Washington Examiner Editorial: Closing the books on the worst Congress

I don't often speak out on current events, even though I am fascinated by the shenanigans in Washington. But this editorial is an exception. It shows that Congress is one of our enemies within.
Comment by Oldtimer

Americans can give thanks in this Christmas season for an end to the reckless and destructive 111th Congress. This is the Congress that passed Obamacare, against the wishes of a substantial majority of the public, on Christmas Eve of last year. In the dead of night, Democratic lawmakers stuffed the monstrous 2,700-page bill with special-interest goodies and political payoffs like the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase." As we have learned since, most members were still ignorant of the bill's contents three months later, when it gained final passage in the House. No surprise that its immediate results -- both intended and unintended -- have been almost uniformly bad.

Similarly, odds are that not one member of the 111th Congress actually read the so-called "cap-and-trade" bill before it passed the House in June 2009. Even a speed-reader could not have digested House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's last-second, 309-page amendment, which read as clear as mud: "Page 14, strike lines 1 through 3 and insert the following. ..." It was filed after 1:30 a.m. just before the vote on final passage. There is also serious doubt that any member of Congress understood the 2,000-page financial reform bill that Congress passed this summer. One of its two main sponsors, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., remarked, "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a long time. ..."

And Democrats wonder why Gallup found this Congress to be the least popular in the history of its polls?

After suffering a comprehensive and humiliating defeat in the midterm election, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the unfrocked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led lame-duck congressional Democrats on a last-minute banzai charge for more federal spending, debt, earmarks, taxes and regulations. They unsuccessfully pushed for the biggest tax increase in American history, a yearlong spending bill loaded with pork, and a DREAM Act to award amnesty to certain children of illegal immigrants. We hope that voters will remember these misguided initiatives in two years.

Our Founding Fathers were always wary of those who wanted government to do lots of big things. That's why they created a system that separated powers among three more or less equal branches and provided each of them with powerful checks and balances. When professional politicians become frustrated with Congress, it is a sign that our system is working as intended. Columbia University historian Alan Brinkley told Bloomberg News recently that "this is probably the most productive session of Congress since at least the '60s." When Congress votes on bills that no one reads or understands, it can be quite "productive." Americans have already rendered a verdict on such productivity and elected a new Congress with orders to clean up the mess in Washington.

 Read more at the Washington Examiner:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion
http://washingtonexaminer.com/#ixzz19EiXguMY http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/2010/12/examiner-editorial-closing-books-worst-congress#ixzz19EiolJod

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