I'm going to do something a little unusual: Praise Congress. Well, at least I'm going to praise one chamber of it: The Senate. No, I haven't lost my mind. No, I'm not actually happy with how things are going in Washington. But at least in the Senate, things really could be a lot worse—and this year, thanks especially to the elimination of the filibuster for almost all presidential nominations, they actually got better.
Obviously, not everyone agrees with that. For example:
“It’s been a year of great accomplishments and achievements,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who wore a mischievous grin, his voice thick with sarcasm. “When I’m down at the old soldiers’ home and I’m sitting in my rocking chair I’ll say, ‘Boy, 2013 was a banner year.’ ”
There's no question that Congress overall was wildly unproductive in 2013—in fact, it's on pace to be
the least productive Congress in history.
But given the radical nature of the House Republican majority, that's probably a good thing, and the Senate deserves credit. I mean, sure, technically speaking, Congress would have been more productive if the Senate had passed the House abortion ban, or any one of the multitude of Obamacare repeal bills passed by the House, but to its credit, the Senate didn't go there.
Please read below the fold on what the Senate has accomplished this year.
Instead, the Senate passed bills like immigration reform, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and the Violence Against Women Act—and did so on a bipartisan basis. Immigration reform and ENDA are stuck in the House, but even the House eventually realized holding up VAWA was not tenable, and caved.
More importantly, on two separate occasions the Senate stood its ground on the debt limit, refusing the mistake of 2011 by legitimizing government-by-ransom. And when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and House Republicans bluffed their way into a government shutdown over defunding Obamacare, the Senate didn't panic: They called the bluff, and won.
But probably the most important thing the Senate did this year was to finally end filibusters on virtually all presidential nominations, a process that Senate Republicans had abused beyond all recognition. A lot of pundits saw that move as yet another example of gridlock, but it was actually the opposite: It was one of the few things the Senate could actually do to make government run more smoothly, and they did it.
None of this is to say that this has been a good Congress. As a whole, it has been awful, and it has not only refused to deal with crucial issues, but actually inflicted harm on the country. But that's a function of House Republicans. If Nancy Pelosi were Speaker of the House, we'd be looking at a different situation, but given that the House is run by John Boehner and the tea party, the Senate has done a reasonably decent job of keeping things from being worse than they already are.