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While the fate of many in Afghanistan hangs in the balance, at least Americans at home can breathe a sigh of relief. Both the US House of Representatives and the Senate are on vacation for weeks to come. Citizens of the nation’s capital can recapture their identity from the out-of-town blowhards who give Washington a bad name. The trick now will be to encourage as many Republicans as possible to stay away for good. Admittedly, this may take another election to accomplish, but it is important to get to work on it now.
On the Senate side of the Capitol, both Democrats and Republicans are leaving town with their party balloons still in the air in celebration of a bill to fund repair and replacement of a portion of the nation’s hard infrastructure that has crumbled before their very eyes for decades. It has become so rare that both parties can agree on anything that the celebration far outweighs the accomplishment. After all that hard work, it seems that it is time for a “well-deserved” weeks-long vacation, the other topic that receives regular bipartisan support.
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On the House of Representatives side, things are a little more complicated. That group of dedicated public servants adjourned on July 30 for seven weeks, although a short recall is possible for a symbolic vote or two along the way. To be fair, they did pass some meaningful legislation in the last few months. However, only one such piece of legislation has passed the Senate as well and been signed into law — Joe Biden’s initial COVID-19 relief bill (American Rescue Plan). But at least they tried to find legislative solutions on some significant issues, the most important of which are voting rights and police reform.
With all those senators and representatives now vacationing, it would be easy to conclude from this casual approach to governance that the nation is smoothly sailing to its appointed destiny of renewed greatness. Nothing could be further from the truth.
There is so much that is so obviously wrong at the moment in today’s America that even the appearance of a weeks-long hiatus should ethically disqualify those vacationing legislators from further service. A “grateful” nation should retire all of them. But that won’t happen, in part because each of them will have a spin machine at work full-time rolling out the tale of just how hard they are working on the issues of the day back in their districts.
While You Were Vacationing
Lest you think that I am being a little hard on these self-congratulatory public servants, let’s take a look at what is going on around the nation and around the world while the US Congress has freed itself of its legislative responsibilities.
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First, and most obvious, COVID-19 is again ravaging the nation. So, instead of collectively working on urgent public health initiatives, like vaccination mandates, the vacationing legislators are individually on the stump creating more public health confusion. Much of the idiocy makes enough local news that it fortifies those in the caves, covens and churches in Republican districts and states as they go about their communities spreading the disease. The only upside is that many of the vacationing Republican congresspersons are spending their time hanging out with their unmasked and unvaccinated constituents.
Meanwhile, a country that clings to the notion that the current version of universal suffrage has become a critical component of its “democratic” foundation is in the throes of an unrelenting Republican-led effort to do everything possible to make voting more difficult and less universal. The reasons for this are simple: racism and privilege. Universal suffrage to white conservatives is only a good thing if the “universe” is overwhelmingly composed of right-wing white people. Unfortunately for that dwindling crowd, the universe includes a lot of black and brown people, and a whole bunch of young people who see “universal” as a plus.
There is an easy way to stop the reversal of the democratic process in America. It is to pass legislation at the national level that sets clear voting rights standards, that increases access to the ballot for all eligible voters and that provides fierce enforcement measures to ensure legal compliance. But you can’t do any of this on vacation.
While many of those vacationing legislators may come face-to-face with constituents in places where everything is burning, and heatwaves, drought and smoke spread daily devastation, nothing can be done about this either while on vacation. Therefore, environmental laws, climate change legislation, and economic incentives and regulatory mandates remain on hold. The legal framework for cleaner energy production, research and use remains unchanged and woefully inadequate to meet today’s planetary challenges.
While climate change is taking its deadly toll during the congressional vacation season, we should not forget about gun violence and police violence. Hardly a day goes by in America without multiple firearm deaths and some measure of police overreaction or undertraining resulting in the death or serious injury of someone in some community that the cops are supposed to be protecting. It will be hard to get a full tally from these events over the coming vacation weeks, but every congressperson knows that critically-needed federal legislation to address rampant gun violence and police reform will be on hold, as well.
No matter how completely oblivious most Americans have become to gun violence (until it hits very close to home), America remains the most likely developed country in which at any moment someone is being killed or killing themselves with a firearm. Since it has been a few weeks now since the nation’s latest high-profile mass killing, it will be hard to make it to the end of this congressional vacation without another one. Thoughts and prayers are all we get when Congress is in session, so their absence shouldn’t change the landscape much on this one. But we should all be disgusted that these public servants can go on vacation while the gun carnage continues unabated and has remained unaddressed in meaningful federal legislation for decades.
The List Goes On
I could go on. The list is long. But so is the vacation. Think about how a functioning legislature might be able to make some legislative progress in the coming weeks on universal access to meaningful health care, child care and family leave, a living minimum wage, tax reform and access to quality education.
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There might even be the opportunity to debate the crippling and continuing impact of America’s systemic racism and how to do something about it. And maybe if they weren’t all on vacation, they could do something constructive, instead of sound bites, about the implementation of America’s long-overdue withdrawal from Afghanistan and its human rights implications, about immigrants and refugees, and about ensuring that the vaccines that Americans are throwing away get into the arms of those begging for them elsewhere.
They could be doing some of this, but they are doing none of it. They are on vacation.
*[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
OpinionBernie SandersThe planet is in peril. We’re building Congress’s strongest-ever climate billBernie SandersMore than any other legislation in US history it will transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into sustainable energy Wed 18 Aug 2021 08.46 EDTLast modified on Wed 18 Aug 2021 10.14 EDTThe latest International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is clear and foreboding. If the United States, China and the rest of the world do not act extremely aggressively to cut carbon emissions, the planet will face enormous and irreversible damage. The world that we will be leaving our children and future generations will be increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable.But we didn’t really need the IPCC to tell us that. Just take a look at what’s happening right now: A huge fire in Siberia is casting smoke for 3,000 miles. Greece: burning. California: burning. Oregon: burning. Historic flooding in Germany and Belgium. Italy just experienced the hottest European day ever. July 2021 was the hottest month ever recorded. Drought and extreme weather disturbances are cutting food production, increasing hunger and raising food prices worldwide. Rising sea levels threaten Miami, New York, Charleston and countless coastal cities around the world in the not-so-distant future.In the past, these disasters might have seemed like an absurd plot in some apocalypse movie. Unfortunately, this is now reality, and it will only get much worse in years to come if we do not act boldly – now.The good news is that the $3.5tn budget resolution that was recently passed in the Senate lays the groundwork for a historic reconciliation bill that will not only substantially improve the lives of working people, elderly people, the sick and the poor, but also, in an unprecedented way, address the existential threat of climate change. More than any other legislation in American history it will transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energy.This legislation will be a long-overdue step forward in the fight for economic, racial, social and environmental justice. It will also create millions of well-paying jobs. As chair of the Senate budget committee my hope is that the various committees will soon finish their work and that the bill will be on the floor and adopted by Congress in late September.Let me be honest in telling you that this reconciliation bill, the final details of which are still being written, will not do everything that needs to be done to combat climate change. But by investing hundreds of billions of dollars in the reduction of carbon emissions it will be a significant step forward and will set an example for what other countries should be doing.Here are some of the proposals that are currently in the bill:Massive investments in retrofitting homes and buildings to save energy.Massive investment in the production of wind, solar and other forms of sustainable energy.A major move toward the electrification of transportation, including generous rebates to enable working families to buy electric vehicles and energy-efficient appliances.Major investments in greener agriculture.Major investments in climate resiliency and ecosystem recovery projects.Major investments in water and environmental justice.Major investments in research and development for sustainable energy and battery storage.Billions to address the warming and acidification of oceans and the needs of coastal communities.The creation of a Civilian Climate Corps which will put hundreds of thousands of young people to work transforming our energy system and protecting our most vulnerable communities.The Budget Resolution that allows us to move forward on this ambitious legislation was passed last Wednesday at 4am, by a vote of 50-49 after 14 hours of debate. No Republican supported it, and no Republican will support the reconciliation bill. In fact, Republicans have been shamefully absent from serious discussions about the climate emergency.That means that we must demand that every Democrat supports a reconciliation bill that is strong on solutions to the climate crisis. No wavering. No watering down. This is the moment. Our children and grandchildren are depending upon us. The future of the planet is at stake.
Bernie Sanders is a US senator and the chair of the Senate budget committee
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OpinionUS politicsWhat does Biden’s infrastructure bill tell us about the health of US democracy?David LittThis was the kind of bipartisan bill many observers never thought would be possible in 2021. But don’t be too quick to celebrate Thu 12 Aug 2021 06.27 EDTLast modified on Thu 12 Aug 2021 07.47 EDTIs Washington functional? This week would seem to suggest that the answer is a resounding and surprising yes. On Tuesday, 69 senators – 19 Republicans and 50 Democrats – passed the “Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework”, a $1tn bill that invests in everything from roads and bridges to electric grids and public transit.Kathy Hochul vows to change ‘toxic’ culture as she waits to become New York governorRead moreThis was the kind of bill many observers of American politics never thought would be possible in 2021: a major new piece of legislation that won support from both parties and will concretely improve people’s lives. The president, his staff and his allies are rightly proud of their big-deal infrastructure bill – and of the legislative skill it took to negotiate and pass it, and with final passage in the House all but inevitable, President Biden took a well-earned victory lap.“We proved that democracy can still work,” he said.But those words were clearly chosen carefully. Just because democracy can work does not mean democracy is working. In fact, a closer look at the bipartisan infrastructure framework – and the effort required to pass it – confirms just how much trouble American democracy is in.In a functioning political process, a major infrastructure bill like this one would never have passed during Joe Biden’s presidency – because it would have passed far earlier. As far back as 1998, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave America’s infrastructure a D, a grade which has barely improved in the years since. In 2007, a deadly bridge collapse in Minneapolis brought the issue of infrastructure funding to the foreground, and in 2008, both parties’ presidential candidates spoke about the importance of fixing our crumbling roads, bridges and highways. Even the Trump administration, with its endless parade of infrastructure weeks, acknowledged the importance of the issue even as they failed to address it.For well more than a decade, in other words, elected leaders of both parties have agreed the state of America’s infrastructure is a serious problem. Yet it wasn’t until this week that they finally did something about it. This hardly suggests our political process is functioning as it should.This years-long delay was even more remarkable when you consider that infrastructure investment has long enjoyed massive, bipartisan support among voters. According to Gallup, practically every poll in the last five years that asked about infrastructure found overwhelming support among Americans. In theory, supporting new infrastructure projects should have been popular no matter who was president. In practice, Republicans were more interested in spending money on tax cuts for the wealthy when they had full control of government, and in denying Democratic presidents victories when they did not.For more than 10 years, Republican elected officials concluded that the benefit of doing something the American people wanted was outweighed by the benefits of obstruction and rewarding their donors. Politically speaking, this may well have been the correct conclusion. But that suggests there’s something wrong with our political process itself.Particularly since the only thing that finally did get Republicans to the table on the infrastructure bill was the near-certainty that massive infrastructure investment was happening with or without them. For the first time since 2010, Democrats control both houses of Congress and the White House. Early in President Biden’s term, they committed to using reconciliation, which is immune to the Senate filibuster, to pass an infrastructure package.Republican lawmakers didn’t negotiate because they wanted to improve America’s infrastructure. They negotiated because obstruction was no longer an option. By helping to pass a bipartisan bill, they could at least get credit for popular items and perhaps convince Democratic centrists to pare down a future reconciliation package. Bipartisan legislation, in other words, was only made possible by the alternative possibility of extreme partisanship. That doesn’t change the importance of the bill – but it does suggest the process that led to its passage was hardly an inspiring display of country over party.So, yes, Washington proved that democracy can still work. But at the moment, American democracy works like this: if a large majority American people agree; and one party wins full control of Washington; and that party is able to find a procedural loophole that would let it take action without the Senate filibuster; and the president and his allies in Congress execute their legislative strategy near flawlessly; and we wait about 15 years; then politicians of both parties will come together and act. Such a political process is many things, but “functional” is not among them.And our democracy is poised to become much less functional very soon. If voting rights are further eroded, rampant partisan gerrymandering is allowed to go unchecked, and far-right judges continue to legislate from the bench without any real threat of court reform to moderate them, the gap between what the American people want and what Washington does will only widen.The same week the Senate passed the bipartisan infrastructure framework, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report declaring that we have reached “code red for humanity”. If governments don’t act soon on climate, the planet could become essentially uninhabitable, not in some hypothetical future, but within the lifetimes of Americans born today.Biden is right: this week, we proved democracy can work. But we were also reminded that we can no longer afford a democracy that works like this.
David Litt is an American political speechwriter and New York Times bestselling author of Thanks Obama, and Democracy In One Book Or Less. He edits How Democracy Lives, a newsletter on democracy reform
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OpinionJoe BidenThe Guardian view on Biden’s bipartisan bill: one battle won, many more to goEditorialTo emerge truly victorious the US president will have to win over the right of the Democratic party and push for big, bold change Wed 11 Aug 2021 14.09 EDTLast modified on Wed 11 Aug 2021 15.47 EDTOn Tuesday, 19 Republican senators, including minority leader Mitch McConnell, joined with Democrats to pass Joe Biden’s $550bn infrastructure bill. In a polarised age, this act of bipartisan politics seems miraculous. To vote for the bill, Senate Republicans had to go against the wishes of Donald Trump, who had warned against handing Mr Biden a victory before midterm polls in 2022. They also U-turned on a core Republican principle: that private investment is superior to government intervention.Yet the Republicans’ vote was rooted in self-interest. Only four will face the voters next year and the spending was popular, even with Republicans. Crucially Mr McConnell had protected the filibuster. Unless Republicans relented, Mr Biden might have done away with legislative tool that preserves the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for legislative success. Instead Mr Biden thanked his opponents for their courage in backing his proposal. This moment represents a test of Biden’s faith that Congress, and democracy, can still work and get things done.In many ways this looks like a defining battle for the heart and soul of the Democratic party. The infrastructure bill now goes to the House of Representatives, which has a Democratic majority and a bigger progressive bloc. The House Democratic leadership has said it will only move after the Senate passes a $3.5tn spending bill to reduce poverty, improve elderly and childcare as well as protect the environment. The biggest expansion of the US’s social safety net since the Great Society of the 1960s is needed to help flatten the inequalities wrought by decades of pro-market policies. The same can be said for rolling back the tax cuts for corporations and wealthy households that were Mr Trump’s signature legislative achievement.It is important to note that leftwing Democrats have had to trim their demand for a $6tn package. But some on the right of the party appear more in tune with Republican arguments that characterise the $3.5tn bill as “reckless”. After agreeing to vote for the bill’s framework, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin said he had “grave concerns” about such a price tag. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona last month made it clear she could not support a bill that size. They are not the only ones: in the House moderate Democrats would rather take an easy win and dump any attempt to enact big, bold social change.The criticism the US cannot afford the spending is wrong. The economist Stephanie Kelton wrote that Mr Trump’s tax cuts added $1.9tn to the country’s fiscal deficit with little effect on the country’s ability to spend. The other concern is inflation. Prof Kelton noted many experts thought “Congress could enact both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the proposed $3.5tn reconciliation bill without exacerbating inflation”.Perhaps the greatest obstacle to Mr Biden’s ambition is not the politicians, but the ideological orientation of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which scores the spending and revenues. Under reconciliation rules, measures cannot add to the deficit after a decade. In a sign of what lies ahead, Mr Biden’s treasury team has already claimed that tax enforcement will raise more cash than the CBO projects. The president knows that the New Deal and Great Society programmes passed into law without a CBO score. Mr Biden would like to change America on a such a scale. But transformations like that cannot be bought. They must be fought for.TopicsJoe BidenOpinionUS SenateUS politicsDemocratsRepublicanseditorialsReuse this content More
US SenateSenate approves $3.5tn budget plan in crucial step on economic packageLawmakers approve Democrats’ budget resolution on party-line 50-49 vote hours after passing $1tn infrastructure bill G More
