Politics should stop being politics

Obama: Congress should stop bickering

The President thinks that the Republicans and Democrats should stop fighting and arguing over how the federal government spends its money. They should stop “manufacturing” crises and stop being “out of touch” with the American people.

TIME OUT!

Mr. President, what world are you living on, because it sure ain’t the same one the rest of America lives on.

Sorry, but the Republicans and the Democrats pretty much are doing what they are supposed to do: Represent the interests of the people who sent them there. Now that does not mean everybody in their district or state, but the people who voted and supported them. That, Mr. President, is how a representative democracy works. You don’t like that, then move to a different universe.

I know that I am a voice in the wilderness here, but, people, we have to understand that the US does not speak with one voice. It never has and it never will. Currently there are more that 310 million of us, each with our own mind and our own view of how things ought to be. Neither of the major political parties represents the view of the majority of Americans – especially on every issue. That is what makes politics politics.

Mr. President, you want Congress to pass a budget? Then call Harry Reid over in the Senate and tell him to pass the next budget bill that comes over from the House as is. Don’t play around with it, just pass it. And then you sign it. But, you and I know that isn’t going to happen.

And it hasn’t happened since the Republicans became the majority in the House. Every year, since 2009, the House dutifully passes the various and sundry authorizations and appropriations bills (like some 26 of them each year) and every year during that time the Senate has piddled and diddle and not one thing has it resolved. Why? Because the Democrats won’t accept what the Republicans have passed.

Every year, the Congress ends up passing a “continuing resolution” that, I guess, now extends all the way back to 2009 (it actually doesn’t but that is a different story). As Pappy used to say: That is one heck (he WAS a gentleman after all) of a way to run a railroad.

All continuing resolutions do is kick the can down the road to be dealt with again whenever it runs out.

So, the problem has not been in the House. It has been doing its job all along. And the problem is not with the Senate Republicans; they are just standing by what their House brethren have sent over. No, the problem lies on the other side of the aisle.

Now, I will guarantee you that you will not see it reported that way because it does not fit the establishment narrative of the problem.

I saw this back in 1994 when the GOP first took the House after being the minority party for more than 40 years. The establishment media was in a quandary. Over 40 years the reporters and pundits had established where they could go to get information and where the levers of power were. In an election, all that was washed away and it upset them. No longer could they go to the “usual suspects” and get the low-down on what was going on the backrooms and the cloakrooms of Capitol Hill. For a reporter who has spent years developing news source relationships, that is a very disconcerting feeling.

The new folks in power on the Hill, a bit chary of those who had developed such deep relations with their opponents, were less than welcoming to the established reporter and pundit class. So the feeling became mutual and the media bias grew to a deeper chasm.

Now, Mr. President, I know that neither you, nor any of your staff, or anyone else of note or power will read my ramblings (well, maybe someone at the NSA who is bored to death might), but please quit blaming others for your own lack of leadership.

The budgetary train wreck, the health care train wreck, the foreign policy train wreck, they are all your responsibility. Don’t slough them off on your minions. Don’t ask your co-equals in government (the ones who are to set the polices and priorities that you are to execute with the resources they give you) to do things that you apparently are unwilling to do.

Compromise is a two-way street and Congress is a co-equal with the Presidency (as is the Supreme Court). That is how the American republic was designed and how it is supposed to work. (Not by executive order and writ, as you just demonstrated with the setting up of new panels, etc., to sidestep the role of the uncooperative Congress – AND that is yet another rambling I will not digress into)

Nuff Said. Have a nice day.