Zarathud wrote:And still nothing accomplished on the budget or resolving the U.S. debt limit, the signature issues of the 112th Congress. Republican strategists have worked hard to create this budgetary crisis over the last 20 years, and the real response has been to attack public sector unions at the state level.
In the documentary Hot Coffee they made the claim that more workers have a mandatory arbitration clause in their employment contract than the number of workers who are members of a union.
Kraken wrote: as we embark upon two years of obstruction and backtracking.
Called that one, didn't I?
The 112th Congress is on pace to be one of the least productive in recent memory — as measured by votes taken, bills made into laws, nominees approved. By most of those metrics, this crowd is underperforming even the "do-nothing Congress" of 1948, as Harry Truman dubbed it. The hot-temper era of Clinton impeachment in the 1990s saw more bills become law.
Does that make this the worst Congress money can buy? I suppose it depends on whose money's doing the buying.
Let us take a moment to acknowledge the 117th Congress, which achieved much more than the Democrats' thin majority would lead one to expect, before we embark on another two years of obstruction and grandstanding. Congress born of Jan. 6 chaos ends in achievement.
The 117th Congress opened with the unfathomable Jan. 6, 2021, mob siege of the Capitol and is closing with unprecedented federal criminal referrals of the former president over the insurrection — all while conducting one of the most consequential legislative sessions in recent memory.
Lawmakers are wrapping up the two-year session having found surprisingly common ground on big bills, despite enduring bitter political divisions that haunt the halls, and the country, after the bloody Capitol attack by supporters of the defeated president, Donald Trump, that threatened democracy.
The Congress passed monumental legislation — including a bill making one of the most substantial infrastructure investments in a generation and another federally protecting same-sex and interracial marriages. It rallied the U.S. to support Ukraine in the war against Russia. Senators confirmed the nation's first Black woman, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, to the Supreme Court.
Among the rare moments of agreement: passage of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, making lynching a federal hate crime, after more than 120 years and some 200 failed efforts to pass such legislation.
In many ways, the chaos of the Capitol attack created a new coalition in Congress — lawmakers who want to show America can govern. With President Joe Biden in the White House, the Democrats who controlled Washington found new partners in a wing of the Republican Party eager to push past the Trump years and the former president's repeated lies about a stolen election that led to the Capitol siege.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., compared this session to the Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt administrations that produced some of the nation’s most lasting laws.
“These two years in the Senate and House — in the Congress — were either the most productive in 50 years Great Society, or most productive in 100 years since the New Deal,” he said.
...
Together, lawmakers sent Biden the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that invested in the nation's roads, bridges and public works, and another big package to invest in semi-conductor industry and scientific research in the U.S.
Democrats alone approved a massive coronavirus aid package that put money in Americans' pockets, supported business and funded free vaccines, a $1.9 trillion deal Republicans rejected as wasteful spending and blamed for fueling soaring inflation.
While Biden's promised “Build Back Better” fell apart, his party regrouped to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, which that may not have curbed rising prices but delivered the nation's biggest investment yet in efforts to curb climate change and capped monthly insulin prices for seniors at $35 starting in January.
The first bill to curb gun violence, though modest compared to advocates' demands, became law after the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas — nearly a full decade after the Sandy Hook school shooting that killed 20 children failed at the time to move lawmakers to act.
As the worst war in Europe since World War II broke out, Congress embraced a little-known leader, welcoming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky twice — first to address lawmakers remotely at the start of Russia’s invasion and with a daring in-person speech this past week that echoed Winston Churchill’s 1941 visit to Congress.
...
While Schumer said he wants to work again with Republican leader Mitch McConnell for more bipartisan bills in the new year, the House GOP leader has other plans.
“In 11 days this all changes,” McCarthy said Friday. “The new direction is coming.”
