The Berkshire Eagle (Mass.), Sept. 7:
Procrastination is a common human trait but it is never a successful strategy because whatever needs doing must be done. This is a lesson Congress never learns.
This fall, a returning Congress must deal with its procrastination of spring, as the issues kicked down the road through the summer are right where members of Congress left them. Congress doesn’t want to deal with the nation’s decaying transportation infrastructure because doing so costs money and requires decision making, but there eventually will be a limit to temporary highway bills. Temporary budget bills for government agencies are only putting off the need to determine what departments need additional funding, such as those related to social services, and what departments need cutting, such as the Pentagon, with its bloated budget.
“It’s going to take a sense of give and take,” assesses Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican. That is true and always has been, but the tea party wing of the Republican Party is all about taking and regards compromise as treason even though compromise is the essence of successful government.
A feisty President Obama, riding a wave of recent successes and looking forward to moving on to the next chapter of his life, appears to believe he has given enough over his nearly seven years in office. There is no indication he is willing to give much more to appease the unappeasable – or the “crazies” as he undiplomatically referred to them during the course of his summer vacation off the Massachusetts coast.
The Republican Party establishment has made it clear it has no stomach for a government shutdown or even the threat of one, as that always hurts the GOP with American voters and a national election is looming large. Tea partiers, however, who are all about ideology, have no such reservations, and with the government budget running out on Sept. 30 they are willing to force a shutdown if federal funding for Planned Parenthood is not ended.
Canceling federal funding for an organization that provides health care for women to make a political statement on abortion is not what a party already dancing to the tune of Donald Trump needs with an election a little over a year off. Rather than a war on women, the GOP desperately needs to find “a sense of give and take,” as does America if it wants to move forward rather than stagnate.
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