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Congress Mired in Indecision E. Ralph Hostetter Ambivalent, indifferent, weak, compromising, inattentive, uncaring, lacking understanding, rhetoric-driven, politically motivated, self-indulgent . . . Would you vote for a politician who displayed most or all of these characteristics? You did! And the 110th Congress is the result. The most vaunted "reform" Congress in recent years, and for the first time in history the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives would elect a woman speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Speaker Pelosi announced a lightning legislative program for the first 100 hours, followed by the first 100 days. Both the 100 hours and the 100 days have gone by with no major legislative accomplishments. The House of Representatives has been taken over by its pre-election rhetoric, "End the war," and has sputtered down to agonizing months of debate of an Iraq war appropriations bill that Speaker Pelosi and the far left tried to pair with a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Her reward for several months of wasted legislative effort was a veto of the bill as promised with no possibility of an override. Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate, Senate Majority Leader Harry ("The war is lost") Reid, D-Nev., has been doing his part in supporting Speaker Pelosi in her anti-war efforts. Story Continues Below
In addition, the U.S. Senate is involved in a series of witch hunts, principal among them is the trumped-up investigation of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for what has been considered normal procedure involving the dismissal of several U.S. district attorneys. President Clinton dismissed 92 U.S. district attorneys at one time with no criticism whatsoever. It was jested the other day that Sen. Reid, on hearing of a thwarted terrorist attack on Fort Dix, N.J., demanded an immediate withdrawal of all troops from the Fort. Ridiculous, of course, but no more ridiculous than Congress' waste of time in the face of two of the most critical problems that have confronted America in modern times. Solutions go begging for a viable energy independence program, opening our vast domestic reserves, and an intelligent immigration law that protects Americans from an invasion of illegals across the Mexican border and copes with the 12 to 20 million aliens already here. First, the energy program. Failure to resolve our energy independence problem is so critical that it is an accident waiting to happen. When it does happen, it will be instant and catastrophic. Few individuals today remember December 1973, now 34 years ago, when the Arab nations of the Middle East cut off shipments of all oil for just two weeks. The reaction was immediate. Filling station gas lines were blocks long. Frustrations were mounting to the breaking point. A cut-off today, lasting for months, would cause major economic dislocations in the U.S. economy. America's ability to wage war would come into question. Even if Congress acted today, providing access to all America's petroleum reserves, energy independence would take a full 10 years or more. Oil refinery capacity needs drastic overhaul since we haven't built a refinery in the past 30 years. In the face of this urgent problem, a lackluster, indifferent, incompetent Congress lounges about looking for nothing more than ways to discredit and destroy the opposing party and its leadership. Worse yet, America faces an illegal immigration problem that, uncorrected, threatens not only the culture but the very stability of the nation. The Kennedy-McCain Immigration Act of 2007 will create a worse situation with its provisions that are tantamount to amnesty. Promises that the amnesty part of the act will not come into play until the borders are secure are pure fantasy. They have no real plan. In addition, their plan for a documented guest-worker program lacks any means of documentation. The amnesty crowd in the Senate was opposed to any border fence in the beginning. Then they approved a 700-mile fence, but failed to fund its construction. Now the same crowd recommends a 300-plus mile fence in the new plan as though a 300-plus mile fence will keep more people out than would a 700-mile fence with no funding. The same amnesty crowd expects the U.S. public to accept a program proposing that 12 to 20 million aliens confess to their crime of illegally crossing the border, cough up a multi-thousand-dollar fine, go back to Mexico, and apply for citizenship. This is beyond even the Tooth Fairy's realm. It ain't gonna happen! The U.S. Congress, with the help of a corrupt dominant media, has been so bent on driving President Bush's ratings down that Congress now finds its own ratings below that of the discredited president. While President George W. Bush's public acceptance rating in mid-May, reported by Rasmussen, was 39 percent, at the same time, a Gallop Poll showed the rating of the U.S. Congress has slipped to a low of 29 percent. It is a rating the U.S. Congress has labored to achieve and a rating that is well deserved. E. Ralph Hostetter, a prominent businessman and agricultural publisher, also is a national and local award-winning columnist. He welcomes comments by email sent to eralphhostetter@yahoo.com.
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