Well, we knew this Congress was taking inaction to the extreme, but this may surprise you: Only 15 bills have become law this year: passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president.
15. For the whole year.
At this pace, Congress would easily break the record for futility set by ... the last Congress.
The American people deserve a refund. These lawmakers are just taking our money.
(And we know where the biggest share of the problem resides -- the House, which can't seem to do anything but vote against Obamacare.)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-05/congress … g-low.html
Here in Des Moines, a group of perhaps 30 regularly meet and often arrive at congressmen's offices to give them the message about how we want things done. We are working to further the President's agenda. The odds are awful, but I cannot stand by in good conscience and let this nation sink to the levels the Teapublicans want.
FOR EXAMPLE: women are especially insensed lately by state-level restrictions on their health options. It is impossible for me to fathom the depravity of the minds that insist that an ultrasound probe needs to be inserted into a woman's pussy to show her that there is a living thing in there. What woman doesn't know what a fetus is? If you ask me this is a Teapublican Rape. But if they get their way, we will probably all be subjected to such forced actions. Doctors will have to read from scripts about a woman's health choices. It isn't difficult to imagine attendance required at church services (this would be Christian only, of course) or at least the social stigma attached to not attending. Re-writing history to favor their conservative take on what happened - hell that is already being done by re-writing textbooks, killing public education, etc. I could go on, but you get the point. Conservative restrictions, all in the name of freedom.
And all of this is actually manipulated from the lofty position of the wealthy corporate owners who press the social issue buttons of these neanderthal Teapublicans to vote against their own best interests. Is healthcare for everyone a terrible thing? Only if you lie and say healthcare equals killing grandma, forcing people to abandon their long-held beliefs, etc. Of course healthcare is none of these things, but they lie and say it is.
And there is SO much more distortion going on . . .
Yeah, it's worth the fight!
The Republicans in the House are in districts that are, on average, 75 percent white. So the only danger to their re-election is not from Democrats, but from the Tea Party. As a result, they have ZERO incentive to compromise on anything. As the story above points out, many of the GOP reps actually think they were elected to just oppose anything Obama supports. It's pathetic, and this development has basically brought domestic policy to its knees. As I've said before, you'd have trouble passing a resolution honoring Mom, baseball and apple pie if Obama supported it.
It's terrible, because House members are just not interested in actually governing. And I really don't see any solution to this. The Supreme Court made it even worse by neutering the Voting Rights Act.
BTW, I think the House has made it clear that immigration reform is DOA. The House will not even consider the Senate bill, and you can bet that whatever they pass will be full of poison pills.
The way things are going, barring something catastrophic for the Dems, I think the GOP has cut its own throat in terms of presidential politics.
And Republican House members just don't even care.