WASHINGTON, D.C.
By: Lieno Tipe
In a surprise move this morning, the
U.S. Congress applied for unemployment benefits. None were available for
comment regarding the action, but a person familiar with the matter stated
that many members of both the House and Senate had seemed confused lately.
“They’re not getting any work done,”
the person conjectured. “So maybe they erroneously believe they don't have
jobs.”
Staff at the Unemployment Services
Office at 4058 Minnesota Avenue in the nation’s capitol was taken aback when
they opened their doors at 8:30 a.m., and all members of the nation’s governing body
swarmed the entrance. “It was highly unusual,” said a manager at that
location. "As I understand it, these
individuals all worked for the same organization, but none of them spoke to
each other, or even acknowledged each other’s presence.”
Many in both the public and private
sectors agree that the nation’s leading governing body has seemed to be
unemployed since the November election. Their inactivity spans a wide
range of areas, such as avoiding to avert the “fiscal cliff” in January and
lengthy delays in endorsing vital appointments – including former Senator Chuck
Hagel, a highly regarded veteran soldier, to Secretary of Defense and John
Brennan, a renowned counterterrorism authority, to Director of the CIA.
They have also failed to act, in
spite of appalling massacres, on gun control measures as seemingly common sense
as background checks and limits on fully automatic rifles with high capacity
magazines, weapons considered by military and law enforcement officials to be
designed solely to kill large numbers of human beings in a matter of minutes.
Other inactivity, perhaps more curious, has included no meaningful progress on budgetary and tax revenue legislation, considered by some to be pivotal in
actually having a government.
In one example of contrast, the
Seventy-third Congress, in two years under President Roosevelt, raised tax rates, ended the
tax-exempt status of corporate dividends, limited deductions for capital
depreciation, restored the banking system, increased unemployment assistance to
the states, authorized tariff reductions to promote free trade, asserted the right of workers to organize, and passed the
A.A.A. – aimed at increasing the purchasing power of farmers – and the
N.I.R.A., mandating key minimum wages. They passed the Glass-Steagall Act, separating commercial from
investment banking, created the Securities and Exchange Commission, the
Civilian Conservation Corps, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the
Tennessee Valley Authority, and passed the National Labor Relations Act and laws
regulating railroads and public utilities.*
In their spare time, they also managed to agree on, and establish, something called the Social Security Administration.**
“I know it's bizarre, but by comparison, our current Congress does seem to believe they are not employed,” said one expert on governing process. "What other explanation could there be?”
White House reaction was limited. An
administration spokesperson released a terse statement reading, in its
entirety: “When the President promised to put the nation back to work, he
didn’t think he’d have to include Congress.”
*Louis
Menand, “How the Deal Went Down,” The
New Yorker, March 7, 2013,
pp. 69-74.
**Ditto.
**Ditto.
