It has been more than four decades since the Congress of the United States has been able to summon the will to pass a major piece of social legislation. Not since 1965, when Medicare and the Voting Rights Act both overcame decades of opposition to become law, has Congress proved itself up to the task.
Significant healthcare reform is all but dead for this session, and the chances of substantively addressing the regulatory breakdown that allowed Wall Street's irresponsible speculation to precipitate the worst global financial crisis since the Depression seem to recede with each passing day. So too the prospects for passage of further stimulus measures to remedy the crisis of unemployment and underemployment that continues to ravage the lives of families in states from Michigan to California.
In the face of these daunting issues, what was it that preoccupied the Senate on the eve of its long weekend recess? The legislative drama du jour is the standoff between the White House and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), who has put a personal hold on more than 70 executive branch appointments until the Obama administration agrees to fund a couple of pork-barrel projects he has earmarked for his state...
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten6-2010feb06,0,1034960.column
Matthias Wasser wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Marv Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca>wrote:
>
>> "...a “Beijing consensus” has been gaining ground, extolling the virtues of
>> decisive authoritarianism over shilly-shallying democratic debate. In the
>> margins of international conferences such as the recent Davos forum, even
>> American officials mutter despairingly about their own “dysfunctional”
>> political system."
>
>
> Who has been saying this? I've heard a lot of people mocking the Senate for
> being dysfunctional, but the comparison is to parliamentary systems, which
> are more democratic.
>
> Indeed, the only defense I've seen of the senate is an explicitly
> anti-democratic appeal to authority: the Framers wanted a republic, not a
> democracy, &c.
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