During my time spent on Capitol Hill, I had the pleasure of working in the minority party.  It was a pleasure for a number of reasons beyond my politics.  One of the best parts of my former job was that I got to live each day on the moral high ground by helping my boss stand up for the little guy.  I went to bed each night claiming the high ground because I never had to compromise what was right because it wasn’t like those in power were ever really concerned about what the minority party thought.  

Oh, how times have changed.  Today, my former bosses are in power and it is their job to actually get something done.  If you have picked up a paper today, you probably saw that getting something done has become a challenge.  Bills get passed but either don’t make it past both chambers or are shot down by the President…. Funny how he didn’t ever do that when the Rs were in charge - hum.   Congress is even having trouble passing bills that fund the federal government – their only Constitutionally-mandated responsibility.  

Why?  You may have noticed that we are gearing up for an election.  Not only are we getting ready to elect a new President, every seat in the House of Representatives and 33 seats in the Senate are up for grabs.  Republicans are determined to show that last year’s trend of electing Democrats was a mistake by trying to show that the Democrats can’t get anything done when in power. That means lots of filibusters and finger-pointing.  Meanwhile, the Democrats are trying to find consensus among their diverse membership on all policy items, which also can lead to filibusters and finger-pointing.  And we can’t forget that the President is desperate to prove that he isn’t a lame duck so it is his way or the highway on everything.  You guessed it - this also leads to filibusters and finger-pointing.   

In the past few months, there has been tremendous work done in Congress on our most pressing issues.  The House passed an energy bill with a great fuel mileage standard.  They also approved spending that reaffirmed our country’s commitment to environmental funding.  The Senate started the work of seriously addressing climate change.  Unfortunately, none of these priorities have resulted in new, better programs because of all of the filibustering and finger-pointing.   

We are approaching the finish line of the first session of the 110th Congress so it is time to close the deal on many of the issues they promised to address. Congress and the President need to put aside the politics and do the jobs that they were elected to do.