NYT's Gail Collins: Congress has no date for the prom
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/opinion/collins-why-congress-has-no-date-for-the-prom.html?_r=2&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212
The latest Gallup poll gave Congress a 10 percent approval rating. As Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado keeps pointing out, that’s lower than BP during the oil spill, Nixon during Watergate or banks during the banking crisis.
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But there’s much, much more. For instance, both chambers recently approved a big new ethics reform bill that would ban members of Congress from engaging in insider trading. Perhaps you imagined that this was already against the law. This piece of legislation had been lying around gathering dust since 2006. But, this year, the House and Senate decided to stand tall and pass it as a matter of principle. It had nothing to do with a “60 Minutes” report that made the whole place look like a convention of grifters. Totally unrelated. This was simply a bill whose time had come.
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But, no, the idea ran afoul of the House majority leader, Eric Cantor, the Darth Vader of Capitol Hill. Cantor says the idea should be studied, which is, of course, legislatese for “trampled to death by a thousand boots.”
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But Americans ought to have a better grasp of how the Senate works. The nomination’s progress had long been thwarted by Mike Lee, a freshman Republican from Utah, who has decided to hold up every single White House appointment to anything out of pique over ... well, it doesn’t really matter. When you’re a senator, you get to do that kind of thing.
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