I'm Sooooooo Disillusioned

Wow, I'm shocked. The Democratic Congress is seen as inactive? Jeez, I thought they were going to accomplish great things under Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Apparently, the Washington Post doesn't think they're doing much...

In the heady opening weeks of the 110th Congress, the Democrats' domestic agenda appeared to be flying through the Capitol: Homeland security upgrades, a higher minimum wage and student loan interest rate cuts all passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

But now that initial progress has foundered as Washington policymakers have been consumed with the debate over the Iraq war. Not a single priority on the Democrats' agenda has been enacted, and some in the party are growing nervous that the "do nothing" tag they slapped on Republicans last year could come back to haunt them.

...President Bush signed 16 measures into law through April, six more than were signed by this time in the previous Congress. But beyond a huge domestic spending bill that wrapped up work left undone by Republicans last year, the list of achievements is modest: a beefed-up board to oversee congressional pages in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal, and the renaming of six post offices, including one for Gerald R. Ford in Vail, Colo., as well as two courthouses, including one for Rush Limbaugh Sr. in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

The minimum-wage bill got stalled in a fight with the Senate over tax breaks to go along with the wage increase. In frustration, Democratic leaders inserted a minimum-wage agreement into a bill to fund the Iraq war, only to see it vetoed.

...The voters seem to have noticed the stall. An ABC News-Washington Post poll last month found that 73 percent of Americans believe Congress has done "not too much" or "nothing at all." A memo from the Democratic polling firm Democracy Corps warned last month that the stalemate between Congress and Bush over the war spending bill has knocked down the favorable ratings of Congress and the Democrats by three percentage points and has taken a greater toll on the public's hope for a productive Congress.

I'm glad to see the public is filled with starry-eyed idealists. A productive Congress? Next, they'll tell us they believe in Santa Claus. Meanwhile, the moonbat left is probably thrilled that there's a post office named after Rush Limbaugh, Sr.

Over at Captain's Quarters, Ed Morissey breaks it down rather well...

The 108th Congress, controlled by Republicans, passed ten substantive bills into law by the end of the first three months of their session. Even the 109th had passed two bills into law of import -- an extension of welfare reform and class-action lawsuit reform, both complex and controversial issues. Even a month past that time in the 110th, the only two pieces of substantive legislation are still a continuing appropriation and an approval of NATO reorganization. The rest is public-relations fluff, as the Post notes.

Of course, this comes as no great surprise. It took the Democrats more than two months to finally settle on an Iraq policy -- after spending the midterms criticizing the Republicans and George Bush for having no plan for the war. For weeks, funding for the troops stalled as the Democrats attempted to float one strategy after another to force the administration to bring troops home without having to assume responsibility for the retreat. While they fumbled that ball all over Capitol Hill, they focused on nothing else -- and it still took them 85 days to produce a funding bill that barely passed each chamber and which everyone knew would get vetoed. Now they're starting all over again, and in the meantime, that 100 hours looks more like 100 weeks of futility.

Ted Kennedy wrote in March that this is the most productive Congress he's seen in 45 years. That either proves that Kennedy has serious memory problems, or that he wants to continue burnishing his credentials as a political hack. This Congress has been just like Kennedy -- all spin and bluster, and no substance at all.

That sums up Congress pretty well, and the Democrats in general.