{"id":687,"date":"2012-08-07T15:49:01","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T15:49:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/megalextoria.wordpress.com\/?p=687"},"modified":"2012-08-07T15:49:01","modified_gmt":"2012-08-07T15:49:01","slug":"congress-isnt-gridlocked-its-just-totally-irresponsible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2012\/08\/07\/congress-isnt-gridlocked-its-just-totally-irresponsible\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress isn\u2019t gridlocked \u2014 it\u2019s just totally irresponsible"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Despite looming deadlines related to budget sequestration and decade-old \u201ctemporary\u201d tax rates that expire at year\u2019s end, massive entitlement crises and much more, Congress has effectively stopped work on serious legislation until at least some time after November\u2019s election.<\/p>\n

Many observers and participants \u2014 including the entire GOP and Democratic leadership \u2014 are quick to cry gridlock and to blame inaction on some new awful hyper-partisan or ideological era.<\/p>\n

But there isn\u2019t gridlock, which usually results from Democrats and Republicans sharing power and clashing over alternative positions. Gridlock slows things down \u2014 almost always a good thing \u2014 but it doesn\u2019t stop serious legislation from happening. Welfare reform, balanced budgets, defense cuts and capital-gains tax rate cuts in the 1990s were all the product of gridlock that slowly gave way to consensus.
\nAnd today\u2019s Congress is more than happy to pass legislation when it suits members\u2019 interests. In just the past few months, for instance, the ostensibly gridlocked Congress reauthorized the Export-Import Bank program that gives money to foreign companies to buy U.S. goods; extended sharply reduced rates for government-subsidized student loans; re-upped the Essential Air Service program that subsidizes airline service to rural communities; and voted against ending the 1705 loan-guarantee program that gave rise to green-tech boondoggles such as Solyndra and Abound. None of these were party-line votes \u2014 all enjoyed hearty support from both Democrats and Republicans.<\/p>\n

Another instance of budding bipartisanship is the pork-laden farm bill that extends sugar subsidies, maintains crop subsidies and creates a \u201cshallow-loss program\u201d that effectively guarantees incomes for farmers at a time when that sector is doing historically well. The bill passed the Senate with 16 GOP votes. Though the House version of the bill is still being worked out, no one doubts it will not only pass, but largely resemble the Senate version.<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re actually witnessing \u2014 and have been for years now \u2014 is not gridlock, but the abdication of responsibility by Congress and the president for performing the most basic responsibilities of government. Despite the fiscal crisis that Washington knows will occur if it fails to deal with unsustainable spending and debt, it hasn\u2019t managed to produce a federal budget in more than three years.<\/p>\n

To their credit, House Republicans have drafted, voted on, and passed a budget, but they are busy now trying to worm their way out of the very spending cuts \u2014 the sequestration deal \u2014 they insisted on as a condition for raising the debt limit last summer.<\/p>\n

One of the most egregious failures of the president\u2019s budget was that it, as in his previous budgets, offered no serious plan to stabilize the largest entitlement programs. Instead, the president and congressional Democrats lambasted Republicans for actually addressing the problem in their budget.<\/p>\n

Full article: http:\/\/thehill.com\/o \u2026 tally-irresponsible-<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite looming deadlines related to budget sequestration and decade-old \u201ctemporary\u201d tax rates that expire at year\u2019s end, massive entitlement crises and much more, Congress has effectively stopped work on serious legislation until at least some time after November\u2019s election. Many observers and participants \u2014 including the entire GOP and Democratic leadership \u2014 are quick to cry gridlock and to blame inaction on some new awful hyper-partisan or ideological era. But there isn\u2019t gridlock, which usually results from Democrats and Republicans sharing power and clashing over alternative positions. Gridlock slows things down \u2014 almost always a good thing \u2014 but it doesn\u2019t stop serious legislation from happening. Welfare reform, balanced budgets, defense cuts and capital-gains tax rate cuts in the 1990s were all the product of gridlock that slowly gave way to consensus. And today\u2019s Congress is more than happy to pass legislation when it suits members\u2019 interests. In just the past few months, for instance, the ostensibly gridlocked Congress reauthorized the Export-Import Bank program that gives money to foreign companies to buy U.S. goods; extended sharply reduced rates for government-subsidized student loans; re-upped the Essential Air Service program that subsidizes airline service to rural communities; and voted against ending the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}