Congress
begins their traditional August recess a bit tongue tied
The
Senate and House spent their first full week enjoying their traditional August
recess with a double digit number of CODELs (Congressional Delegations) touring
the world and very few town hall meetings being scheduled. It seems that
Congress would rather not talk to their constituents at the level they did two
summers ago when the town hall meetings became so confrontational.
It
isn’t so much that members of Congress are afraid of their constituents but
rather they don’t seem to know what to say to them. When constituents ask: “why
aren’t you working on legislation that would help with the joblessness”, they
don’t have an answer. When town hall participants ask members of Congress how
they plan to address our out of control spending, they don’t know what to say.
As
the leaders of Congress announced their appointments to the super-Congress debt
committee this past week, I began to research each appointee’s years in
Congress. Naturally, I went to the Congress website for this basic bio
information. Each member of Congress is permitted to write his or her biography
or “about me” link on their website provided and paid for by us, the taxpayer.
I found it almost comical that most of the members of Congress appointed to the
super-Congress have modified their bio page so as to not reflect how long they have been serving in
Congress.
For example, the Senate Majority
Leader has appointed Sen. Baucus (D-MT), Sen. Murray (D-WA) and Sen. Kerry
(D-MA).
Senator Baucus represents the Senate
democrats on the finance committee. This is the same finance committee that
produced major parts of the ObamaCare bill in 2010. According to the Joint
committee on Taxation, ObamaCare included $491.7 Billion in taxes. The regulations
that the bill lobbed onto the citizens and businesses in America are too
staggering to mention in this piece. Senator Baucus has been in Congress for 37
years. His years of service were hard to locate on his bio page.
Senator Murray represents the Senate
democrats on the appropriations committee. This is the committee that didn't
produce a single appropriations bill last year in the U.S. Senate. This is the
same appropriations committee that has considered only 1 of the 6
appropriations bills that the House of Representatives has been dutifully
passing this year. This is the same committee that will be called to task Sept.
30, 2011 for failing to enact a single one of the 12 appropriations bills that
make up our federal government agency spending budgets for this upcoming fiscal
year. The drama moment of last fall and spring will repeat itself at the end of
September all because the appropriations bills aren’t being considered in the
Senate. I was able to learn lots about Sen. Murray from her website, but her 19
years of Senate service was also hard to locate in her bio.
Senator Kerry represents no key Senate democratic
committee that would help solve the debt crisis, but he will carry the White
House's water in the meetings. You see, Senator Kerry desperately wants to be
President Obama's Secretary of State. If he is a good and loyal water-boy for
the President, he might just earn that new title when Hillary Clinton decides
she has had enough of the Obama regime. Senator Kerry has been in Congress for
26 years. Together these 3 career politicians have served in Congress a total
of 82 years in Washington, DC. Hum...how's that Congressional representation
been working out for us?
Finally, the Senator from Massachusetts
might serve the SC well because several cities within "the Bay State"
are close to having their credit rating downgraded or given a negative outlook.
These municipality scores might inspire the senior Senator from Massachusetts
to work to get a deal and not just carry the empty water bucket for our
President. However, I wouldn't hold my breath on that on!
Stay tuned for more on the super-Congress.
Elizabeth B. Letchworth is a retired, elected United
States Senate secretary for the majority and minority. Currently she is a
senior legislative adviser for Covington & Burling, LLC and is the founder
of GradeGov.com (link:
http://www.gradegov.com)