To Congress, With Thanks

A lot of people were upset when the GOP-controlled 109th Congress spent all its time (as much as two days a week) debating gay marriage and flag burning amendments when the country was falling apart. What most didn’t realize is that this Congress doing nothing is Congress at its best.

Which is why I feel it’s time for few kind words for the much-maligned GOP “do nothing” Congress. When we look at the record, it is clear we should be thankful they have done so little, because what little they have done has been disastrous.

What is their proudest achievement? Massive tax cuts for the richest one percent of our society. So what does that mean for the rest of us? We pick up the tab. Ultra conservative judicial appointments also assure guns nuts they can shoot up schools and work sites. Nice going, 109th.

This is the only Congress in history that refuses to demand accountability of the Executive branch. (And if ever an Administration needed Congressional oversight, it’s this one). Senate Democrats asked for a committee to investigate war profiteers and the resolution was soundly rejected by every GOP member.

This Congress won’t ask why thousands of our troops are killed or maimed because they lack body armor, yet on behalf of the Religious Right it went into emergency session to save one life, that of poor brain-dead Terri Schaivo, spurred along by Bill Frist’s medical diagnosis based on a videotape.

While not on Abramoff golf outings, this Congress found time to write a prescription drug bill that strictly forbid the federal government from negotiating lower prices for consumers. As more and more Americans were forced into bankruptcy by stagnant wages, rising gas prices and soaring health care costs, the 109th made matters worse by approving a bankruptcy bill that sided with the credit card industry.

Oh year--who can forget their fiscal miscalculations in dealing with Social Security, Medicare Plan D and Hurricane Katrina? Little wonder this Congress has lower public approval ratings than Dick Cheney.

Difficult though it be, pronouncements of individual Congressmen stand out. Such as Arizona’s Rep. J.D. Hayword who introduced legislation for unlimited logging because “forests are a fire hazard.” Or Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe who calls global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and says our situation in Iraq “is nothing short of a miracle.”

And who can forget when Sen. Majority Whip Mitch McConnell sponsored a bill seeking $20 million for a party to celebrate American’s victory in Iraq? Perhaps he was still in shock and awe of President Bush landing on the aircraft carrier and looking dashing in his Navy flight jacket as he declared “mission accomplished.” (Not to be outdone were the repeated mutterings of Vice President Cheney that the insurgency “is in its final throes”).

Whatever. This ‘do nothing’ Congress never asked any questions—it just 'stayed the course’ and kept throwing money to Halliburton.

Perhaps the saddest accomplishment of this Congress is the authorization for construction of a wall across much of the U.S. Mexican border. What kind of message does that send to the free world? It’s hardly the one the French government admired so much in the early days of our Republic that it presented us with the Statue of Liberty. Perhaps our new image created by the 109th Congress will inspire a donation from Russia’s Vladimir Putin — something symbolic of the Berlin Wall.

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, whose state has a long unfettered border with Canada, said recently “you can be sure that if Congress can build a 12-foot fence, Wal-Mart can build a 14-foot ladder”.

Voters on November 7 will have the last word on the 109th and it is likely to be “goodbye, good riddance.” But were it not for such distractions as FBI probes, corruption scandals and a two-day work week, it could have been a lot worse.

Congress: Conyers is alive and well

Every day more and more evidence piles up that Democrats are going to regain control of the Congress. It’s so compelling that even Democrats in Congress are beginning to believe it.

Here’s how I know: Rep. John Conyers’ universal health care bill that has been lying dormant all these years has suddenly come alive. If the American people could have voted on the bill, Conyers’ legislation would have passed overwhelmingly when it was first introduced. But everyone knew that in a GOP-controlled Congress where the health care industry underwrites most of their campaigns, it didn’t have a prayer. So no one paid it much attention.

In a recent speech, Sen. John Kerry called health care “the great unfinished business of half a century.” He noted that for five decades, presidents “have approached this challenge, then backed away—and powerful interests have had their way.”

That’s why states took the lead. Last spring Massachusetts and Vermont both passed versions of universal health care. Illinois is knocking at the door as is Maine. Just this summer, San Francisco passed universal coverage and other California cities are making similar noises.

Any politician with presidential ambitions wants to get out front on this issue. All are envious of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney who got a jump on everyone when his state passed a health care reform bill that won him accolades across the nation. Close scrutiny of the Massachusetts law indicate it is quite a few rungs short of its promise of providing a ladder to affordable care for every resident, but his boast as “the man who brought universal health care to his state” is the brightest nugget in Romney’s otherwise lackluster presidential campaign.

No slouch at fattening his campaign resume is New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson who governs a state with the second highest rate of uninsured. He appointed a task force to study whether universal coverage will work in New Mexico, or at least measure up to whatever it is Mitt Romney is boasting about back in Boston. Earlier in the year Richardson vetoed a bill that would have funded a study of universal health care but that was BM (Before Massachusetts).

For years, labor unions have wanted health care taken off the collective bargaining table and have been active participants in statewide universal health care campaigns. Now as they perceive Democrats regaining control of the Congress, they’re giving new attention to the Conyers’ bill. Hundreds of local unions and central labor councils have endorsed HR 676, including state AFL-CIOs in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut and Kentucky. Just the other day the nation’s largest labor union, the National Education Association, signed on.

There is a huge and anxious audience impatient for government to do something about our country’s biggest domestic crisis. Health insurance premiums have gone up five times faster than worker incomes so it isn’t just the uninsured who are panicky. Businesses and state governments know too that health care costs are unsustainable.

Now that gasoline prices are also out of sight, oil companies are as profitable as the health insurance industry. Since the Bush administration has good friends in both camps, don’t expect any summoning of company executives to the White House for “jawboning” to bring down prices. The only solution is the traditional one: throw the bums out.

Once that’s done my guess is we’ve got a better shot at universal health care (with states leading the way) than energy independence, if global warming doesn’t get us first.

Midterm madness

The Top 10 Reasons
Republicans can win the midterm elections if a majority of voters believe:

They were helped by the Bush tax cuts.
The Iraq War is making us safer.
Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
The best way to save Social Security is turn it over to Wall Street.
Global warming is a myth. The best way to fix a problem is to ignore it.
Insurance companies should dictate health care policy.
Outsourcing will make us stronger.
Stem cell research is evil.
Government has no business negotiating lower drug prices.
Whatever is wrong with the country is Bill Clinton’s fault.


Spinning the war, for big bucks.

The Iraq War has been getting terrible reviews lately, so the Pentagon is taking direct action. Despite what you see on your TV screen at home and stories you read from front-line correspondents, Don Rumsfeld will have you know the war is really going quite well, thank you. What we have is a communications problem. So Rumsfeld has turned once again to those talented spinmeisters from the Lincoln Group, awarding them a $6 million contract to see that the media view the war through the same opaque lens Rumsfeld does. PR firms know that most of their press releases are tossed or ignored, but not those of Lincoln (Jefferson, Jackson, maybe even Franklin). All the news, wrapped in greenbacks from Uncle Sam. The going rate in an earlier Lincoln success ranged from $50 to $2,000 per story. As Columbia Journalism Review noted, Lincoln’s contract of $57.6 million for that campaign was more than the annual newsroom budget allotted to most American newsrooms to cover all the news from everywhere for an entire year.


More midterm madness

Rep. Tom Reynolds of NY, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said his investigators had been looking into perspective Democratic challengers since the summer of 2005. “These candidates have been out there doing things.” Which resulted in NRCC ads slamming Kentucky House candidate John Yarmuth for editorials he wrote years ago for his student newspaper. “They have never seen anything like this before,” crowed Reynolds. “We haven’t even begun to unload this freight train.”

Former Redskin quarterback Heath Shuler, running for Congress as a Democrat in NC, is being attacked in NRCC ads for late payment in back taxes. If Reynolds wants some real dirt on Shuler, he needs to talk to some Redskin fans still angry about a wasted No. l draft pick.