The Week of Speaking Pleasantly
By GAIL COLLINS
NYT
Congress really has been looking a little more civil. Not quite Athens in the age of Pericles, but it’s very possible that this year we’ll get through the State of the Union address without anybody jumping up to scream insults at the president.
Going for baby steps.
The Senate has had no comity issues whatsoever because everybody went home after a single meeting early this month under rules that require time to come to a halt. It’s officially still the first day of the year in Harry Reid Land, demonstrating once again how closely the United States Senate resembles the second season of the original “Star Trek.”
But the House has been busy. First, the members read the Constitution out loud, which gave us a welcome opportunity to recall the time last fall that John Boehner gave a speech in which he bragged that he carried the document everywhere, pulled it out of his pocket, waved it around, and then started to recite passages from the Declaration of Independence.
(More here.)
NYT
Congress really has been looking a little more civil. Not quite Athens in the age of Pericles, but it’s very possible that this year we’ll get through the State of the Union address without anybody jumping up to scream insults at the president.
Going for baby steps.
The Senate has had no comity issues whatsoever because everybody went home after a single meeting early this month under rules that require time to come to a halt. It’s officially still the first day of the year in Harry Reid Land, demonstrating once again how closely the United States Senate resembles the second season of the original “Star Trek.”
But the House has been busy. First, the members read the Constitution out loud, which gave us a welcome opportunity to recall the time last fall that John Boehner gave a speech in which he bragged that he carried the document everywhere, pulled it out of his pocket, waved it around, and then started to recite passages from the Declaration of Independence.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
3 Comments:
It sounds as though Ms. Collins finds the civility dissappointing and the attention paid to our Constitution perplexing.
Ms. Collins is being entirely too kind to the House ... they have been just as inactive as the Senate. They shutdown on Thursday at 2:05 PM ... that was after they started on Tuesday ... after being shutdown for almost ten days. There have been very few formal Committee hearings ... and very few announced for future dates.
Ms. Collins is also crediting the House with passage of the STOP Act ... to stop printing of legislation that is available online ... sounds reasonable since they print at least 625 copies today (44 USC Sec. 706) ... well, don't sell your stock in Xerox just yet, they have to wait for the Senate to decide if it wants to do this also ... and then for the President to sign off .... and what the legislation says is not really to StopOverPrinting but instead reduce as stated in the EXCEPTION :
Provides the following exceptions: (1) if a committee of the House or Senate, at any time during a Congress, requests the Public Printer to provide the committee with printed copies of each bill or resolution during the Congress that is within the committee's jurisdiction, the Public Printer shall provide the committee with printed copies of each such bill or resolution (limited to 75 copies); and (2) at the request of a Member or committee of the House or Senate, the Public Printer shall provide the Member or committee with such number of copies of a bill or resolution as the Member or committee may request.
So, if a member wants to have copies printed of his latest healthcare proposal to distribute at the local Rotary club speech, he can.
Sorry, but I am getting more and more dissatisfied with this Republican-managed House everyday.
MacPherson -
If you expect this Congress to be as activist in passing as much legistlation as possible with a cavalcade of backroom deals, kickbacks, payoffs, exemptions, bribes, mountains of borrowed money that we have no hope of ever paying back, authorizations for the monetization of trillions in debt (in layman terms, printing money), terms provided to the CBO that forced estimates that woefully underscored the true costs of legislation, coupled with legislation members of Congress readily admitted was so big they didn't even bother to read and didn't have any regard for its Constitutionality - as was the case with the 111th Congress -then, yes, you will be disappointed.
As for me, the fact that none of these shenanigans is happening is exactly what the American people asked for and exactly what I asked for. Remember, there were over 600 Democrats in the Congress and state legislatures who were fired last November. Over 600. While you and the editors at Vox Verax may not understand the weight of what that means from the country as a whole, I think the message was pretty clear that the tactics employed be Reid, Pelosi and Obama were so infuriating and condescending that the country fired the entire party responsible for those shenanigans. To coin a phrase 'change has come to America'.
You need to wake up to the new reality that the days of government being the activist be-all-end-all-everything-to-everyone type of government are over. To think of returning to the bad-old-days of borrow, inflate, borrow and inflate is to be on the wrong side of history.
Post a Comment
<< Home