[Vision2020] Running Our Country

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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September 21, 2012
The Polar Express By GAIL
COLLINS<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/gailcollins/index.html>

This is the season of Extreme Politics. Everything’s exciting. Mitt Romney
paid taxes! Joe Biden just bought a 36-pound pumpkin! Paul Ryan is
campaigning with his mom again!

Oh, and Congress is ready to go home to run for re-election. I know you
were wondering.

“I haven’t had anybody in West Virginia tell me we should hurry home to
campaign,” protested Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat.

This might be because Manchin is approximately 40 points ahead in the
polls. He could probably spend the next month in a fallout shelter without
anybody noticing. Nevertheless, he is so fearful of alienating
conservatives that he refuses to say who has his support for president.
There are only about five undecided voters left in this country and one of
them is a senator from West Virginia.

The good news is that our lawmakers spent their last pre-election days in
Washington working to pass a bill that would keep the government running
for the next six months. This is sometimes referred to as a “continuing
resolution,” and sometimes as “kicking the can down the road.” Personally,
I am pretty relieved to see evidence that this group has the capacity to
kick a can.

Let’s look at what else they were up to. This is important, partly because
the last things you take up before going back to the voters shows something
about your true priorities. Also partly because it will give me a chance to
mention legislation involving 41 polar bear carcasses in Canadian freezers.

The Senate had a big agenda for its finale. Kicking the budget can down the
road! Passing a resolution on Iran designed to demonstrate total support
for whatever it is Israel thinks is a good idea! The Sportsmen’s Act!

O.K., the last one was sort of unexpected. It’s a bunch of
hunting-and-fishing proposals, ranging from conservation to “allowing
states to issue electronic duck stamps.” Also, allowing “polar bear
trophies to be imported from a sport hunt in Canada.” A long while ago,
some Americans legally hunted down said bears, happily envisioning the day
when they could display a snarling head on the study wall, or perhaps stuff
the entire carcass and stick it in the front hallway where it could
perpetually rear on its hind legs, frightening away census-takers.

But then the United States prohibited the importation of dead polar bears,
and there have been 41 bear carcasses stuck in Canadian freezers ever
since.

Free the frozen polar bears! Well, not before November, since the Senate
minority leader, Mitch McConnell, dug in his heels, claiming the whole
hunting bill was only coming up to help its main sponsor, Jon Tester of
Montana, in a tight race. McConnell, who publicly set his own top policy
priority as making sure Barack Obama didn’t get re-elected, hates naked
partisanship.

The House, meanwhile, declined to take up two major bipartisan bills from
the Senate. One was the farm bill, which Speaker John Boehner admitted he
just couldn’t get his right wing to vote for despite pleas from endangered
rural Republicans.

The other was aimed at reviving the teetering U.S. Postal Service, which is
about to default again. “I hear from our Republican colleagues they didn’t
want to force their folks to make difficult votes,” said Tom Carper, a lead
Senate sponsor.

Really, there’s no excuse on this one. By the time a difficult issue has
been turned into a bipartisan Senate bill, it’s no longer all that
difficult. People, if you see a member of the House majority campaigning in
your neighborhood, demand to know why the Postal Service didn’t get fixed.

Although on the plus side, the House did agree that the space astronauts
should be allowed to keep some flight souvenirs.

One thing virtually nobody in the Senate considered a pre-election priority
was spending hours and hours arguing about a proposal from Senator Rand
Paul of Kentucky to eliminate foreign aid to Libya, Pakistan and Egypt.
However, in the grand tradition of the upper chamber, Paul had the power to
hold up the crucial kicking-the-can bill hostage by threatening a
filibuster if he didn’t get his way.

“He can keep us here for a week and a half if we don’t let him bring it
up,” grumbled Senator Charles Schumer.

Rand Paul does this sort of thing all the time. Who among us can forget
when he stalled the renewal of federal flood insurance under the theory
that the Senate first needed to vote on whether life started at conception?

The majority leader, Harry Reid, pointed out repeatedly that he has had to
struggle with 382 filibusters during his six years at the helm. “That’s 381
more filibusters than Lyndon Johnson faced,” he complained. Obviously,
Robert Caro is never going to write a series of grand biographies about the
life of Harry Reid.

It’s a wonder anything ever gets done. Although, actually, it generally
doesn’t.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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