Have you ever had to reschedule a vacation, or cancel it altogether, because of a crisis at work that demanded your immediate attention?
If so, maybe you should consider a career in Congress. Your vacations would be safe, according to this ABC piece by John Cochran:
With Americans still reeling from this week's report that gas may cost $7 a gallon in a few years and with millions either losing their homes to foreclosure or unable to sell their homes, people are looking looking for help.Well, don't expect quick action here.
Congress has gone on holiday and told the nation, "See you after July 4th." Nobody here but tourists, who can't understand why Congress would leave with so much undone.
"I can't really say I know what they do in there," a man from Bakersfield, Calif., said outside the Capitol building. "I know what they're not doing."
Congress failed to agree on energy legislation and in the most surprising failure, lawmakers couldn't come to terms on a housing bill to rescue homeowners threatened with foreclosure.
But don't worry; our members of Congress aren't just making progress in the art of blaming the other side of the aisle for the lack of progress:
Congress is also making great progress on something it promised it would not do: loading up spending bills with those earmarks that critics call pork-barrel or pet projects.In one spending bill alone, earmarks are already up to $619 million compared to $278 million last year, which just goes to show that Congress can act, when it wants to.
This would almost be funny, in the tragicomic sense, if it weren't so unconscionable.
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Posted by: mdavid | June 28, 2008 11:23 PM
Golf clap - spot on...
I suppose when they're not in session they do less damage. But I'd say this: these people, for all their privilege and power, do work long, stressful hours, and deserve a vacation, like the rest of us.
Partly, because I think housing prices are still inflated - so a price floor isn't yet necessary, and indeed, foreclosures help bring them down to earth.
Agreed. The time to do something about the housing bubble was in 2003-2004, not now. There's not a lot you can do at the end of a bubble. The only way to fight bubbles is to stop them from forming or slow them down...attempting to 'help people' during the collapse just ends up delaying the collapse and the bubble gets worse.(1)
Investigations, at some point, into the shoddy mortgage practices of banks, would be useful, but not until the banks actually finish collapsing. Especially as the collapse is almost entirely due to mortgage resellers lying about the quality of their loans to other banks to purchased the loans from them, which is, at least, standard fraud, and probably a specific banking crime that I don't know the name of.
Of course, expecting this Congress to follow through with any sort of investigations is probably pointless, so it's just as well there's not much point anyway until at least 2009.
1) Strange words from a progressive, I know. But I think the government should attempt to influence the direction of the economy, but not attempt to board and steer part of the economy in midair after it has, despite all sense(2), driven up a ramp and 50 feet in the air and is about to slam into the ground. There's not actually any logical way that could work, you can't steer while you're falling. The government should, instead, put up barricades around ramps in the first place.
2) I say 'despite all sense', when in actuality it's damn obvious what 'sense' led us here. Short term profit in the mortgage business, at the expense of a viable company five years down the road, which is almost always the fault of company executives with huge golden parachutes. They will, like always, walk away with their money while leaving behind millions of homeless, tens of thousands of loyal employees without a job, and stock in the toilet. And then get immediately rehired by some other friend of theirs from Yale to run another company into the ground. <cheap_shot>Or the country.</cheap_shot>
The idea that, if Congress was in session for an extra couple weeks during the summer, the supposed problems of high gas prices the housing market coming back down to earth would be solved is too much wishful thinking.
I think we're actually better off if Congress doesn't try to "solve" these problems. Take the "vacation".
On a side note, just because Congress isn't in session doesn't mean they're "on vaction" in the first place. Most Members of Congress, when not in Washington D.C., actually have a full schedule of meetings and public appearences, which include weekends, back in their districts and states. That's not to say Congressmen have a rough life; they don't (most Americans would probably trade their jobs and salaries for those of a Congressman) but it's far from a vacation.
I used to work on "the Hill" and my boss probably took about two weeks of true vacation (when he and his family actually got to go away somewhere away from the "wonders" of modern technology) a year.
There is a story in the Talmud about a Roman emperor who decided to mend his ways and become a better person, or at least not so bad. He sought the advice (for some reason) of a locally eminent rabbi. "What can I do," he asked, "to make life better for my people."
"Sleep later in the morning," said the rabbi.
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