A week or so ago, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor reported that the House had completed its legislating for the rest of the term, leaving in Limbo substantial amounts of unfinished business. Without bothering to specify what unfinished business he was leaving behind.
One of those important bills is the agriculture bill, in limbo as reported here by the NYT. In a horrendous drought year where about thirteen hundred counties are under drought emergency findings, and many of them in the agricultural areas east of the Rockies, which is one big drought area, this bill provided insurance against crop failures both of ag and animal farmers, but has not yet gotten done in the House, although the drought is not similarly hampered and is doing its worst. The results of crop failures this year will probably be increases, and possibly gouging, on food prices for shoppers later this year, according to the Secretary of Agriculture in the Times. Another item is a disaster relief bill which expired last year and has not been renewed, and is therefore unavailable to farmers or anyone else, which might have provided relief for farmers in the current crisis.
Another is the relief for the Post Office, discussed but not acted upon, reported by the Times here. The failure to act on this one has produced a default by the USPS in two payments, each of Five and a half Billion Dollars due for the ridiculous pension fund sequestration to fund in advance payments on USPS pensions due in the next seventy five years, for which the workers are not only not necessarily now working, but not necessarily even born yet. As we know, the USPS has financial troubles exacerbated by this pension problem, created by 2006 legislation, and is looking at ceasing Saturday deliveries, raising postage, and closing hundreds if not thousands of smaller post offices as well as a number of the critical distribution centers, which are required to produce the relatively timely delivery we now get. This is in limbo and under Cantor's scheduling will stay there.
We are, of course, also waiting for the most awful possible moment for the Republicans to move forward with the debt ceiling renewal, whatever is proposed to deal with the lapse of all of the Bush tax cuts effective January 1, and the mandatory sequestrations required by the Republicans' failure to make a grand bargain deal required under the terms of their last traffic jam mess last year, the last time they tried to make the US default in order to get what they wanted. None of that business is in fact resolved, and the debt ceiling comes up in IIRC October this next time, as if the adjournment of dealing with it in a way that resolves it is intended to be an intentionally created October crisis. All of the economists have already told us that if these are not resolved, we are headed right back into recession.
To say this is idiotic, given the critical nature to lots and lots of Americans who are not and try never to be in Washington DC and never send it vast amounts of money, understates the matter. Their party affiliations are irrelevant. The suffering from delay is not irrelevant.
I am posting these as a place to start to have Kossacks identify other critical legislation sitting in limbo in the House, apparently until the elections are over, because the Republicans have effectively closed the House for business and which affect large numbers of ordinary Americans directly. I ask in order that Kossacks can have this information here at their fingertips rather than scattered, for the weeks soon to come when many a primary is being held and many a Republican is running for the smaller offices, including House and Senate, and state legislatures and such.
Actually, I have two lists in mind, this 'unfinished business list' for the House, and a list of House Truly Stupid stuff, which they have in fact worked on, for which my first nomination is a bill which they are chewing away at to forbid implementation of 'black lung' coverage for miners under the terms of a relatively new bill which made it harder for mine owners to evade their responsibility for this well known and horribly damaging and fatal work illness.
Please identify your nominees as either stuff left in limbo by the abdication for the duration of the House Republican leadership, or appalling stuff they have in fact been prepared to work on, and the parts of our America adversely affected by what they have not gotten done, or are moving on. The campaign is coming, the potential nominees are numerous, the mail in ballots are in the mail and the light is going. So get to this, that we may be better armed in the next few weeks.