Sun sets on the worse Congress ever

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Examiner Editorial:

Americans can give thanks in this Christmas season for an end to the reckless and destructive 111th Congress. This is the Congress that passed Obamacare, against the wishes of a substantial majority of the public, on Christmas Eve of last year. In the dead of night, Democratic lawmakers stuffed the monstrous 2,700-page bill with special-interest goodies and political payoffs like the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase." As we have learned since, most members were still ignorant of the bill's contents three months later, when it gained final passage in the House. No surprise that its immediate results -- both intended and unintended -- have been almost uniformly bad.

Similarly, odds are that not one member of the 111th Congress actually read the so-called "cap-and-trade" bill before it passed the House in June 2009. Even a speed-reader could not have digested House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's last-second, 309-page amendment, which read as clear as mud: "Page 14, strike lines 1 through 3 and insert the following. ..." It was filed after 1:30 a.m. just before the vote on final passage. There is also serious doubt that any member of Congress understood the 2,000-page financial reform bill that Congress passed this summer. One of its two main sponsors, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., remarked, "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we've done something that has been needed for a long time. ..."

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Good riddance. It will take a lot of work to undo the damage done by this Congress and this administration. They passed a huge financial reform bill while ignoring the problems that caused the financial mess in the first place. They left the requirement in place that made banks accept bad loans to people who could not pay.

They passed a health care monstrosity that will devastate that sector of the economy if it is not repealed.

Fortunate their cap and trade mess was defeated in the Senate, but between Salazar and Jackson this administration is trying to destroy the domestic energy business while it chases the illusive dream of magic energy.

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• No Congress Since 1960s Makes Most Laws for Americans as 111th (businessweek.com)
• Why the Medicaid Mandates on States Violate the General Welfare Clause (volokh.com)