Do you want proof that the Senate is broken? They have 290 House-passed bills in their queue, along with several dozen nominees. For all intents and purposes, the members of the House of Representatives can just go home and campaign for the rest of the year because they’ve already passed their versions of energy and financial reform, and they’re not going to discuss immigration until the Senate passes it (which, they won’t).
By the time the Senate finishes debating the financial reforms, they’ll have at most two full weeks before the Memorial Day recess. They plan on using that time on a “package of tax extenders, a yearlong unemployment insurance extension and Medicaid assistance.” When they come back on June 7th, they’ll have four weeks to try to pass climate change legislation (they probably won’t succeed). Then they’ll have another four-week session between the July 4th and August recesses. They can try to pass immigration reform then, but that’s all the time they have because the Senate doesn’t plan on working very far into September before recessing until the elections. There is very little opportunity to deal with the 290 House-passed bills on their docket, let alone the myriad nominees that are languishing in the queue. And all the appropriations bills (except, perhaps, an Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental) will have to wait for mid-November and December.
This is no way to govern a country, and we need to break the back of the filibuster rule just so we can have a functioning government. In the meantime, as you’re ruminating on why some top priority of yours hasn’t been addressed by the Obama administration or the Democrats, remember this calendar. The whole point of the Republicans’ stalling tactics is to make the Democrats ineffective and to sow dissension among our ranks.
