Welcome back?
Congress returned to Washington this week after a thoroughly undeserved one-month vacation to find their work right where they left it — far from finished.
The lawmakers say they had to break to talk to their constituents and gauge the mood of the country.
They didn’t have to leave Washington to find that out. The voters are depressed and anxious thanks in part to congressional stunts like a totally unnecessary fight over raising the national debt ceiling that resulted in a first-ever dent to the national credit rating.
Congress fouls up one of its mandatory duties every year so it’s almost not worth mentioning, but every year since 1995 the lawmakers have failed to finish the 12 appropriations bills that fund the government for the next year by the Oct. 1 deadline. The Senate has passed only one.
Sometimes the lawmakers never get around to it, resorting instead to a sloppy and expensive process of passing temporary measures. Often the whole mess gets left to the next Congress to take care of.
The number one talking point will be jobs.
The emphasis here is on “talking.” The Republicans refuse to spend any money on hiring.
Their centerpiece is a bill to prevent the National Labor Relations Board from restricting when employers can locate new plants. But this bill, if it passes, does not create jobs. It only relocates them.
Last week, President Barack Obama laid out his newest jobs agenda, which should be big, bold and visionary.
He could put all 14 million unemployed Americans back to work tomorrow and congressional Republicans would still say no rather than hand him a victory in advance of the 2012 election.
One fight to watch will be the reauthorization of the surface transportation bill that comes up for renewal every five to six years.
This one has been waiting to be renewed since 2009 and has been extended seven times. If the bill expires at the end of the month, billions in road, bridge and mass transit projects will be idled along with their workers and the government will be unable to collect the 18.4-cent a gallon gas tax.
House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica, R-Fla., says he’ll agree to one more extension, a short one, but he and the Senate are far apart of the cost and duration of the new bill.
The most recent of the short-term extensions the FAA has been operating under since 2007 expires Sept. 16, meaning a halt to airport construction, tens of thousands of layoffs and hundreds of millions of dollars in uncollected airline ticket taxes.
If a bipartisan super committee cannot agree on $1.2 trillion in budget cuts, those cuts go into effect automatically and across the board in 2013.
When the voters get a look at the impact of those cuts, they’ll be even more depressed and anxious – and angry, really angry.
Meanwhile, Belgium has now gone more than 450 days without a parliamentary government and seems to be getting along quite nicely.
Congress, take note.
– Scripps Howard News Service