Resolved: Our cat's breath smells like cat food. Good work everyone, see you in six weeks.
Oh,
you poor deluded souls:
A month ago, many of us had circled this week on our calendars as the window for Congress to complete -- or at least make progress on -- key issues before departing on its August recess. For instance, the assumption back then was that the House of Representatives would roll up its sleeves on immigration reform, and that Democrats and Republicans would continue to have conversations about resolving some of the thorny budget issues.
Funny story on that: it neglected the first rule of this Congress, which is that this Congress is so utterly incompetent that they are hard-pressed to enter and leave the building without injuring themselves. "Rolling up their sleeves" on anything would end with half of Boehner's caucus somehow impaling themselves on their own cufflinks. True to form, immigration reform in the House has devolved into the one-man dog and pony show Steve King berating everyone who comes into earshot, and if there's been any credible progress on Congress even attempting a passable—not a good, but merely an actually enactable—budget, they've been exceedingly well hidden. If anything, I fear the
incompetent label is not enough: it implies they've been trying.
Fear not, however: America's most inept social club is on the cusp of its hard-earned August break. This would be different from the January, February, March, April, May, June and July breaks in that during the month of August they won't even pretend at doing business, which in the case of Darrell Issa marks a substantive improvement in things, but some cranks on both sides of the aisle have it in their heads that adjourning for over a month when they have not actually solved any of the critical problems that they were have supposed to solve by now (budget, cough) and that maybe the group does not actually deserve to leave work and go to summer camp.
Failing to adjourn has the potential to create a clunky August for both the House and Senate. Unless both chambers agree to leave, both would have to hold two pro forma sessions each week throughout August — forcing a few members and several House and Senate aides to show up each day for no reason.
However, the last time Congress voted against going on August break, it was an act of empty symbolism. Members held a boisterous vote to stay in session — in a sense, protesting their own failure to legislate — only to quietly adjourn for August just a few days later.
Note that the choices being contemplated are between adjourning and holding pro-forma sessions with a skeleton crew of members; actually using the time to accomplish something is a unicorn fart of an idea, and not one that is even in the cards. Among other things, House Republicans have been planning for a summer of crackpot
social media networking and town hall question-planting to rally their base against Obamacare, gin up outrage against the already-debunked "IRS scandal" and to argue against the very idea of government needing to spend money at all, and you can't ask them to give
that up. You don't want to know how much time and cash has been put into finding just the right hashtags for those things, and I think that's a
little more important than coming up with a national budget.
I mean, hashtags, people. That's some top-notch gubberminting, right there.