There are 435 Representatives in the House and 100 Senators in the Senate. The population of the United States is currently about 330 million people. Here we are on the verge of yet another government shutdown because the 535 people in Congress are too busy playing political gamesmanship to see who will blink first or who can be blamed for whatever calamity befalls the nation due to this continued and inexcusable political game.
The Republicans, true to form, are blocking everything and anything the Biden administration is trying to do while forgetting that some Democrats voted with the Republicans three times during the Trump administration to raise the debt ceiling. And, oh by the way, the national debt that they are now complaining about rose significantly during the Trump administration due primarily to the tax cuts that they enacted.
And, to make matters worse, there is significant infighting within the Democratic Party between the moderates and the progressives. The fact is that if they can’t get their collective act together, they will likely blow a once in a generation chance to get this done. We will likely end up with nothing and the Republicans will be ready to pounce on the fact that the Democratic party is totally ineffective.
This is all frustrating but the thing that really pisses me off is the fact that the 535 elected officials in the House and Senate are playing their political games while the rest of us are getting screwed. These people are supposed to work for us and they all seem to be caught up in the ‘game of politics’ and losing sight of the fact that there are likely to be real world consequences for their failure to act and/or learn to compromise to at least make some progress.
Everyone in Congress is pretty well paid. They all have a whole raft of perks that come with the job including health care. And, if the government shuts down, they will likely still get paid. It’s really easy to play hardball when its not your ass on the line. And, that’s exactly what’s happening. All of these Congressman, Republican and Democrat, are playing with our collective lives to score political points, play ‘king of the hill’ to see who gets to be in power, and it pisses me off. Every time I hear one of these politicians talk about how they are playing hardball ‘for the American people’, I want to vomit. If they really meant that, they would learn the meaning of the word ‘compromise’ and put it into action.
It seems like there is absolutely no incentive for members of Congress to work together to solve problems or avert crises like this showdown on the debt. I don’t know what the answer is, but it certainly seems like there needs to be some type of structural change that incentivizes Congressman to actually work together to solve problems as opposed to being incentivized to create chaos and obstacles to getting anything done.
I’m sure there are those who would welcome the suggestion I’ve heard sometimes that Congressman shouldn’t get paid if the government is shut down. Think about that. There are likely very few, if any, Congressman who are living paycheck to paycheck. Most of them could probably last for quite a while without getting a paycheck with minimal impact on their lives. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for millions of Americans.
Since these people seem to enjoy playing games, and the filibuster has become the favorite cudgel used by the minority party to stymie or kill legislation they don’t like, I was thinking perhaps we should take a page from the game of football. In football, each side is allowed three timeouts per half. Maybe the filibuster rule should be changed so that each side, Democrats and Republicans, are allowed three filibusters each year. If that were the case, perhaps they’d be a little more judicious in how they used the filibusters and be more incentivized to work toward a compromise rather than just blocking everything that comes along like children having temper tantrums.
That would seem to be a simple, commonsense solution but it is highly unlikely any commonsense solution to enable reasonable people to navigate through the existing political swamp will ever pass. I think the Congressmen/women, once they get sucked into the ‘game’, actually begin to enjoy being Congressional swamp rats and relish playing in the slop. Unfortunately, for the rest of us, we just have to sit by and watch this spectacle while being splattered with the mud. Get out your foul weather gear out – it’s going to be a messy week.