Congress should repeal its own vacation first

Amanda Frost has a piece up at Slate about how Congress should abolish the Supreme Court’s three-month vacation. The merits of that idea aside, Congress should first abolish its own moronic vacations. Although I understand that representative democracy means visiting one’s home district, the number of breaks is ridiculous. The House essentially gets a week recess off every month. Both houses still take an August recess. Most of these recesses give Congresspersons time to raise money for their reelection.

Yet, Congress’s job is far more important and copious than the Supreme Court’s. If the Supreme Court chooses not to hear cases and allow different court of appeals opinions to rule in different circuits, the Republic will not collapse. If Congress doesn’t do something about the end of the stimulus and Bush tax cuts as well as the end of various federal aid, the Republic may actually collapse.

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*Sigh*

I read Calculated Risk (and you should too!) for its aggregation of various economic indicators and trends.

But every once in a while, Bill McBride will write some editorial comments and, well, this one’s short and depressing.

Basically, McBride lays out the terrible options the Obama administration is considering, namely literally nothing (passing things through Congress) or targeted tax incentives for hiring workers:

Tax incentives are the “bigger idea”? It sounds like the debate is between doing nothing and doing very little.

If I arrived on the scene today – with a 9.1% unemployment rate and about 4.6 million homes with seriously delinquent mortgages or REO – I’d be arguing for an aggressive policy response.

Indeed, it’s weird to think about this without the history of the stimulus, but if Obama stepped into office today, instead of in 2008, he would be calling for stimulus. So much for that ship.

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Best of all worlds

If we take Rep. Louis Gohmert’s plan to let all Congressional Reps carry guns, combine it with (perpetual Unpersons pinata) Rep. Peter King’s plan to ban firearms from within 1,000 feet of public officials, then add in Rep. Dan Burton’s plan to encase the House chamber in bulletproof glass (or something), we might just have us a great reality show.

435 Congressmen, 435 guns, behind glass, no one else has a gun. Take your next call, TLC!

Joking aside, I find it distasteful that suddenly every Congressman is trying to find a way to protect Congressmen. Never mind that thousands of people die of gun violence every year or the people who died in the Giffords attack; let’s just scramble to make sure that Congress is safe!

UPDATE: Hah, minutes after I post this, I see that Greg Sargent and John Cole have each independently made the same joke. Great minds, I guess.

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Bayh-partisanship

Evan Bayh was, in many ways, indicative of the problems in American “centrism” — notably the inability to articulate any message other than fence-sitting.

Nevertheless, one part of his farewell speech made clear how much the symptom of false bipartisanship has destroyed any real political dialogue:

Two weeks ago, the Senate voted down a bipartisan commission to deal with one of the greatest threats facing our nation: our exploding deficits and debt. The measure would have passed, but seven members who had endorsed the idea instead voted “no” for short-term political reasons.

Just last week, a major piece of legislation to create jobs — the public’s top priority — fell apart amid complaints from both the left and right.

OK, let’s look at these seven co-sponsors who jumped ship. Which party did they belong to? Hmm…

Republican Sens. Sam Brownback (Kan.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), John Ensign (Nev.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas), James Inhofe (Okla.) and John McCain (Ariz.) all voted against the bill, despite being co-sponsors. A seventh GOP senator, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, had co-sponsored the bill and planned to support it but was forced to miss the vote for family reasons.

Huh, would you look at that? All 7 co-sponsors who jumped ship were Republicans.

Hey, let’s see why that whole jobs bill failed. Was it voices on “both the left and the right”? I wonder…

The pared-down version that Reid is pushing would cost only an estimated $15 billion over a decade. To reach that low price, Reid threw out the extension of some tax breaks included to win Republicans, but also some items popular with Democrats, including extension of unemployment benefits and subsidies to help the jobless keep their health insurance.

//

Reid said the Senate Democratic caucus backed his move. Trimming the bill could keep at bay criticism that the Senate was producing yet more legislation loaded with special deals.

But Republicans who had worked to craft the original bipartisan jobs bill weren’t happy.

Reid “pulled the rug out from work to build broad-based support for tax relief and other efforts to help the private sector recover from the economic crisis,” said Jill Kozeny, a spokesperson for rassley, in a statement.

OK, just so we’re clear. Reid took away something Republicans wanted and something Democrats wanted. Never mind that the Democrats are actually in control of the Senate or anything; we need bipartisanship! Democrats said OK. Republicans jumped ship.

Yet, in his farewell speech, Bayh presents the bipartisanship problem as both sides seemingly unable to come together. This is not a question of two intractable parties, neither willing to compromise. One party is willing to compromise a lot — on health care, on stimulus, on climate change. Every outstretched hand is met with the slap of the Republican Party.

Bipartisanship has failed because one party — the Republican Party — has decided that its best bet for electoral success in the near future is simply to make “Washington” appear as inept as possible, which is exactly what Bayh helped to frame in his speech:

I am constantly reminded that if Washington, D.C., could be more like Indiana, Washington would be a better place.

The whole “Blame Washington” approach only benefits the exact same forces that make “bipartisanship,” as Bayh imagines it, impossible today — the regressive, obstructionist and ultimately destructive right wing party. Bayh can blame “the left and the right” or “Washington” if it makes him feel better, but his dream of bipartisanship as a magical totem worthy of fetishization created exactly the impossible environment he claims to detest.

They’ll agree with us when we win.

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The best bill you can pass

The New York Times editorial board rightly bashes the “jobs bill,” which appears to be little more than a tax cut and feeble job-growth measures and highlights the real issues underlying the lack of uptick in employment:

An even bigger problem is that the hiring credit is unlikely to work as intended unless it’s paired with other federal support to generate and maintain consumer demand — mainly extended unemployment benefits and more fiscal aid to states. No matter what Congress does to lower the cost of labor, employers won’t hire unless they believe demand will be sufficient to sell whatever the business produces. Absent unemployment benefits (which will expire at the end of February if Congress does not extend them) and aid to hard-pressed states, there are, as yet, no compelling signs that consumer demand will hold up this year.

In fewer words, the best way to improve unemployment is to bail out the states. As state employees face layoffs and state unemployment benefits run out, consumers are unlikely to spend money and even if private employers hire, that hiring will be offset by the millions laid off by states.

What irritates me is the continued Democratic urge for “bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake.” The end result of these half-hearted measures is lack of trust in government. Democrats hope to be able to blame Republicans for the problems faced this year through obstructionism and procedure, but the bulk of Americans don’t know or care about Senate or Congressional procedures. They see Washington unable to do a damn thing, and Obama sitting in the White House and Democrats in control of the Congress. At best, the Democrats will get a “pox on both our houses” sentiment of anti-incumbency, which still benefits Republicans overall. When November 2010 (and 2012) rolls around, no one in the public will think about the filibuster or how “bipartisan” you were.

Here’s an idea: Write the bill that best improves job growth. Then get it through however you can.

Reconciliation is there for a reason.

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