Congress - Are We Getting Our Money's Worth?

Next week is the twenty-fifth week of 2012 and Congress will be adjourning for their fifth week-long recess. In preparation for their week off, the House of Representatives rushed to pass some new legislation designed to enhance their conservative credentials but destined to die on the congressional scrap heap.

what eye thynk: Why do these people even bother coming to work? Or better yet, why do we bother to pay them? Maybe we should begin to consider our congressmen to be piece workers--pass a piece of legislation that can get through both houses of Congress and that the President will sign and we’ll cut you a paycheck. I’d be willing to bet we’d see them working more than 20% of the time. They would most certainly have to stop wasting time passing bills that are designed only to be eye-candy for the far right. They may even learn to listen to other opinions and (gasp!) rediscover the art of compromise!

The latest round of silliness includes a Republican sponsored bill that prohibits the creation of any new federal regulations until unemployment goes below 6 percent. This is just a skewed way of saying “We don’t care about worker safety, the environment, job equality or anything that may impede the corporate double-time march to godhood“. (It would, however, be interesting to see how that no-new-regulations idea could be applied to all those abortion road-blocks of which the Republicans are so proud.)

Last Thursday, the Republican controlled House voted to repeal an important part of the Affordable Care Act by voting to remove the requirement that companies selling more than $5M in medical devices pay a higher tax on their earnings. This tax money was intended to subsidize health insurance for those who fall into the lowest income brackets. The House bill will not even be taken up by the Senate, the fact of which the Republicans were well aware even as they preened for their conservative homeys.

At the same time, the House refuses to consider any legitimate or useful legislation like the transportation bill which is designed to help the economy by creating millions of new jobs while rebuilding our aging infrastructure. But NOT helping the economy is their real purpose here. The Republican party has completely lost sight of reason. They have become so focused on the goal of defeating the Democrats that they have abandoned any semblance of governing--and governing is their job, it is what we, as citizens pay them to do.

How long to you think Romney would have employed a private sector worker he hired to paint a yellow line down the middle of the highway if that worker instead spent all his time pulling weeds along the berm? But this is exactly what the Republican controlled House is doing while conservatives rain kudos down on their congressional heads, never noticing that the highway, with its missing center line has become a million car pile-up.

I’m sick of being treated like a dandelion. It is time to hire a Congress that will keep their hands on the paint brush and off the Round-Up. Is anyone with me?