We’ve all heard the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for – you might get it.” Chances are we have all wished for something that turned out not to be what we really thought we would be happy with. Let me apply this phrase to the current political situation.
The approval rating of Congress is somewhere around 20% so we know that both sides of the aisle are frustrated with all the dysfunction. Yesterday was the mid-term Election Day for our U.S. House of Representatives, one third of our U.S. Senate, and several State Governorships so these same frustrated voters had the opportunity to vote for the government they wanted and this morning we see what that government will look like.
Now the new American government has to take on the business of government and to a person I’ll bet they are not very well prepared for what is ahead. For the past many years we have witnessed the politics of obstruction as one side of the aisle or the other worked to keep their opponent’s proposal from becoming law. They all want credit, but they don’t want to share it with the opposing side so nothing gets done.
The Senate has been the epicenter of the dysfunction through the use of the filibuster by the Republican minority for several years, but that will be a different situation now that the Republicans have a majority of the seats – or will it? The Republicans have a majority, but they don’t have a filibuster proof majority so we are likely to see the Democrats doing a bit of tit-for-tat. Oh, they won’t play the filibuster card in exactly the same way, but they will be playing it none the less.
If we just look at the Affordable Care Act, (aka, Obamacare) we should see some interesting dance steps right after the new Congress is sworn into office in January. The Republicans have promised to repeal it altogether, but now that millions have health insurance for the first time, I wonder if that promise will be smart to follow through on. Immigration is another hot topic that should be entertaining to watch.
In the end, one of my friends said it best – “When they don’t know what they’re doing, they do what they know.” I would like to think that the new government will govern in a manner that will ease the frustration of the voters, but I suspect that the new way of doing business will demonstrate that the politics of obstruction and construction have simply switched seats in the chamber.
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