of 2013
Comprehensive Immigration Reform Stalled
House Speaker John Boehner refuses to bring a comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill, like the Senate's S 744 to the floor for a vote. Senate Majority has said for some time that there are enough votes with House Democrats and Republicans to pass a bipartisan bill. But, there it sits, stalled.
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| Photo by politusic.com |
We Must Fire These Representatives Who Are Not Representing the American People's Best Interests
If you check the Bills To Be Considered in the U.S. House of Representatives for the Week of December 9, 2013 you won't see a Farm Bill, an Immigration Reform Bill, a Jobs Bill, or much of anything significant.
Just as many important issues have not been acted upon by this Do-Nothing-Congress, about to become the "Least Productive Congress Ever" in the Guinness World Book of Records. Talk to friends, neighbors, co-workers, staying with these obstructionist TeaPublican, Republicans is hurting our Republic. The turnout for the 2014 elections will probably determine who controls the House and the Senate after the midterm elections. Typically the incumbent President loses seats in the House during his second term especially. We must not let that happen, for the good of the country.
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