The People's House That Isn't

Why can't Congress, and especially the House, get anything done?  See below for some of the answers and see below for how the American people view Congress and how changing demographics will ultimately change its last-gasp obstructionist mentality.


Gallup:

Fifteen percent of Americans now approve of the way Congress is handling its job, essentially unchanged from 13% in March and 15% in February. Congress' disapproval rating is 79%.

All three partisan groups' ratings of Congress have been similarly low since the legislative body came under divided control after the 2010 midterm elections, with the exception of a spike in Democrats' rating prior to the 2012 elections. Rank-and-file Democrats were more likely than Republicans and independents to approve of Congress from February 2009 until the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 midterms.



Why the dismal approval rating for Congress, and especially the House?  Timothy Eagan explains:


Timothy Eagan, NYTimes:


"Much has been said about how the great gerrymander of the people’s House — part of a brilliant, $30 million Republican action plan at the state level — has now produced a clot of retrograde politicians who are comically out of step with a majority of Americans. It’s not just that they oppose things like immigration reform and simple gun background checks for violent felons, while huge majorities support them.

Or that, in the aggregate, Democrats got 1.4 million more votes for all House positions in 2012 but Republicans still won control with a cushion of 33 seats. Or that they won despite having the lowest approval rating in modern polling, around 10 percent in some surveys. Richard Nixon during Watergate and B.P.’s initial handling of a catastrophic oil spill had higher approval ratings.

But just look at how different this Republican House is from the country they are supposed to represent. It’s almost like a parallel government, sitting in for some fantasy nation created in talk-radio land. 

As a whole, Congress has never been more diverse, except the House majority. 

There are 41 black members of the House, but all of them are Democrats. 

There are 10 Asian-Americans, but all of them are Democrats. 

There are 34 Latinos, a record — and all but 7 are Democrats. 

There are 7 openly gay or lesbian members, all of them Democrats. 

Only 63 percent of the United States population is white. But in the House Republican majority, it’s 96 percent white. 

Women are 51 percent of the nation, but among the ruling members of the House, they make up just 8 percent. (It’s 30 percent on the Democratic side.)

To date, seven bills have been enacted. Let’s see, there was the Responsible Helium Administration and Stewardship act — “ensuring the stability of the helium market.” The Violence Against Women Act was renewed, but only after a majority of Republicans voted against it, a rare instance of letting the full House decide on something that the public favors.

Just recently, they rushed through a change to help frequent air travelers — i.e., themselves — by fixing a small part of the blunt budget cuts that are the result of their inability to compromise. Meal assistance to the elderly, Head Start for kids and other programs will continue to fall under the knife of sequestration."

The Beltway chorus of the moment blames President Obama for his inability to move his proposals through a dunderheaded Congress. They wonder how Republicans would be treating a silken-tongued charmer like Bill Clinton if he were still in the White House. We already know: not a single Republican voted for Clinton’s tax-raising budget, the one that led to our last federal surplus. Plus, they impeached him; his presidency was saved only in the Senate. 

Obama may be doomed to be a reactive president in his second term, with even the most common-sense proposals swatted down because, well — if he’s for it, Republicans will have to be against it. What could be a signature achievement, immigration reform, faces quicksand in the House. But a gerrymander is good for only a decade or so. Eventually, demography and destiny will catch up with a Congress that refuses to do the people’s bidding." 

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 Denis Campbell, UK Progressive 

 "As elected representatives of the people, they seem incapable of avoiding self-immolation. 

The GOP has doused themselves in kerosene, tied themselves in the middle of a circle to the nation and hold a lighted match over their own heads threatening President Obama with dropping it on themselves, if he fails to agree to a balanced approach to revenues and cuts… which he already has done… many of which were proposed by this Republican Congress themselves… who are opposed to any idea this President puts forward."

The demographics of future voters guarantee that unless the GOP changes, it will have a difficult time recapturing the WH and holding on to its majority in the House:




America’s changing demographics. 

 "According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2010 results, the nation’s share of the non-Hispanic white population declined from 69.1 percent in 2000 to a present 63.7 percent in 2010, with America’s minority population rising from 30.9 percent in 2000 to 36.3 percent in 2010. 

Twelve of the nation’s 50 states have a minority population exceeding 40 percent—triple the number of such states in 2000. 

Four states—California, Texas, New Mexico and Hawaii—now claim “majority-minority” status. 

The reason for this population shift is Latino-Americans, who now are one-sixth (50.5 million) of the national population, compared to one-eighth (35.3 million) a decade ago. This political and demographic phenomenon is not limited to America’s border states, with their pre-existing Latino populations. 

Latinos represented a majority of the population growth in 18 states. They accounted for at least 40 percent of the population growth in seven other states, and at least 30 percent of the population growth in another five states. 

Twelve of the nation’s 50 states have a minority population exceeding 40 percent."



"Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies."  --Robert Kennedy