Type in the words Congress and Vacation into your favorite search engine and you will find hundreds of hits like this one that refers to their recent recess they started. Many (Republicans) are furious about this as they feel Congress should have addressed our energy crisis first. Let’s put aside the fact that there is nothing they can do about energy that would solve the problem that they cannot do just as well when the new Congress takes over in January.
The August recess is standard, and calling it a vacation is greatly misleading. Especially in election years, giving the members of the House (and a third of those in the Senate) to deal with their election campaigns is important for democracy (giving the people a chance to keep or reject the incumbent). These recesses also give the Congressmen a chance to hold townhalls with their constituents, another important aspect of the democratic workings
I’m not a cheerleader of Congress, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t think many Congressmen take the job seriously enough in the nuts and bolts (making sure to be there for votes, committee meetings, etc). But this latest challenge is rubbish, another lame attempt by Republicans to make the energy struggle the fault of Democrats, even though the Republicans had strong control for many of the previous eight years.
- VWI
