Are Republicans Really Taking the Country Hostage?

Republicans in Congress have voiced their anger over the “hostage” word in reference to the debt limit shootout, but it's not out of bounds. No less than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said — and this was after the debt ceiling deal had been reached — that defaulting on our debt is a "hostage that's worth ransoming" and "we will go through the process again".

Democrats would point to a number of other maneuvers that have gone unnoticed. It's our (self-appointed) job to look at such things unblinkingly, so here are three instances. See what you think:

If you thought Congress left for its August recess, you were mistaken. Congress did not officially adjourn. When the Senate fails to approve those proposed for administrative jobs, We've gotten a lot of 'Discontinues' suddenly, presumably from this article. What it says is that in polarized America, you can't even raise a subject. Dismaying. How are we ever going to repair the torn fabric of this country if people refuse to read factual material that might run counter to their opinions?
presidents often end-run Congress by making “recess appointments” when Congress goes on one of its frequent breaks. To thwart President Obama from doing so during the August break, ProPublica reports that the Republican-controlled House has used a procedural move to keep the Senate open so that there is no recess period. The Washington Examiner explains how the subterfuge works:

Though it's the Senate that must confirm presidential appointments, under the U.S. Constitution, it cannot adjourn for more than three days without the approval of the House.

To deny that approval, the House will remain open in so-called "pro forma" sessions which in turn require a Senator — volunteered by the Republicans — to show up every three days or so to gavel sessions that could last as little as a few seconds. That supposedly suffices to prove that the Senate is in session.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill was passed into law by Congress, yet Republicans, while money pours into their campaign coffers, are using every devise to disable many of its provisions. The particular intent of their keeping Congress technically open is to prevent the president from appointing Richard Cordray, formerly Ohio’s attorney general, to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It is the House Republicans’ announced plan not to approve anyone to run the agency as a way to cripple it.

President Obama has made very few recess appointments — some 15, a tenth of George W. Bush’s, for example. The question is whether the president will ride roughshod over this Congressional ruse and make those appointments anyway, taking the position that, with everyone absent, Congress is effectively not in session. His right to appoint during recess is in the Constitution (Article II, section 2), whereas Congress’s cynical pretense should be easy to defeat if taken to court. But given this president’s inclination not to fight back, he probably will do nothing.

The underlying reason for Congress’s failure to fund Federal Aviation Administration operations before leaving on recess was not money (a mere $16.6 million). It was another instance of Republican efforts around the nation (e.g., Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana) to crimp union rights or their ability to expand membership. (Union members typically vote Democratic.)

Congress has not passed a long-term FAA funding bill since 2007, voting for 20 stop-gap extensions instead. Holding it up is Republican insistence on a provision in that bill stipulating that in any union membership drive to sign up air or rail transportation workers, an employee who does not vote should be counted as a ‘no’. Deciding how a person voted who did not vote flies in the face of voting practices everywhere.

In the present dispute, Republicans are refusing to approve subsidies to keep 13 small town airstrips open to force Democrats to give in to that union inhibiting rule (which President Obama says he would veto, but who knows).

Until the matter was temporarily resolved, the nation stood to lose $1 billion in airline ticket taxes; 4,000 transportation workers were furloughed because they could not be paid; and projects at 241 airports around the country were halted affecting some 70,000 construction workers. All fundamentally traceable to a union issue that still festers; it will be taken up yet again in September.

At the end of July, President Obama announced a new mileage standard: 54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2025, the biggest increase in auto efficiency ever. This time around, the auto industry, which had been rescued by the Obama administration, and whose management had been taken over by a new can-do breed, was in league with the president.

But in Congress, House Republicans have mounted an assault on environmental laws by attaching riders — 39 in total so far — to the spending bills that finance the Interior Department and Environmental Protection Administration. This extent of this assault is a subject all its own, but consider one of those riders. It says:

Sec. 453. None of the funds made available under this Act shall be used— (1) to prepare, propose, promulgate, finalize, implement, or enforce any regulation pursuant to section 202 of the Clean Air Act (42 U.S.C. 7521) regarding the regulation of any greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines that are manufactured after model year 2016 to address climate change.

So despite the auto industry agreeing to strive for the all-important technologies that would reduce the nation’s imports of oil for gasoline, not to mention commensurate reductions in CO2 emissions, this Republican diktat wants to yell “Stop!” to progress and strand us right where are, all for no evident reason.

We write this out of disgust for how our government conducts itself. If Democrats were pulling these stunts, if the roles were reversed and all mentions of “Republicans” above were replaced with “Democrats” and vice versa, we would be saying exactly the same. Believe it.