Do-nothing Democrats (Even the Washington ComPost is Turning on the Dems)

The Washington Post ^ | 09/22/10 | Dana Milbank

[MissesBush]

Reporters walking into House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's office Tuesday morning noticed an open supply cabinet with a tape measure on the shelf.

It was a strange bit of office equipment. Are Democrats so resigned to defeat that they're expecting Republicans to stop by and take measurements of the majority offices?

They still have their largest majority in decades, but the Democrats have succumbed to paralysis in the closing days of the legislative session. Congress has yet to pass a budget or a single one of the annual spending bills. Plans to spur the economy with tax cuts await action. Senate Democrats, faced with a GOP filibuster, have now punted on immigration reform and repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military. Meanwhile, House Democrats have so little on their schedule that their first vote of the week is coming at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, when Americans are most of the way through their workweeks.

Among the items they'll consider: H.R. 1545, "Expressing support for designation of the week beginning on the third Monday in September as 'National Postdoc Appreciation Week.' " And: H.R. 4387, naming the building at 100 North Palafox St. in Pensacola, Fla., the "Winston E. Arnow Federal Building."

"Your schedule," Linda Scott of PBS remarked to Hoyer at Tuesday morning's meeting, "looks pretty light." She asked whether Democrats are "telling you they need to be back home, rather than naming post offices?"

"We always name post offices," Hoyer replied with irritation. "It's a worthwhile endeavor to do that, and people really do appreciate it, particularly when it's their name and their community."

The Democrats are unable to rally themselves around tax cuts for millions of Americans, and their leader is defending . . . postal namings...

[MissesBush]

Hoyer was soon answering questions about the party's "death knell." To defend the Democrats, the majority leader had to employ some inventive math. At one point, he erroneously added up quarterly growth rates, asserting that GDP had seen "almost a 25 percent turnaround from negative to positive." At another point, he made the impossible claim that from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, "you lost 250 percent of the value of your stock portfolio."

Priceless. These Dems have the stink of death all over them.

[anniegetyourgun]

Unfortunately, so does America.

Commercial & home real-estate defaults.
Personal & business bankruptcy increases.
Personal net worth declining.
Homelessness, poverty, hunger, and health problems increasing.
Home/rental vacancy rates.
Retail sales.
Unemployment.
The federal budget.
State budgets.
The top 100 largest city budgets/deficits.
Massive student loan defaults.
Government pension defaults, along with the demise of the PBGC.

And that’s just the short list. And it’s also just the domestic picture.

[nina0113]

The Post will never admit the policies themselves, and their underlying philosophy, are just plain wrong, though - it’s the incompetence of the people carrying out those policies that’s the problem.

[ponygirl]

DO NOTHING? If only that were the problem. They’ve done way too much.

[perfect_rovian_storm]

Whatever makes them stay home is fine with me. They’ll always be disgruntled about something.

[Cicero]

Plans to spur the economy with tax cuts await action.

Does this mean that Dana thinks they should extend the BUSH TAX CUTS? (Relabeling them, of course.)

[Hoodat]

Wow, Dana Milbank wrote this? What did she expect? This is what she voted for.

[qwertypie]

By not eliminating don’t ask/tell, the Senate caused Millbank to have a hissy fit. For homos, it was THE litmus test of this Congress.