Congress Faces Summer School Final Exams

It’s test time for the Legislative branch of our government. As the Associated Press correctly points out, House members and Senators are now heading home where they will face questions, criticism and scrutiny from their many employers (i.e. the voters) who will decide in the months and years to come whether or not they will keep their jobs.

The problem they face in this test is the same one which comes around every few years and both parties are plagued by it. Each party has to deal with the screaming, if not particularly numerous members of their base. For all the talk we hear about the need for (or lack of) bipartisanship, the fringes of the parties want no truck with it. In fact, they only bring it up when they are in the minority.

I’m sure we all remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth in 2005 about how the Democrats were just “obstructionists” and the Republicans wouldn’t let them get any of their agenda to the floor for a vote. Flash forward to 2009 and the Republicans have been hung with the “party of no” tag as a substitute for “obstructionist” but the song remains the same.

And what of those elected officials who lean more toward the center and occasionally dare to work with members of the other party? We won’t soon forget the howls of protest over the “Gang of 14″ during the Bush years. No matter the issue at hand, the insults will come flying. If you’re a Republican who crosses the line, the far Right wing will call out “liars,” thieves and backstabbers. If you’re a moderate or “blue dog” Democrat, the fringe Left of your own party will call you a creep or any of several other unappetizing names.

So the test awaits members of both parties as they arrive back home. The more sensible Democrats, if they have been watching the polls, will need to avoid the danger of caving in to the shrill voices of the Air America / MoveOn crowd. They will hopefully recognize that roughly 80% of Americans are happy with their health care and are not going to sign on for any “solution” that endangers that care and further drives up the weight of an economic black hole threatening to consume our government.

Republicans will similarly have to close their ears to Rush Limbaugh’s army of dittoheads and tea party fanatics who want to use the health care issue as nothing but a political football to try to damage Obama. They will need to tackle the admittedly difficult task of finding a truly deficit neutral approach to improving health care options for those Americans who truly need the help and can’t afford it without destroying the system as it exists today.

Can they do it? Given the track record of the current edition of Congress, it’s hard to be hopeful. One of the worst case scenarios – and unfortunately one of the more likely ones – is that there will be so much pressure to PASS SOMETHING that we wind up with an ineffective patchwork of compromises to the current, ill conceived plans on the table, that does little and still flushes hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars down a rat hole.

But hey… I’m cynical by nature. Who knows? Maybe they’ll come back in September and deliver a pleasant surprise.