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Day 1
Author: BobR    Date: 2011-01-05 13:00:00

Today is the first day of the new congressional session, when power changes hands in the House, and the Senate rearranges a few deck chairs. We have a split personality party getting ready to set a good deal of the political agenda in DC. What do we have to look forward to?

Nothing... zilch, nada.

Instead - we will be looking back. The Republicans main objectives seem to be to undo everything that's been done over the last couple of years. There doesn't seem to be anything on their list that involves anything new. First up: a quixotic attempt to roll back the healthcare reform initiative passed into law by the Democrats. Why? Because they're sore losers. They will lose on this as well, and they know it, but they campaigned on it, so they have to go through the motions. It will likely not get past the Senate, but even if it does, the president will veto it, and that will be that. There're not enough votes to override a veto.

They've already flipped and flopped over earmarks (definition: something someone else thinks is important). They also campaigned on cutting back on government waste. One would think that those that voted for the politicians promising not to waste their tax dollars would expect they spend their time crafting and revising legislation with that in mind. Despite their claims that the health care bill will cause an increase in taxes, the very fact that it was passed using the budget reconcilliation process proves them wrong. That process can only be used on legislation that the non-partisan CBO has deemed will reduce the deficit. Repealing it would therefore increase the deficit.

There's also the announced plans by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to spend a lot of taxpayer money on "investigations" (i.e.: witch hunts). This includes trying to determine whether FDA food recalls are effective and whether government regulation hampers job creation. Considering the financial meltdown was caused by a virtually unregulated banking industry feeding at the trough like rabid hyenas, this is laughable. The FDA one at least makes sense - that's the executive branch, run by the Republicans' nemesis President Obama. There's also this:
3. The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: The president created this bipartisan commission in 2009 to investigate the causes of the current financial crisis. But the commission broke down along partisan lines last year and failed to reach a consensus. Issa wants to find out why.

Hmmm... it broke down along partisan lines, and he wants to find out why? Umm... because they're partisan? I mean seriously - is this an example of how we can trust the Republicans to make the best use of our tax dollars?

So it's clear the next two years are going to be Republican attempts to undo progress and get "revenge". Nothing will get done, not that much got done over the last two years (save for the health care bill, and the late flurry in the lame duck session). There are still a ton of unfilled appointments requested by President Obama that have languished in the Senate, and that doesn't seem likely to change. Even Republican-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts is angry that judicial appointments have gone unfilled, with the Senate confirming 62, but 96 still remaining open. This has caused backlogs in the courts. It's easy to extrapolate that unfilled positions elsewhere in the executive branch have made it difficult for those departments and agencies to work effectively for the American people.

Today is day one... Just 731 to go...
 

49 comments (Latest Comment: 01/05/2011 22:06:21 by Raine)
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