The title says it all. I also love NPR for providing this kind of journalism.
Thomas Mann, senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, is working on a book about Congress with a title that provides a succinct answer: It's Even Worse Than It Looks.
In modern history, Mann says, "there have been battles, delays, brinkmanship — but nothing quite like this."
Also,
Mann acknowledges there have been worse times for Congress, but he reaches back a very long way for a comparison.
"There were a few really bruising periods in American congressional history, not only the run-up to the Civil War, but also around the War of 1812," he says.
It gets better after the fold.
"I think you'd have to go back to the 1850s to find a period of congressional dysfunction like the one we're in today," says Daniel Feller, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Tennessee.
Feller, who specializes in the Jacksonian, Antebellum and Civil War periods, points specifically to 1849-1860 when Congress sometimes struggled for months to even elect a speaker of the House.
Other periods of governmental deadlock include Andrew Johnson's Reconstruction presidency, Woodrow Wilson's conflict with Congress over the League of Nations and the fights between President Truman and the "do-nothing" 80th Congress in 1947-48.
"None of those involved the level of conflict within Congress itself that we see today," Feller says.
They let Eric Cantor off a little too easy.
Lawmakers are acutely aware of the failing grades they're getting from the pundits and the public alike. After punting two months down the field on the payroll tax cut, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) clearly registered his disgust.
"Washington needs to stop adding confusion and more uncertainty to people's lives," he said.
However,
If today's Congress really is the least effective since before the Civil War, "it's disappointing, but not surprising," Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia says.
I really don't find any of this to be surprising either. However, I kind of like how it ended.
But Warner believes the tide is beginning to turn and that "more cooperation" is on some lawmakers' lists of New Year's resolutions.
"I am actually going into the next year more optimistic," he said. "I know this problem isn't going away. It's going to require both sides being willing to take on both revenue and entitlements. I think there's a growing recognition of that. And I'm going to hang in there."
OK, I'm going to have to part with Senator Warner on entitlements. He's trying to be too nice with his language there. When it gets closer to November, we'll learn what the voters really want. I don't think that they would be too thrilled with cutting Social Security and Medicare. I wonder how they'll respond to the idea of putting the tax burden on the wealthy instead? We might want to look more into that in 2012.
What's the best part of the article? It brings attention to the gridlock in Congress and why Congress is screwing with people. They didn't get into Republican obstruction, but they also didn't simply blame President Obama either. When we get into the 2012 elections, we are going to have to pay attention to the Congressional races as well.