Acting like they're earning their pay

The week past was notable primarily in that Congress left to go on vacation. (An argument could, I suppose, be made that this is when they are at their best - at least they can't do any damage.) Before shutting off the lights, however, our elected representatives appeared to realize that we pay them to pass legislation and perhaps they should do some of that before going home. The wapo described the activity as a "flurry of GOP victories" since many of the bills were items that Bush and the Republicans have been pushing for. A closer look would seem to indicate that there isn't much for either party to cheer about.

After years of partisan impasses and legislative failures, Congress in a matter of hours yesterday passed or advanced three far-reaching bills that will allocate billions of dollars and set new policies for guns, roads and energy.

The measures sent to President Bush for his signature will grant $14.5 billion in tax breaks for energy-related matters and devote $286 billion to transportation programs, including 6,000 local projects, often called "pork barrel" spending. The Senate also passed a bill to protect firearms manufacturers and dealers from various lawsuits. The House is poised to pass it this fall.

So the three major pieces of "work" accomplished dealt with the following:

• The long awaited energy bill
• The highways and transportation bill
• Protection of gun manufacturers from certain liabilities

We can knock the last one off the list quickly. I commented on that previously, and I support this mostly bipartisan effort. Roughly half of the Democrats voted against it, but I think that there will always be some Democrats who can't get past the mindset of "Guns are bad, mmmkay?" so that will never change.

The energy bill was, in some respects, a "victory" for Bush, Cheney and their cronies. This was Cheney's baby from the outset, and the bill does deliver 14.5 billion dollars in tax cuts, primarily to those poor, financially strapped Big Oil companies. However, in order to get it passed, they had to drop the ANWR drilling proposal and include at least some lip service (though not much cash) for alternative energy sources. I think Trent Lott summed up the GOP's lack of enthusiasm for this watered down bill the best.

"Finally, by pure exhaustion, we're going to stagger across the finish line, emaciated and without much to brag about," Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said in an interview. "The only way we got the energy bill was to pick a lot of the meat out of it. This is not a particularly impressive bill."

The last piece was the highway bill. Nobody in Congress ever wants to oppose these bills because they are seen as "bringing money home" by our elected representatives. This one was no different, with more than 6,000 local cash Care packages spread out across the various states. Most people refer to this as "pork" but I find myself less outraged about highway spending in the pork arena than many other, far more notable excesses. Keeping up the infrastructure is important. It facilitates transportation (and thereby all other industry), creates jobs on a local level, and at least gives us the security blanket feeling that the government is actually doing something.

All in all, Congress rushed to pass a lot of paper before going on their summer break. Sadly, all of this "work" looks to be, as usual, mostly hat and not much in the way of cattle.