‘This Congress, they are accustomed to doing nothing, and they’re comfortable with doing nothing, and they keep on doing nothing,” President Obama whined at a September 15 Democratic National Committee gathering in a private Washington residence.
Now that his “Blame Bush” hobby horse finally has retired to the glue factory, Obama resorts to pinning America’s woes on the “Do-Nothing Congress.” If only these parliamentarians would stop taking endless lunches, sipping cocktails at Capitol Hill happy hours, and napping at their desks, America might have some chance of returning to normal.
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Obama speaks as if the entire Congress were in lock-step Republican opposition to his every initiative. Damn those pesky elephants!
Of course, Obama’s rhetoric cynically turns things upside down.
Congress consists of a do-something House of Representatives, run by Republicans, and a do-nothing Senate controlled by Obama’s very own Democrats. Obama evidently believes that if he can keep spouting clever lies and distortions, no one will call him on it. Well, it’s time to do so.
The 112th Congress has been characterized by a very active legislative pace in the Republican House, featuring the passage of many measures designed to revive America’s exhausted economy.
The Democratic Senate, meanwhile, is a much lazier place, where House Republicans’ measures go to die.
The figures bear this out, beyond debate.
Through September 15, the Republican House had been in session for 120 days. The Democratic Senate through the same date had been in session only 115 days.
In terms of recorded votes, the two bodies are as different as Times Square and the Everglades. Through September 15, the GOP House had voted 711 times. Meanwhile, across the same period, the Democratic Senate had only 137 recorded votes. So, the allegedly lethargic GOP legislators whose sloth dooms the nation actually are five times as energetic as their indolent counterparts in the Democratic Senate.
This distinction might discredit House Republicans if they wasted their time voting on National Apricot Yogurt Month and similar matters of national urgency. In fact, Republicans have approved serious legislation designed to get America moving.
“Our new majority has passed more than a dozen pro-growth measures designed to address the jobs crisis,” Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor wrote Obama on September 6. “Aside from repeal of the 1099-reporting requirement in the health care law, however, none of the jobs measures passed by the House to date have been taken up by the Democrat-controlled Senate.”
These have included bills to reduce anti-business regulations, accelerate offshore oil production, and speed the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry Canadian petroleum to refineries in Texas. The pipeline alone would create 20,000 jobs.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid seems to be in no rush to consider Obama’s American Jobs Act, even though Obama wants it enacted “right now!”
“We’ve got to get rid of some issues first,” Reid said. For now, he is not sure “exactly what I’m going to do yet with the president’s jobs bill,” especially since some of Reid’s own Democrats, such as Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Jim Webb of Virginia, seem ho-hum about Obama’s $447 billion Stimulus Jr.
While House Republicans adopted a budget last April 15, the Democratic Senate has not approved a budget since April 29, 2009. This Democratic inaction seems to violate the U.S. Congressional Budget Act, which requires passage of an annual budget resolution. Indeed, the Senate rejected Obama’s budget in May by a vote of 0 to 97 — with every Democrat in the chamber voting nay.
Obama can disagree with every piece of paper passed by the GOP House. But when he slyly bashes Republicans by accusing “this Congress” of “doing nothing,” he simply is lying through his teeth. If Obama wants the entire Congress to get something done, he should tell Harry Reid to wake up and do his job.
— New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
If the Senate would have passed the budget that the House sent them, we would not have needed a Continuing Resolution, would we? Or was that budget for next year?
The budget the House passed earlier was for next year. However, for govt, next year starts on Oct. 1. (It does for the company I work for as well. Very few organizations have their fiscal year end at the same time as the calendar year. Too many people want vacation at that time of year.)
Let's not forget: If Obama was still in the senate, and a republican was President, he would be talking about how the senate was deliberately designed to act slowly.
Everything BHO does, seems contrary to someone who actually wants to win re-election, or even at a minimum, protect and improve America and the lot of it's Citizens ...
I have maintained, since 2009, that BHO is doing EXACTLY what he set out to do - he IS accomplishing exactly what he was made President for {and not by the American People, in case you think 'We, the People' made him so}, but by the real power-holders. He is right on track to run the country into the ground, as planned, and 'fundamentally transform America' - once again, just as he planned. I don't believe that he ever anticipated a second term - that would merely be an added bonus. He has done what his handlers employed him to do!
I agree with your assessment, but for the life of me (and the country) I don't know why. Why does he want to destroy America; who stands to gain; what happens during the interim; what is the endgame going to look like; will America then be a colony, defunct, open land, or what?!?!
I believe who gains is Obama and all his cronies, not to mention the UN which is determined to have one world government, socialist in nature, and I believe their one sole reason is for the redistribution of our wealth to THEIR coffers.
You're exactly right. I used to have the same problem wrapping my head around why Democrats would ever want to do things that appear on the surface to basically destroy America as it's been since its founding. And then I realized that unless you crush the spirit out of people, and more importantly business, you can never control them to the degree you wish. It's been said that people will give up their liberty when faced with destitution, poverty or hunger. So the more people you can have on the government dole, the more you can set all the rules about how not just this country, but the world "should" be managed, in the view of those doing the managing. It is not only immoral but nearly, if not truly, treasonous when you really think about it.
And once again, the House sends a spending bill to the Senate and the Senate simply votes it down. Had the Senate passed it, Obama had already promised to veto it.
So the epithet "do nothing" merely means "do nothing that we want you to do", just as "compromise" was quickly revealed to mean "give us what we want."
What has been most interesting to me in the recent weeks is that we have a President who does not even lead his own party, a President who felt it necessary to call a joint session of Congress to deliver a speech about a "jobs bill" that he hadn't even written yet, and on which he apparently did not even consult with leaders in his own party.
Obama talks like he's taking us all to school, but it turns out he has consigned himself to the desk in the hallway.
Just because the House passed bills doesn't mean they are good bills. I could pass 500 bills that say "cows are to be corralled from left to right, not right to left", but it would serve no purpose. You also fail to mention that when the Democrats had control of the house, the house GOP filibustered at an alarmingly high rate....so much that in 1 year, they filibustered more than the 10 year span between 1950 and 1960. The system of government we have was designed to be this way. The house passes bills and the senate shuts them down. It's called a balance of power so that one branch of government doesn't control everything.
You cannot filibuster in the House, only the Senate, well, not since 1842 anyway. So, the GOP couldn't have filibustered when the Democrats had control of the House.
The article did mention that the House had passed bills that engaged energy production, and jobs creation. These would seem to "serve a purpose". So, your criticism of the article as one sided is incorrect.
Face it, Obama isn't going to let the truth get in the way of his talking points. This is the most dishonest president that we have had in a very long time. And that is saying something.
did you even read the article? the bills mentioned are pro-growth and will create jobs...Reid's position is weak here, he can't agree with the president and he can't agree with the house...I hope they vote that bum out.
Actually Nick, it wasn't until Scott Brown was sworn in that the R's had the ability to block passage of any bill. If a bill failed to achieve 60 votes, it was because of the lack of Dem unity. But the meme of R obstructionism relies on ignorance which is unfortunately rampant, so go for it.
Now the shoe is on the other foot and the D's are obstructing R bills that are actually popular with the public such as "cut, cap and balance".
No, it's not called "balance of power so one branch of government doesn't control everything". The House and Senate are the same branch of government. They are not there to balance each other out. And the Senate's job is not to, as you say, shut down the House's bills. Their "job" is the same as the House... to pass legislation. Learn some civics before you go spouting off.
