[Gimpy]

109th "CUT & RUN" Congress: Goodbye, Farewell and Amen

AN OP-ED GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Michael Winship
12/12/06

The 109th Congress is dead. Adjourned for good.

Hooray. Don't let the door bump your behinds on the way out.

These guys set new milestones for financial and moral hanky-panky, including 19 members under federal investigation and Friday's release of the House ethics report on the Mark Foley page scandal.

Sunday's Washington Post quoted Republican Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee, a member who entered Congress as part of the "Contract with America" Class of 1994: "Our leadership and some of our members grew arrogant in their power, and with arrogance comes corruption." Senator John McCain added, "We came to change Washington, and Washington changed us."

The 109th broke by a week the record of the notorious 1948 "Do-Nothing" Congress, managing to convene for a mere 103 days from January 2005 to 5 a.m., last Saturday morning. That's a little more than four days a month.

So indolent have these legislative layabouts been that, last week, when Democratic Majority Leader-Elect Steny Hoyer held a press briefing declaring the new Congress will meet for five whole days a week instead of the current average of 2.5, the reaction from many was shock and dismay.

A few members and some of the reporters who cover them griped like teenagers being told to shovel the walks and clean their rooms. Gauging by the bellyaching, you'd have thought Hoyer had announced that Taco Bell was taking over catering for the House and Senate dining rooms.

Not much was accomplished during the 109th, but there was the usual manic flurry of activity the last couple of days, sort of like those sudden deathbed confessions at the moment of reckoning that keep you from going to Hell.

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 tax-free 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!

They also managed to fob off nine of eleven spending bills for fiscal year 2007 onto the new guys.

"It's a real act of defiance by the lame-duck Congress and a conscious attempt to set up a political problem for the next Congress," congressional historian Julian Zelizer told the Christian Science Monitor.

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No surprise there, typical Re-THUG-lican arrogance!



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