There is a maxim that no man’s life or liberty is safe as long as Congress is in session, but incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., has it exactly right in telling members of the 110th Congress they are expected to be at work five days a week.
The contrast with the outgoing GOP majority could not be more vivid, as it will have worked a mere 103 days when it is gaveled into the history books. Harry Truman got himself re-elected in 1948 in great part by enthusiastically bashing another GOP –dominated legislature, forever branding it the “Do Nothing” Congress.
Hoyer also warns that there won’t be so many long vacations under the Democratic rule that begins Jan. 4 because, among other things, the Senate and House will be much more active in congressional oversight of the executive branch.
The irony here, of course, is that the GOP majority, which squandered a dozen years in which it could have used congressional oversight to weed out failing government programs, is being replaced by Democrats who will use the process to help make their case for more government programs.
One caution for the new majority — the American people threw the Republicans out due to dissatisfaction with the war in Iraq and because it had become clear the GOP majority was more interested in staying in government than in cutting government to make it work better. You Democrats will be handed the gavel of power on the Hill next month to run the legislative branch because you aren’t the GOP, not because people yearn for the return of the New Deal.
