the democrats are sunk. life preserver anyone?
by Ted Hamilton
Published: February 1, 2008
Cameron Contois’s rebuttal to this article: “re: the democrats are sunk. life preserver anyone?“
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Much like rats on a sinking ship, the Democrats in congress are clawing at anything that might float as they sink in a sea of unfulfilled promises. Riding into office on a wave of the public’s resentment of the war in Iraq, the party ran on a mostly anti-war ticket in 2006, commandeering the ship from the Republicans who had sailed the congress since 1994, but then running it into a reef of numerous failures.
The main planks the Democrats ran with in 2006 - ending the war, securing the borders and shrinking the federal deficit - have not shown much improvement. According to the latest Gallup poll, Congress’ approval rating is only 22-percent, which is at least better than the 14-percent approval rating Gallup reported the congress held in June of 2007. As a matter of fact, these polls are below what the Republican majority held when they were ousted in 2006.
Though the Democrats had previously claimed to withhold war funds until a timetable was set for withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Congress just passed a huge spending bill that contained $70 billion for the wars. That $70 billion will perform two functions: it funds the war effort until September of 2008 and proves that Democrats are just as good at making hollow promises as Republicans. Maybe better.
Along with the considerable war funds in the spending-bill (which in its entirety is $555 billion dollars), there is a considerable amount of “earmarks,” or money that goes towards particular projects that only benefit one congressional member’s district. According to the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, funds were set aside for 11,331 earmarks although congress had claimed it would reduce the number to somewhere under 7,000 while campaigning in 2006. Nancy Pelosi and her gang of pirates have been running under a flag of balancing the budget; however, by doing little to reduce earmarks, Congress continues to allocate billions of dollars to pork and little, if not nothing, to the federal deficit.
Congress also made the mistake of waiting until the last minute to vote on a patch to the alternative minimum tax. In the past, the AMT was designed to make sure upper-class citizens could not get through a certain loophole in the tax code, but if left unchanged, it would result in 20 million middleclass Americans paying up to $2,000 more in taxes. Luckily, Congress delayed the tax for a year. But they did not provide a way for the treasury to make up the $50 billion it will lose from delaying the tax. Short term financial forecast: more of the same.
Has the Democratic majority really improved America or fulfilled any of its promises? The short answer is no. Outside of toting Pelosi as “the first woman Speaker of the House,” the Democrats have done little to affect history outside of the historical low approval rating it has obtained. It has not set a time table for Iraq or done much to reduce the federal deficit.
There may be one silver lining to the Democrats not fixing anything in congress - it provides more of an opportunity for third parties to sneak into their ironclad. The Libertarian Party reports significant growth in its members being elected to local offices and cites the failure of the main parties as reason for its (slight) popularity. GOP candidate Ron Paul, himself a former member of the Libertarian Party, has amassed a considerable war chest worth millions of dollars, even though he is one of the least known presidential candidates.
The Democrat’s ship is sinking, taking with it the promises they made to the American people. One question remains: will voters grab the life preservers of the independent parties or will they change out a do-nothing Democratic Congress for one that does less? Maybe in 2008 the rats will finally be voted off Capital Hill, making way for a new wave of politicians. But don’t get your hopes up.
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Cameron Contois’s rebuttal to this article: “re: the democrats are sunk. life preserver anyone?“
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