Subject: ICYMI -- Norm Ornstein in The Atlantic: Is This the Worst Congress Ever?
From: Dem Leader Press Office <[email-masked]>
To: Undisclosed recipients:;
Date: Tue, 17 May 2016 16:08:50 +0000

Again and again, House Republicans have failed the American people - relentlessly obstructing real action for communities in crisis, and refusing to work with Democrats to invest in the future and protect the safety of hard-working families.  In a column<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/is-this-the-worst-congress-ever/483075/> today for The Atlantic, Congressional scholar Norm Ornstein notes the stunning indifference, inaction, and outright failure of the Republican Congress, echoing House Democrats' appeal to the GOP: #DoYourJob for the American people.

The Atlantic

Is This the Worst Congress Ever?<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/is-this-the-worst-congress-ever/483075/>

It can't pass a budget, can't confirm appointments, and now it can't even scrounge up funding to address public-health crises.

May 17, 2016

By: Norm Ornstein

Excerpts:

...it may be no exaggeration to call the current, 114th Congress the worst ever-at least edging out the infamous 112th. The truly cringeworthy failures started when both the House and Senate refused to even acknowledge the president's budget, an unprecedented step, and the House and Senate Budget Committees followed by refusing to hold the usual annual hearing when the president's top economic advisor comes to the Hill to discuss the budget and the economy. It was a sign of disrespect that was simply shocking...

What about the congressional budget? Remember, back when Democrats controlled the Senate, Republican congressional leaders used to laud passing a budget as the single most significant action government could take? This time, the April 15 deadline passed without a murmur, much less an actual budget plan, from either house.

...the dozen spending bills, which should be moving along with dispatch right now to meet the deadline of October 1, when the new fiscal year begins, are hardly moving at all. In the House, the Boehner budget deal was designed to "clean out the barn" for Ryan. Instead, the barn's been soiled by the pesky Freedom Caucus, the right-most wing of the right-wing majority party. Despite Paul Ryan's many moves to accommodate Freedom Caucus members, bringing them into the leadership fold and consulting with them regularly, they have given him the middle finger on spending bills, holding firm against any change in the sequester numbers. And that, of course, puts Ryan right where Boehner was for several agonizing years...

... Now add the embarrassment of the unprecedented failure of fundamental fiduciary responsibility by the Senate to even acknowledge the right of a president to nominate an individual to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court with eleven months to go in his term, and then the obdurate refusal to hold a hearing on a nominee many key Republicans, like Orrin Hatch, had praised to the skies before his nomination, before turning him into a nonperson...

Delays in congressional action, failures on fiscal policy, foot-dragging on confirmations-these are all, to one degree or another, well-worn paths of behavior in Congress. But there is more, much more, for the 114th Congress.

There are very legitimate arguments about the appropriate role and scope of the federal government. But few except nihilists and the most extreme libertarians would argue that protecting public safety in the face of catastrophe or epidemic should be off the government's books or sharply constrained in scope. And right now, there are three such examples: the horrible Flint water debacle, a man-made (mostly state government-made) disaster; the Zika crisis, a classic disease epidemic; and the opioid crisis. All are crying out for a sharp and focused response from the federal government. In Flint, the excruciatingly slow response at all levels has left city residents still without reliably safe water supplies, while children and others face health horrors like enduring brain damage. With Zika, as Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health testified, the potential for a major expansion of the virus, leading to health problems and many children born with microcephaly, along with incidents of Guillaume-Barre disease and other terrible maladies, is palpable. The opioid crisis has resulted in widespread debilitating addiction and many deaths from heroin and painkillers. Congress's response last month? Go on recess without dealing with them.

Action on each of these epidemics requires money-and money spent now will make it much easier to avoid much bigger bills down the road, not to mention that it would abate more human suffering and death. But all three have been blocked by the Republican majority's demand for offsets for spending to cope with disasters. And, when offsets are offered, it has still refused to come up with adequate funding.

On Zika, where the flimsy excuse is that the administration has failed to produce a detailed plan to deal with the virus (the reality is that both NIH and CDC have plans ready to roll,) the House Appropriations Committee has come up with a pathetic $600 million or so, far short of the $1.9 billion Fauci and other experts say is necessary. The same small-minded failure to find enough dollars plagues the response to the opioid crisis. In Flint, there has been next to nothing done. I expect that before the year is out, Congress will slap together something on Zika and opioids, and declare victory. Most likely, it will be too little, too late, and taxpayers will foot larger bills in subsequent years, while too many people will suffer, and too many will die.