The following is a blog entry from one of my Y360 Friends.
And here is the LINK .



Perhaps some of you are on the Y360 too and would want to visit his blogs too.

OD

This illustrates more the inadequacies of Congress and how it operates more than any shortcomings of the Democratic Party. The problem is that the Democratic "majority" is being overplayed. They barely have a so-called "majority" in the Senate...just enough to make it official. And to illustrate this is, they were able to pass their legislation in the House, but much of it died in the Senate with the Republicans blocking it or blocking debate.

Ah, that pesky filibuster; I'm sure the Republicans are glad now they didn't go through with abolishing it like they threatened when they were in the majority.

And the legislation that did pass both the House and the Senate, like the minimum wage bill for example, are becalmed because they're in the middle of debate on whether to amend them before they go to the President's desk; or others are bound to get vetoed by Bush like the Stem Cell bill or the War Resolution that sets a time table.

Its slow and unproductive. Its how the framers constructed it. But even so, I'm still surprised at how much the Democrats were able to get done when compared to the last Congress, the so-called "do-nothing Congress". But, as you can see with this thread: that's not saying much.

Well, to be fair, in the previous Congress, the Republican majority existed by just as small a margin.

So, they get referred to as "do-nothing," because of their inability to pass substantive legislation due to a lack of a significant majority, but yet the Democrats don't receive the same label for the same reason?

You're exactly right; it's how the Framers constructed it, because they knew renaming a courthouse wouldn't infringe upon anyone's liberties.

That's why they made it difficult to pass laws advancing any significant ideological agenda; they had just escaped a government which had passed hundreds upon hundreds of "nuisance laws," and had no intention of allowing their new government to do the same.

Two hundred years later, in my book, my only quibble with the Framers' idea is that they didn't make it hard ENOUGH to pass laws; frankly, we don't need a United States Code that's 14,000 pages long.

I actually like this Congress, and the last one, for much the same reason: they haven't done squat. I greatly prefer a legislative body that can't get anything done over one that can, because the overwhelming likelihood is that I will disagree with anything they DO manage to get accomplished.

The longer they go without substantive legislation, the bigger the win for the American people in my book.

P.J. O'Rourke said it well, I think, although it's likely that I am somewhat misquoting him:

(about "creating a more perfect union,")
"The question is are we done yet? The big issue is not how Washington works, but how to make it stop."

Really you should be grateful they have done nothing. The less they do the better off everyone is.

There's an old story about an election in some godforsaken third world country where the president elect was killed before he could take office. There was supposed to be another election but for some reason or other it never took place and the dead guy served a full term. At the next election the population suddenly realised that for five years they'd seen no new wars, no tax rises, no extra regulation, no trade disputes and no corruption. So they decided to let the dead guy have another term.

He's been in power nearly 80 years now.

...That was kinda my point.

...and may I just say, good to see you posting here at the DtT, Xeno.

OD

Why thank you!


...Hopefully you still feel that way after reading more of my posts, lmao.