Congress Needs To Get Its Act Together

Although Barack Obama is performing as poorly as expected, the equally poor performance of Congress is beyond expectations. It’s time for smarter, cooler heads to prevail and for Congress to start acting in accordance with the sensibilities and grounded realities of those they represent.

It was foreseen that Barack Obama’s lack of leadership experience and flaccid positions made him completely unprepared to be President. He now looks like a kindergartner thrown into a PhD program.

We fully expected him to jerk the steering wheel of America as hard and far to the left as humanly possible. We knew he would run to the tax and spend basket. We also knew he’d go after the 2nd Amendment, do a full frontal assault on the unborn, tear down national security protections, and generally pursue a socialist agenda. Well, almost half of us knew he would.

And we knew Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi would be his willing accomplices.

But what has been quite disappointing is the performance of Congress as a whole.

It should have been a safe assumption that at least enough fiscally responsible individuals and smart people inhabited both Houses that sensible policies would have been generated, but it wasn’t.

First they passed a nearly trillion dollar “stimulus” bill that was 2/3 pork, ignoring an option that spent half as much but produced twice as much. Instead, hundreds of billions of dollars for pet projects were forced through Congress and signed without even being read.

One of the things blindly shoved through with that stimulus, and a good example of our Keystone Congress, was the permission for AIG to provide those ridiculous bonuses.

First Congress gave AIG the money for the bonuses in the bank bailout, and then the green-light to pay the bonuses (at the urging of the White House) in the stimulus bill they didn’t read.

But even more outrageous than the bonuses is the hypocritical indignation of the Senators and Representatives who made the bonuses quite possible. While throwing tantrums they look as petty as the parent who gives his kids finger-paints, shows them how to use it on the walls, and then explodes in anger when he comes home to a rainbow mosaic on the walls. Give us a break!

Then a $400 billion “Omnibus” spending bill was rammed through. There was almost a glimmer of sanity as some members of the Senate tried to slow it down, but alas, it went through pork and all.

Now Obama’s trying to push a $3.5 trillion budget, and to use Ben Nelson’s term, it is a complete “fudget” that plays hide and seek with a record amount of our money.

The Congressional Budget Office is predicting trillions of dollars in deficits that are dangerously high for the next ten years with Obama’s plan. They obviously aren’t putting much stock in Obama’s so called reduction plan. They’re not fooled by his parlor tricks.

Running up record deficits in just the first sixty days and forcing our country to hemorrhage money at an exponential rate via Congress and the Fed, some economists and lawmakers are now flat-out predicting Obama will bankrupt our nation.

It’s time for Congressmen and Senators alike to change course, quit talking about being concerned about deficits and out of control spending, and actually do something about it. Start voting “no,” and start supporting those pieces of legislation that resemble the sane and responsible policies and actions individual Americans, successful businesses, and fiscally sound States live and succeed with.