It’s hard to imagine there’s anyone in the United States who does not know that Congress has been screwing around with the nation’s finances.
Over and over for the past couple of years, legislation has been proposed, talked about in the press, debated in the Capitol, and then dropped, usually without a vote. The extreme right wing of the Republican party doesn’t want to do anything that looks like a tax increase. As a lifelong taxpayer myself, I applaud the sentiment, but I also live in the real world, and I know that when you are trying to run an operation the size of the United States, you have to fund it.
The right wingers in the House are the ones blamed for (or credited with) repeatedly blocking votes on compromise legislation. Many of them are beginners, having just been elected in 2010. They don’t know that you can’t have things 100% your way on every issue, so they “just say no” to any bill that doesn’t meet all of their ideological criteria. But they don’t vote “no.” They simply let the House leaders know that they will vote “no.” The leadership doesn’t want to risk defeat and public embarrassment, so the bill doesn’t come up for a vote, the pending compromise is scotched and everyone goes back to the drawing table, the problem still unsolved.
This process protects the naysayers, because they remain in the back of the room and never have to go on the record. They get to block whatever bill they don’t like while avoiding responsibility for doing so. They are a shadow Congress, setting the agenda and dictating to the real Congress which laws can pass and which ones can’t.
But who are they?
I’d like to know their names, their districts, their party affiliation, and when they are up for reelection. Most of all I’d like them to explain their reasons. If they don’t want to vote on certain legislation, I’d like to know why. I’d like them to stand up and explain how they think we can cut our way to prosperity, or why so-called investment returns should be taxed at less than half the rate most of us pay, or why people earning eight or nine thousand dollars a week should not step up and contribute a little more when our country is in trouble and millions of citizens are out of work, out of money, and nearly out of time.