It’s understandable that fewer people watch daytime soap operas on network television these days. After all, it gets tiring to constantly arrive at what seems like resolution only to discover the show has left us with a Friday cliffhanger. Then, to add insult to injury, the Monday show picks up the story and keeps the issue dangling without resolution for
For non-soap watchers, that scenario may also sound familiar. It’s called Congress.
The nation last week reached a truly climactic moment in which disaster was avoided at the last minute, but it didn’t take long for us to realize that the financial mess our federal government is in didn’t get resolved in the least. Lawmakers, after much drama, simply told the nation to tune in later.
So Congress averted a fiscal cliff of its own making, but continues to dig our nation into a pretty massive hole with a new cliff just a few feet away.
Our government leaders - do they still deserve to be called that? - avoided the hard decisions about trimming anything from the federal government’s overspending in passing the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (H.R. 8).
Our local Republican member of Congress, the Honorable Steve Womack, supported the act. He said it avoided a massive tax hike on millions of Americans and now gives President Obama no hiding from tough decisions to reduce the $16.4 trillion debt.
“If he continues to dig his heels in and refuses to come to the table on spending, he will have failed as a leader,” Womack said in a statement.
“The debate on the debt ceiling - which (U.S.
Treasury) Secretary Geithner reported that we formally reached last night - and the expiration of the (continuing resolution) in March must address our unsustainable spending. If Congress cannot do this, we will have failed America.”
The last-minute resolution happened down at the collegial U.S. Senate, where there’s still a shred or two of diplomacy.
The speaker of the House, John Boehner, proved entirely ineffective. And his payment for that? He was re-elected speaker of the House with ease.
Ineffectiveness is apparently a virtue in the halls of Congress.
On Politico.com, former House Speaker Dennis Hastert - the namesake of the rule requiring House legislation to have the support of the majority of the party in power - warned Boehner that he was on a path to losing power in his own party if he continues to rely on Democrats to pass legislation.
“Maybe you can do it once, maybe you can do it twice, but when you start cutting deals where you have to get Democrats to pass the legislation, you’re not in power anymore,” Hastert said on Fox News Radio’s “Kilmeade and Friends.”
Only 85 Republicans backed the fiscal cliff bill while 151 opposed it.
We’d suggest a real spirit of compromise, on both sides, is where hope exists. When Congress continues to show an inability to hammer out bills that address the real needs of this country, it promotes the idea the United States has become so fractious that nothing is possible, from a government point of view.
We know the American people deserve and need better leadership. Our expectations about where they’ll get it keep sinking lower every day.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/07/2013