CONgress Has A New Voice...WAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Congress’s new voice

ROUGHLY half a year after the Democrats seized Congress, nobody could deny that politics has grown more interesting. Judging from the newspapers today it is Capitol Hill, not the White House, where the action is in Washington, DC.

What have the Democrats achieved, besides enabling the enemy of the American people?

The new Democratic majority certainly started strong. In its first 100 hours the House passed six popular bills to show that this was no “do-nothing Congress”, as its Republican-controlled predecessor had been labelled. The Iraq debate heated up with congressional calls to pull the troops home. The Senate has held public, sometimes riveting, hearings with the attorney-general and other administration officials, holding their feet to the fire as Congress is meant to do. And recently, the Senate unblocked the debate on immigration by considering a vast compromise bill that would overhaul America’s system for welcoming foreigners.

And yet the past six months has also shown how painfully blocked-up America’s checks-and-balances system can be. For all of the attention-grabbing activity, nothing concrete has yet been achieved. That 100-hours plan? Except for changes to the House’s own rules, none of the other bills has become law; most are languishing in the Senate. A bill on stem-cell research recently passed both chambers, but it now faces George Bush’s veto. The “100 Hours” may be remembered as a catchy campaign slogan, but it may produce precisely nothing of legislative substance. At least the 1994 “Contract with America” helped to get the ball rolling on welfare reform.

Old news, you say? Yes it is. The stem cell bill was vetoed and rightfully so. The ILLEGAL non-amnesty amnesty bill was also defeated and rightfully so. The question is this. When will the CONgress and the Executive listen to We The People?