The Post Modern Congress

I've accused the national Democrats of pursuing a 'fascist' agenda.  But I think I need to repent of that.  Fascism presumes some sense of organization, a focused goal and discipline.  Charles Krauthammer points out that in addition to doing things that the people oppose (Obamacare) and that were pointless wastes of money (the Stimulus), Congress has behaved with shocking incompetence.  In a time when confidence in US financial management is at it's nadir, the 'Supermajority' Democrat Congress didn't even fulfill its most important constitutional responsibilities.  Here's Krauthammer:

For the first time since modern budgeting was introduced with the Budget Act of 1974, the House failed to even write a budget. This in a year of extraordinary deficits, rising uncertainty and jittery financial markets. Gold is going through the roof. Confidence in the dollar and the American economy is falling — largely because of massive overhanging debt. Yet no budget emerged from Congress to give guidance, let alone reassurance, about future U.S. revenues and spending.

That’s not all. Congress has not passed a single appropriations bill. To keep the government going, Congress passed a so-called continuing resolution (CR) before adjourning to campaign. The problem with continuing to spend at the current level is that the last two years have seen a huge 28 percent jump in non-defense discretionary spending. The CR continues this profligacy, aggravating an already serious debt problem.

As if this were not enough, Congress then adjourned without even a vote — nay, without even a Democratic bill — on the expiring Bush tax cuts. This is the ultimate in incompetence. After 20 months of control of the White House and Congress — during which they passed an elaborate, 1,000-page micromanagement of every detail of American health care — the Democrats adjourned without being able to tell the country what its tax rates will be on January 1.

It’s not just income taxes. It’s capital gains and dividends too. And the estate tax, which will careen insanely from 0 to 55 percent when the ball drops on Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

Nor is this harmless incompetence. To do this at a time when $2 trillion of capital is sitting on the sidelines because of rising uncertainty — and there is no greater uncertainty than next year’s tax rates — is staggeringly irresponsible.

As if this display of unseriousness — no budget, no appropriations bill, no tax bill — were not enough, some genius on a House Judiciary subcommittee invites parodist Stephen Colbert to testify as an expert witness on immigration. He then pulls off a nervy mockery of the whole proceedings — my favorite was his request to have his colonoscopy inserted in the Congressional Record — while the chairwoman sits there, clueless.

We have become the world's laughingstock.  But when the hegemon is preoccupied and held in contempt, darkness falls.  And cruel creatures rule the night.