The degree to which it is appropriate for Congress to prevent real or imagined harm from the Presidency, at the expense of acting to pass compromise legislation, as a general question on the form of our government, is a subjective question and hard to judge.
But whether Congress over the last several years has been acting appropriately in prioritizing blocking any substantive action, instead of seeking compromise, can hardly be considered so hard to judge.
The approval rating of Congress has gone from low (like high 30s, low 40s) ten years ago, to roughly mid-20s in the late Bush years, to consistently in the 10-16 point range since 2010. That’s just the facts – Americans increasingly think Congress is totally worthless, and it hasn’t always been this way.
Republicans themselves are dissatisfied with Congress as an institution for producing insufficient legislation. The Senate Republicans are holding a policy retreat today in Baltimore, and several press articles indicate that one of the top agenda items is whether to reform the Senate’s rules to make it easier to pass budget bills on time.
The general concept that Congress is doing something productive by doing nothing — or whatever spin or nuance one cares to apply to that general idea — is an idea that only seems to have currency in this thread and among certain right wing Tea Party types.
Even by objective measures, the argument over whether Congress is “not governing” or simply “governing unwisely” is clarified. One could fairly claim that, for example, rejecting record numbers of appointees to the judiciary and executive positions would be an example of governing, but perhaps governing unwisely depending on your point of view. But that isn’t happening. As others have detailed, more and more judicial appointments are simply in limbo, not receiving votes at all, despite the fact that there is no longer a filibuster possible on such appointments. That is simply ducking decisions, not making unwise ones.
Similarly, dozens of nominations for important positions are simply being ignored. The nominee to head the Treasury Department’s office to track down and stop terrorist financial activity has languished for nine months without a vote. The nominee to be ambassador to Mexico, with whom the U.S. has very serious issues to deal with in terms of narcotics and immigration, has been frozen for nearly the same. The nomination for the head at the US Agency for International Development sat for eight months, throughout the beginnings of the Syrian refugee crisis, until being approved.
Literally the only bright spot – and it really ain’t so bright – is that bipartisan cooperation on writing the individual budget bills isn’t all that bad. But those committees are probably the only relic of the “smoke filled rooms” era where politicians find it mutually beneficial to cooperate. So while deals can be cut on proposals to fund individual agencies, the process of getting those recommendations approved is also a record of inaction and lack of decisions. To explain, budget talks to relieve sequestration started in September. But there was no reason they could not have started in April, when the first budget proposals were debated. But no, the will of Congress was inaction and delay.
All that wasted time can hardly be considered an important check on executive policies – it was just wasted time. No action at all. A failure to compromise and govern, until the very last possible minute.
If your teenager drags his or her feet on doing chores in this manner, they get chided for being lazy and shiftless. Now some folks here are trying to cast criticism of congressional inaction as mere difference of opinion on what Congress should be doing – if not outright noble?
Puh-leeze. Maybe Cliven Bundy and his ilk would buy that, but not me.