|
Politico...
Congress
set to throw in the towel
By Jonathan Allen
12/14/11
Congressional
leaders are sneering at
each other across the aisle and from one end of the Capitol to the
other,
locked in yet another year-end death match over massive bills that have
real-world implications for every American.
But
among the rank and file, the mood
is different — punch-drunk and ready to throw in the towel.
The
battle-weary and unpopular 112th
Congress is ready to call it quits on its first session and go home to
regroup.
“We’re
kind of in the 12th round, and
you just stagger to the middle of the ring,” said Rep. Lee Terry
(R-Neb.),
whose legislation forcing a decision on the controversial Keystone XL
oil
pipeline has, at least temporarily, been wrapped into a payroll tax cut
package.
In
that way, the session is expected
to end with a whimper rather than a bang. Fierce debates over every
last detail
in the fiscal 2011 spending measure, the August debt-limit deal and the
many
failed deficit-reduction negotiations have given way to a collective
sense of
resignation.
“It
does feel like the piss and
vinegar in this place is at a lower level than before,” said Sen. Mark
Kirk
(R-Ill.).
Indeed,
much as the American people
are turned off and have tuned out from Congress, lawmakers seem like
they’re
over it all after a brutal year.
Sen.
Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who, like
Kirk, is a veteran of the House, said folks just want to “wrap things
up at the
end of the year.”
The
sentiment can be seen, in part, in
the annoyance Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is hearing
from all
sides as he tries to use a year-end spending bill as leverage to
rewrite the
House Republicans’ payroll tax cut bill. The White House and many
congressional
Democrats disdain that measure because its extension of unemployment
benefits
also scales them back, because it uses spending cuts — rather than tax
hikes on
the wealthy — to offset the cost of the reduction in Social Security
taxes and
because of the Keystone XL language.
But
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who
is fighting for her political career in a tough swing-state race, said
Reid’s
tone has been unhelpful...
Read
the rest of this article, plus
others, at Politico
|
