Exhausted from pursuing an arduous schedule of raising millions of dollars to get elected again next year, the 113th Congress is about to go home from its first year of "work." Activity in Congress could well pick up over Christmas, as workmen will refurbish the Chamber, the first actual work done there in months. Look for reports from the broom closet on C-SPAN.
But the 113th was not a Do-Nothing Congress, no matter what you hear. They did do something. For example, they boldly renamed a building at the Nashua, N.H. airport the Patricia Clark Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center, proving once again what poets Congressmen are. They manned up and renamed a Missouri bridge the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge. Those were two of the 50 or so bills — say it ain't so, Stan! — that actually managed to sneak past Republican obstructionism. Still, Congress couldn't quite find the gumption to pass an actual budget, or a road bill, or do anything to provide more jobs for Americans. In Congress's defense, the GOP's sequester will eventually cause the loss of hundreds of thousands of good government jobs with benefits, though those laid-off folks are now welcome to work at minimum wage and draw food stamps when they can't make ends meet. No, wait, this just in — Congress did also boldly cut food stamps, too, because hey, you want to have a job and to eat, too?
A few bills passed relating to hydroelectric projects, probably to the detriment of rivers and the benefit of constituent millionaires, but it's possible some good may come of them, so let's put those laws in the "actually doing something" column. That about wraps up the good news, though. Several laws will do actual environmental harm, so maybe it's a good thing this Congress can't get out of its own way. For example Law 113-33, the "Denali National Park 'Improvement' Act" (internal quote marks, mine) enables the construction of high-pressure natural gas pipelines in Alaskan parklands (o, frabjous day!) and also swaps in some new acreage for mineral rights in a "non-wilderness" area. (One presumes that "non-wilderness" quite ably euphemizes a moonscape.)
Congress did cap the student loan interest rate to Treasury standards plus a few percent, though zero percent would have been fairer. Student loan debt now exceeds credit card debt in America, at around four-fifths of a trillion bucks. Those greedy kids! Just like those greedy laid-off federal and state and local government workers! This country is going to hell, just as the tea partiers insist. They ought to know; they've taken the role of Charon and the Potomac is the Styx.
I must not have understood No. 113-29, the "Reverse Mortgage Stabilization Act of 2013," because it sounded as if this law would help actual people. I'm sure I must be misreading it. I mean, seriously, with this Congress, what are the chances?
Back to the stupidity. We'll tax influenza vaccines now, though who that benefits I don't know. I suppose we're just lucky Katie Couric isn't a Congresswoman, or we'd be banning penicilllin. We eased restrictions on Pipeline Safety Regulations, because we can, and no self-respecting Congressman would want to get in the way of further environmental depredations of public and private lands in North America. Congress also "improved" the Job Opportunities for Veterans Act. How? Get this. By reducing the amount vets will get for OJT, and extending the requirement for a reduced pension for vets' Medicaid for another year. The "improved" part apparently is the non-binding proviso that governmental agencies (nearly all of which are cutting jobs, remember; see: sequester) are to be doubly on the lookout for those many new job openings veterans can fill! Our veterans thank you, Congress! They know you're thinking of them. You should know that they are also thinking of you, and they may still be armed.
No bills were vetoed by the President last year. With that measly output, why bother?
Oh, Congress also "concluded the privatization" of the federal helium reserve, undoubtedly to silence the over-heliumized American people, whose voices, apparently, are already so high that they cannot be heard by human beings. Or by Congressmen, either.