While packing flip flops and sun screen for their upcoming five week summer vacation, the House of Representatives actually managed to get some work done.
Sanity made a brief appearance in the lower chamber where the Republican led House approved a $17 billion bi-partisan emergency bill designed to provide comprehensive reform to the scandal ridden Department of Veterans Affairs. The bill will fund the hiring of specialty doctors, nurses, therapists, social workers and mental health professionals as well as establish of 27 new VA medical facilities in states across the nation. The Senate is expected to pass the measure before recessing at weeks’ end.
Unfortunately for the country, the kumbaya moment was fleeting.
Insanity quickly returned as the House approved a resolution authorizing the Speaker to sue the president. The lawsuit alleges the president’s use executive powers in delaying the mandate requiring businesses to provide employees access to health care under the ACA constitutes an abuse of the powers granted to him under the constitution. The resolution passed along party lines with the exception of five Republicans who voted “no” because the document failed to include a call for the president’s impeachment. Though this frivolous suit has no standing it will cost the American tax payer $3 million adjudicate. A pittance really when you consider that Republicans spent $79 million to cast 50 failed votes to repeal the ACA.
Tomorrow, Boehner, Reid and McConnell will slip on their board shorts and Hawaiian shirts and head for the exits. They will leave behind a desk piled with important unfinished business. Immigration reform tops the “to do list.” As they board their flights the Infrastructure Trust Fund will run out of money, and the Department of Transportation will cease reimbursing the states. Education reform, minimum wage, voters’ rights, gun reform laws, poverty, long term debt, Middle East turmoil, Russia and the Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera remain unresolved.
No worries! They’ll be back in five weeks!
Based on past performance…there’s no need to hurry back.
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