Worst Congress Ever

Recently, when House Majority Whip Rep. Kevin McCarthy was asked if this Congress was the actual "worst in history" -- as Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein had claimed -- his response was that he would agree the Senate is the worst in history, but not his part the House of Representatives.

McCarthy is a perfect politician, or rather a typical politician, when he turned the question, agreed with it and then blamed everyone but himself.

Our politicians have the unique ability to create a problem and a system -- and then run against the very problem and system they have created. They also have the ability to vilify the other side and then cry the other side won’t agree to their terms, while not compromising themselves -- and yet they blame the other side for not compromising.

I agree with Mr. Klein, and would go further to say that our Congress is the worst in the history of empires -- and I will show how I came to this conclusion.

Last year, Congress had its most futile year in history, passing only 80 bills (since records have been kept since 1947). This year, there have been 54 bills passed so far and 17 of those have been to rename either post offices or other places.

After a hard year of work our Congress is taking a much needed five-week break. This long summer break came about initially because of the heat in the nation’s capital -- it was literally too hot to work before air conditioning. Of course, now the Congress has air conditioning, but why change a good thing?

I believe right now we are seeing what happens with years of elected officials that are not qualified to do the job they are elected to do.

The Post Office just defaulted for the first time in history. A fiscal cliff is coming, and the fix -- which will probably happen -- will not be a long-term fix but something to get us through (the hated ‘kick the can’).

We don’t know where or if the Keystone Pipeline fits because we have no energy plan (the only developed country in the world not to have one).

We also have no long-term tax plan, no long-term immigration plan and no true job creation plan.

We are only developed country in the world without a long-term anything, except long-term politicians.

Our two candidates for president argue over everything but say nothing. Recently a senator accused two others who disagreed with her of being associated with the Muslim Brotherhood and the Senate Democratic leader just made an accusation about Gov. Romney about not paying taxes for a decade -- though he admits he couldn’t prove it and says Romney’s dead father must be disappointed.

Really?

Is this how bad we have become, or just how bad the worst Congress in history and our leadership actually have become? I think the latter.

I understand that Ronald Reagan worked with a Democratic Congress and Bill Clinton worked with a Republican one, and President Obama has to take the blame for the standstill and lack of things happening in DC. However, I am not sure that Stephen Hawking mixed with Teddy Roosevelt and Abe Lincoln could work with these guys.

Americans still are the innovators for the world. I still believe in our country, just not our Congress and our leaders - they don’t truly represent us. We will once again this year try to choose the least worst candidates.

We have allowed the debate to center on the lowest common denominator. We must demand more. We must demand that the debate is about our country and not a ridiculous birth certificate assertion or if a candidate strapped a dog to the top of a car on a vacation.

We must demand that our leaders are actually leaders and not what we have now. The worst part is all of Congress would agree with this article -- but place the blame on everyone else and especially the other party.

We demand more out of everything in our society, from sports to business, so we must stop allowing the worst of our society to stay in politics, and we must quit allowing the extremes of our society to dictate the debate.

Our politicians as a whole are in the pocket of lobbyist and deep pockets -- we can’t blame the lobbyist, we must start blaming the ones that are so morally bankrupt that they allow their vote to be bought.

We must demand more.