Macaca
06-10 05:53 AM
Why Washington Can�t Get Much Done (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/weekinreview/10broder.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) By JOHN M. BRODER (http://www.nytimes.com/gst/emailus.html), June 10, 2007
MEMBERS of Congress � with the possible exceptions of Senator Robert C. Byrd and Representative John D. Dingell � come and go. So do presidents and even Supreme Court justices.
But some big issues come to the nation�s capital and never leave, despite the politicians� best efforts to wrap them up and send them packing. Immigration is one.
Efforts to craft a grand compromise on the perennially nettlesome issue of how to deal with the millions who want to settle in this country collapsed in the Senate in spectacular fashion Thursday night, even though President Bush and the Senate leadership desperately wanted a deal. Almost everyone in Washington believes that America�s immigration laws are an unenforceable mess. But confronted with real legislation built on real compromises, the Senate sank beneath murderous political, geographic and ideological crosscurrents. Despite vows of senators to resuscitate the bill, it may be months � or years � before Congress again comes close to passing a major overhaul of immigration law.
But immigration is only one of several major policy matters on which virtually all Americans agree that something has to be done, even as Washington seems mired in dysfunction. What will happen when Congress turns next to energy legislation? Or global warming? Health care? Social Security?
It sometimes seems that it takes a catastrophe to create consensus. The Great Depression, Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11 all shattered partisan divisions and led, at least for a time, to enhanced presidential power and a rush of bipartisan lawmaking (some of which political leaders later came to regret). Today, however, the partisan chasm in Washington is deeper than it has been in 100 years, according to some academic studies, as moderate blocs in both parties have all but vanished.
�Remember,� said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, �these are really big problems and they�re really tough. Solving them is going to involve some major changes in the way we live, the way we tax ourselves, the way we get our health care and the way we transport ourselves.�
He added: �Many of these questions are caught up in ideological differences that really are quite fundamental. On all of them right now there is no consensus in the country and therefore the political system has to try to create one where none now exists.�
A sign of how hard it is to fashion a compromise on these big questions is the length of time between major legislative actions on them. It took almost a decade from the collapse of the Clinton administration�s health care initiative in 1994 to the passage of the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit. The federal minimum wage went unchanged for 10 years until this spring. The last major overhaul of immigration law passed in 1986. The most recent significant revision to Social Security came in 1983.
Even the relatively new issue of global warming has been batted around since 1988, when Al Gore began talking about its potentially dire effects. Now, despite a foot-high stack of proposed legislation on the subject, virtually nothing has been done.
Mr. Gore said it was extremely difficult to move the political system when it is paralyzed by partisan passion and beset by well-financed and well-organized interests. He refers to the combination of the oil, coal and automobile industries as the �carbon lobby,� which he said is very difficult to defeat.
Washington, he said, has also failed to act on global warming for much the same reason that it has not tackled the possible future insolvency of Social Security or the problem of 45 million Americans who lack health insurance. �There�s just garden-variety denial,� he said. �It�s unpleasant to think about and easy to push it off.�
Washington often serves as a trailing indicator of public sentiment on an issue, following action in state capitals or responding belatedly to a growing public outcry. Congress and the White House did not seriously begin to move on immigration until two years ago, after the Minutemen, a civilian group, started patrolling the borders and Southwestern state governors declared states of emergency to deal with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants stealing in from Mexico.
Given the failure of the 1986 immigration legislation to stem the illegal flow, the public is wary of any new government effort to control the borders, said Merle Black, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta. And many lawmakers fear that if they support the current legislation they will be blamed if it fails to live up to its promises. After all, the Medicare drug benefit, too, was a much-heralded attempt to lower the costs of medicines for the elderly, but it created mountains of burdensome paperwork and huge unanticipated costs for the government.
�The public has seen a whole series of performance failures, whether it was the war in Iraq or the response to Katrina,� Professor Black said. �It makes different groups of individuals very skeptical about politicians offering solutions. On top of that, Bush�s approval ratings are so low that he can�t exert any leadership even within his own party.�
Government stasis was not unintended. The Founding Fathers designed the American system of government to cool public passions and created numerous impediments to rash action. They might not be surprised that two decades passed between significant action on immigration law or government old-age pensions. But they might have had trouble conceiving the complexity of the issues facing modern Washington, like global warming or the need to find a way to provide even basic medical care to one in seven Americans.
�It was a pretty simple world Madison was dealing with when he wrote the Federalist Papers,� said Morris P. Fiorina, professor of political science at Stanford University. �His focus was on land, labor and commerce. He was clearly aware of the need to defend the borders, but he was more concerned that you had to limit the reach of government and insure that transitory majorities can�t have their way.�
The molasses pace of governance in America is frustrating to many in and outside Washington. But the framers recognized that the dangers of succumbing to fleeting enthusiasms are often far greater than the slow process of fashioning a consensus from the competing interests of a sectional country.
�I agree that it is a bad thing for it to take an extraordinarily long time to deal with problems,� said Mickey Edwards, a former Republican representative from Oklahoma and now a vice president of the Aspen Institute and a lecturer in government at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. �But I think it is a worse thing to rush into solutions when you�re dealing with a nation of 300 million people.�
He cited Prohibition and the Medicare drug benefit as examples of laws that carried large and unintended consequences.
�I don�t suggest that given enough time you can make everything perfect,� Mr. Edwards said. �But you do need enough time to make sure all views are heard and you can avoid the unforeseen circumstances that plague so many things.�
�You don�t just want them to act,� he said. �You want them to act responsibly.�
MEMBERS of Congress � with the possible exceptions of Senator Robert C. Byrd and Representative John D. Dingell � come and go. So do presidents and even Supreme Court justices.
But some big issues come to the nation�s capital and never leave, despite the politicians� best efforts to wrap them up and send them packing. Immigration is one.
Efforts to craft a grand compromise on the perennially nettlesome issue of how to deal with the millions who want to settle in this country collapsed in the Senate in spectacular fashion Thursday night, even though President Bush and the Senate leadership desperately wanted a deal. Almost everyone in Washington believes that America�s immigration laws are an unenforceable mess. But confronted with real legislation built on real compromises, the Senate sank beneath murderous political, geographic and ideological crosscurrents. Despite vows of senators to resuscitate the bill, it may be months � or years � before Congress again comes close to passing a major overhaul of immigration law.
But immigration is only one of several major policy matters on which virtually all Americans agree that something has to be done, even as Washington seems mired in dysfunction. What will happen when Congress turns next to energy legislation? Or global warming? Health care? Social Security?
It sometimes seems that it takes a catastrophe to create consensus. The Great Depression, Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11 all shattered partisan divisions and led, at least for a time, to enhanced presidential power and a rush of bipartisan lawmaking (some of which political leaders later came to regret). Today, however, the partisan chasm in Washington is deeper than it has been in 100 years, according to some academic studies, as moderate blocs in both parties have all but vanished.
�Remember,� said Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, �these are really big problems and they�re really tough. Solving them is going to involve some major changes in the way we live, the way we tax ourselves, the way we get our health care and the way we transport ourselves.�
He added: �Many of these questions are caught up in ideological differences that really are quite fundamental. On all of them right now there is no consensus in the country and therefore the political system has to try to create one where none now exists.�
A sign of how hard it is to fashion a compromise on these big questions is the length of time between major legislative actions on them. It took almost a decade from the collapse of the Clinton administration�s health care initiative in 1994 to the passage of the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit. The federal minimum wage went unchanged for 10 years until this spring. The last major overhaul of immigration law passed in 1986. The most recent significant revision to Social Security came in 1983.
Even the relatively new issue of global warming has been batted around since 1988, when Al Gore began talking about its potentially dire effects. Now, despite a foot-high stack of proposed legislation on the subject, virtually nothing has been done.
Mr. Gore said it was extremely difficult to move the political system when it is paralyzed by partisan passion and beset by well-financed and well-organized interests. He refers to the combination of the oil, coal and automobile industries as the �carbon lobby,� which he said is very difficult to defeat.
Washington, he said, has also failed to act on global warming for much the same reason that it has not tackled the possible future insolvency of Social Security or the problem of 45 million Americans who lack health insurance. �There�s just garden-variety denial,� he said. �It�s unpleasant to think about and easy to push it off.�
Washington often serves as a trailing indicator of public sentiment on an issue, following action in state capitals or responding belatedly to a growing public outcry. Congress and the White House did not seriously begin to move on immigration until two years ago, after the Minutemen, a civilian group, started patrolling the borders and Southwestern state governors declared states of emergency to deal with hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants stealing in from Mexico.
Given the failure of the 1986 immigration legislation to stem the illegal flow, the public is wary of any new government effort to control the borders, said Merle Black, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta. And many lawmakers fear that if they support the current legislation they will be blamed if it fails to live up to its promises. After all, the Medicare drug benefit, too, was a much-heralded attempt to lower the costs of medicines for the elderly, but it created mountains of burdensome paperwork and huge unanticipated costs for the government.
�The public has seen a whole series of performance failures, whether it was the war in Iraq or the response to Katrina,� Professor Black said. �It makes different groups of individuals very skeptical about politicians offering solutions. On top of that, Bush�s approval ratings are so low that he can�t exert any leadership even within his own party.�
Government stasis was not unintended. The Founding Fathers designed the American system of government to cool public passions and created numerous impediments to rash action. They might not be surprised that two decades passed between significant action on immigration law or government old-age pensions. But they might have had trouble conceiving the complexity of the issues facing modern Washington, like global warming or the need to find a way to provide even basic medical care to one in seven Americans.
�It was a pretty simple world Madison was dealing with when he wrote the Federalist Papers,� said Morris P. Fiorina, professor of political science at Stanford University. �His focus was on land, labor and commerce. He was clearly aware of the need to defend the borders, but he was more concerned that you had to limit the reach of government and insure that transitory majorities can�t have their way.�
The molasses pace of governance in America is frustrating to many in and outside Washington. But the framers recognized that the dangers of succumbing to fleeting enthusiasms are often far greater than the slow process of fashioning a consensus from the competing interests of a sectional country.
�I agree that it is a bad thing for it to take an extraordinarily long time to deal with problems,� said Mickey Edwards, a former Republican representative from Oklahoma and now a vice president of the Aspen Institute and a lecturer in government at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. �But I think it is a worse thing to rush into solutions when you�re dealing with a nation of 300 million people.�
He cited Prohibition and the Medicare drug benefit as examples of laws that carried large and unintended consequences.
�I don�t suggest that given enough time you can make everything perfect,� Mr. Edwards said. �But you do need enough time to make sure all views are heard and you can avoid the unforeseen circumstances that plague so many things.�
�You don�t just want them to act,� he said. �You want them to act responsibly.�
wallpaper clip art tree roots.
mbartosik
11-21 03:32 PM
Please take a look at this thread
http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15540
and suggest some witty ideas for the text.
thanks
http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15540
and suggest some witty ideas for the text.
thanks
xgr3
05-14 08:59 PM
No, I have not moved to different state. I am in the same state since the day I filed my labor.
2011 Tree of Life
thomachan72
11-12 01:28 PM
Good morphing technique!!! Almost believed it at first:D:D
more...
nhfirefighter13
June 1st, 2005, 07:11 PM
Hi Tracey,
Looks like you're off to a good start. The white flower is slightly out of focus. I'm not familiar with the Easyshare but I'm guessing you might have been inside of its minimum focal distance.
The first baby photo also seems to be a little on the soft side but I can't tell if it's due to camera shake or just from resizing the image.
Welcome to the site.
Chris
Looks like you're off to a good start. The white flower is slightly out of focus. I'm not familiar with the Easyshare but I'm guessing you might have been inside of its minimum focal distance.
The first baby photo also seems to be a little on the soft side but I can't tell if it's due to camera shake or just from resizing the image.
Welcome to the site.
Chris