democrat's dream of majorities in both houses and a pushover president end up as a disaster for the Republic

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Republicans failed to filibuster all the legislative time bombs destined to explode this country's economy and resilience.

We can't afford to let the newly elected congress languish without suitable REPEALS for all the damage done by the last congress.

 

Examiner Editorial: Closing the books on the worst Congress

By:
Examiner Editorial

12/25/10 8:05 PM

 

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Americans
can give thanks in this Christmas season for an end to the reckless and

destructive 111th Congress. This is the Congress that passed Obamacare,

against the wishes of a substantial majority of the public, on

Christmas Eve of last year. In the dead of night, Democratic lawmakers

stuffed the monstrous 2,700-page bill with special-interest goodies and

political payoffs like the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana

Purchase." As we have learned since, most members were still ignorant

of the bill's contents three months later, when it gained final passage

in the House. No surprise that its immediate results -- both intended

and unintended -- have been almost uniformly bad.

Similarly, odds are that not one member of the 111th Congress actually read the
so-called "cap-and-trade" bill before it passed the House in June 2009.

Even a speed-reader could not have digested House Energy and Commerce

Chairman Henry Waxman's last-second, 309-page amendment, which read as

clear as mud: "Page 14, strike lines 1 through 3 and insert the

following. ..." It was filed after 1:30 a.m. just before the vote on

final passage. There is also serious doubt that any member of Congress

understood the 2,000-page financial reform bill that Congress passed

this summer. One of its two main sponsors, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn.,

remarked, "No one will know until this is actually in place how it

works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a

long time. ..."

And Democrats wonder why Gallup found this Congress to be the least popular in the history of its polls?

After suffering a comprehensive and humiliating defeat in the midterm election, Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid and the unfrocked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi led lame-duck

congressional Democrats on a last-minute banzai charge for more federal

spending, debt, earmarks, taxes and regulations. They unsuccessfully

pushed for the biggest tax increase in American history, a yearlong

spending bill loaded with pork, and a DREAM Act to award amnesty to

certain children of illegal immigrants. We hope that voters will

remember these misguided initiatives in two years.

Our Founding Fathers were always wary of those who wanted government to do
lots of big things. That's why they created a system that separated

powers among three more or less equal branches and provided each of

them with powerful checks and balances. When professional politicians

become frustrated with Congress, it is a sign that our system is

working as intended. Columbia University historian Alan Brinkley told

Bloomberg News recently that "this is probably the most productive

session of Congress since at least the '60s." When Congress votes on

bills that no one reads or understands, it can be quite "productive."

Americans have already rendered a verdict on such productivity and

elected a new Congress with orders to clean up the mess in Washington.