Try the US Senate. It wouldn't be fair to blame everything on the Senate -- okay, or the entire Congress, at least not as logical as blaming everything on the White House -- but the Senate is a embarrassment when it comes to responsible legislation. Very, very few senators of either party are emerging from this session with their integrity intact.
You're worried about climate change? what the mortgage crisis is doing to the economy? fuel prices? people losing their homes? inflation? OPEC blackmail? The Senate is more committed to in-fighting than in well-fought battles producing well-honed legislation on your behalf. There's something particularly insulting in that close-up of the minority leader's piggy little face over the caption: "During debate on a climate change bill this month, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell required that the 492-page bill be read aloud." McConnell's personal vendettas always seem to take precedence over action.
In a rundown of Senate failures, the Washington Post concludes with an analysis of what went wrong with the "housing package," a carefully crafted piece of legislation intended to deal with the mortgage crises with input from both parties and the White House. Everything was going just fine. It sailed through the House. It managed to avoid the plague of a cloture vote in the Senate.
But then [Republican Senator John] Ensign demanded an amendment to add the renewable-energy credits, noting that the housing bill had begun life as H.R. 3221, the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007. The Senate grabbed H.R. 3221 in April, wiped out the energy provisions, replaced them with housing provisions and changed the bill's title to the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008.
At that time, Ensign and his Democratic co-sponsor, Sen. Maria Cantwell (Wash.), urged their colleagues to keep the energy credits, and the Senate voted to restore them, 88 to 8. But the House later rewrote the housing bill and wiped them out again. Now Ensign is threatening to use every parliamentary trick at his disposal to restore them, although the amendment would ruin efforts to finalize the housing bill.
Ensign said he just wants to make sure the energy credits are extended, a goal supported by Democrats and Republicans alike. "I don't have any trouble being an obstructionist when you're trying to do something good for the country," he said.
But congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution said Ensign's demand "really points to a breakdown." The housing bill, Mann said, "is as good a faith effort by the majority as you can point to in this Congress."
The Senate is expected to pass the housing bill soon after it returns July 7. But with more than 8,000 homes going into foreclosure every day, Jerry Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Homebuilders, said, a two-week delay could prove costly.
"All I see is one senator blocking what could have been a law enacted before the July 4 recess," Howard said. "It doesn't make any sense."
No, it doesn't make any sense. But it's part and parcel of a disease which is as prevalent on the left as on the right. I've been trying to find a way of writing about it for over a week. The country seems so full of panic and anger that it's afraid of action, any action. This self-destructive mood is hardly illogical given that we're in the final six months of one of the worst periods in our history, dealing with undoubtedly the worst leadership we've had. Ever.
It's a lousy time to get stuck. We have urgent problems to deal with. It would be better to stick around during the week-long celebrations of this nation's birth and get to work saving its life.
And by the way, some news on the economy.
