MP: Goodbye 109th Congress
The Messenger Post had a great column about the outgoing 109th congress:
These guys set new milestones for financial and moral hankypanky, including 19 members under federal investigation and Friday’s release of the House ethics report on the Mark Foley page scandal.
The 109th broke by a week the record of the 1948 “DoNothing” Congress, managing to convene for a mere 103 days from January 2005 to 5 a.m., last Saturday morning.
I say, thank God. Who knows what additional damage they could’ve done to the country by actually applying themselves. But wait, they managed to slip in some nasty stuff at the last minute:
In the final hours, Congress approved $45 billion in tax cuts, a nuclear cooperation deal with India (despite that country’s refusal to sign the nonproliferation treaty), the opening of more than 8 million acres off the Gulf Coast to petroleum and natural gas drilling, an increase in taxfree contributions to health savings accounts that labor believes allows companies to dump more medical costs on workers and a trade bill that many say will take away more American jobs. Merry Christmas.
Can the first 100 hours include the repeal of the more egregious laws passed by this Congress? Please? How about corporate tax breaks that don’t get passed on to the consumer and instead result in record corporate profits and record compensation for executives?
Trickle-down economics was maybe the biggest bill of goods sold to the American public, and we’re paying for it now as the middle class erodes away along with the social safety net.
One funny thing to end on, though:
Thus I’m sure they’ll never go for my own favorite reform proposal, first suggested by that great Texas populist Jim Hightower. Members of Congress would be required to wear NASCARstyle jumpsuits plastered with the corporate logos of their major campaign contributors.
What would Reynolds, Kuhl and Walsh’s jumpsuits look like? Would they have room? Eric Massa often offered the challenge of laying his military uniform down next to any Kuhl wanted to produce. Even more interesting would be a comparison of their two NASCAR jumpsuits. Hmmm…that’d make a great political cartoon.
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[...] Goodbye to the 109th Congress, and a preview of what was to come in Congress. [...]