CONGRESS IS WORKING HARD AT NOT WORKING HARD!

 

…The “Do Nothing” Congress, hard at not working

Republican Congress Motto: Whenever possible, blame the president!

It interesting that the most “do-nothing” congress in history is now planning on suing the president.  This is their attempt for moving the public’s attention away from a non-working US Congress, and on to the chief executive.  They are now attempting to sue the president for not enforcing some US laws.  When asked just which law, or laws the suit would be about, House Speaker John Boehner said he, “..wasn’t ready to state which laws at this time”.

The issue appears to be about all of the Executive Orders that the president has gone to using, since the Republicans in Congress have decided to put a stop to doing the business they were elected to do.  And to stop working in congress just as long as Mr. Obama is the President of the United States.

On top of this, the congress is making all this noise, with all that is going on in Iraq and the middle east, that President Obama is also playing too much golf and taking too many vacation days.

Okay, let’s try to put all of this in perspective. 

As for the use of executive orders for getting things done, here is the list of the number of executive orders used by these past presidents and the current president:

Executive Orders:

·       Ronald Reagan: 381

·       Bill Clinton: 364

·       Dubya Bush: 291

·       Barack Obama: 180 (to date) Bush had used 208 at this time in his presidency.

Doesn’t sound like the president is going overboard in this area of using his power to get things done.  All the while the congress is sitting on its hands and as Speaker Boehner also plays golf.

As to taking vacations, according to history, and anyone can Google it, they will find out that George W. Bush took the most vacation days of all past and current US presidents. 

Here are some of the numbers.  Obama vacation days as of the latest numbers taken in January 2013, it was 92 vacation days, by that same time for Bush: 180 vacation days, by that time for Reagan: 112 vacation days. 

 

What’s crazy is that most of “Dubya” Bush’s 2^nd term was for him taking off in vacation days at his ranch in Texas.  This was while the nation was at war in both Iraq & Afghanistan, and Osama bin Laden was still a fugitive.  When Dubya’s 8 years were over, he had taken 1,020 vacation days, more than any president….ever.

As to playing too many rounds of golf, I doubt that any president will ever come close to playing the amount of rounds of golf of the president that brought golf to its highest identity in the White House.  That president being the Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower.  According to history, Eisenhower played more than 800 rounds of golf in his 8 years in office.  That comes to one round of golf every 3.6 days of his 2 presidential terms.

As for politicians playing golf while being in high political office, House Speaker John Boehner, the same one who is attempting to sue the president, Mr. Boehner belongs to two golf clubs, and he has a golf handicap of 7.9.  Having once been an avid golfer, I am aware that it takes playing a whole lot of golf to maintain a handicap of under 10.  By the way, President Obama’s handicap is only 17.

Because the Tea Party in the House has caused the House Speaker to reject every idea that the president has offered to the congress, President Obama has rejected the idea that he can iron out serious business while playing golf with Speaker Boehner. He has dismissed the suggested notion that “if you just play golf with John Boehner more . . . then we’d get more stuff done.” 

However, this president has tried to use the game of golf as an element of diplomacy.  As an example, the president welcomed New Zealand Prime Minister John Key to the White House by recalling that the two leaders played golf during his family’s vacation in Hawaii.

At a White House event on dealing with sports concussions, the president spoke of the therapeutic benefits of his golf time: “When I need to relax and clear my head, I turn to sports, whether it’s a pick-up basketball game . . . or more sedate pastimes like golf, or watching SportsCenter. ”

The congressional Democrats would probably like, for the sake of appearance, that Obama would devote more time to watching sports on TV and less on playing golf. But as was stated by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, “If the optics of manicured greens and country clubs worry Democrats, they should consider themselves lucky that he [President Obama] didn’t take up polo.”

The reality is that the Republicans will do anything in attempting to draw the attention away from their not doing their jobs and in trying to blame all their not working issues on the president. 

The non-working congress issues actually got so bad that the FOX NEWS host, Neil Cavuto, he actually scolded Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) when she brought up the possible suing of the president.  Cavuto and  Ms. Bachmann got into a shouting match last week when Bachmann advocated defunding the executive branch.  “Think about what you are saying,” Cavuto said. “The Democrats would be in their right mind to laugh you out.”

The squabble actually began as Cavuto was grilling Bachmann over the lawsuit of the president’s executive orders.  “Where was your rage when Democrats were going after President Bush on the same use of executive orders?” Cavuto asked. “I think you know in your heart of hearts this is a waste of time now. There are far more important things you guys have to be addressing.”  Bachmann’s priority, though was obviously in trying to rein in the executive branch.  “What we should do right now is defund the executive branch while we have the option,” Bachmann said. “What we can do further is impeach the elected official.”

This segment went to a TV commercial while Bachmann was still trying to talk, but Cavuto just blew Bachmann off by saying that Bush had done the same and the Democrats couldn’t stop Bush either.  

But they will obviously keep this up from now and through all of the brouhaha of the political ramp-up to the 2014 and 2016 elections.

So, as a warning to everyone. “The non-working GOP congress and the Republican “Blame Game” is only going to get worse from now to November 2016.” 

I guess we'll just have to live with it.

Copyright G.Ater 2014