There are 24 legislative days on the congressional calendar between now and October 1, which is 68 days away. Our congress must therefore slave away for 24 days with only 44 days of rest before, after, and during this period in which to do the country’s business. And do this for a piddling wage of only about $170,000 per annum. Plus fringe benefits.
Which is not to say that a Tea Party-dominated Congress isn’t in the process of setting this country’s agenda through budget cuts it aims to enact. What’s that, you say? The Tea Party was defeated on the last election. The Democrats won the White House again, the Senate again, gained seats in the House and got five million more House votes than Republicans but lost that chamber only because of district gerrymandering that gives an undemocratic edge in House seating. But the Tea Party is setting the country’s agenda nonetheless. How is this possible?
The simple answer. Barack Obama. A Democratic president whose notion of leadership is to ask the people who elected him to make the people he was elected to put in their place negotiate in ways that might actually let the president pretend he is actually leading. He does speak well, though. You can check that out if you’re still listening.
Here’s the upshot of it all. We now have a truly dysfunctional government no longer able to function in ways that will keep the economy from plunging into the very darkest realms, political as well as economic, that this country has experienced since the 1930s. And it is all gonna come to fruition soon.
America is a great country. It is capable of producing great legislators, great presidents, great and honorable captains of commerce and labor.
They are out there. But not currently on view in Washington or on Wall Street. Cry the beloved country!
(Now available from Amazon in print and ebook formats — Michael Silverstein’s The Devil’s Dictionary Of Wall Street.)