Congress Heads Home To Rest From Their Exhausting Eight Days Of Work
Credit: csmonitor.com
September 19, 2014

If the Democrats were smart, they'd campaign on this issue alone: "Why vote for the guys who can't even be bothered to come to work?" And they'd run it with a big picture of John Boehner teeing off at the golf course.

But they're not that smart. I guess all we can hope to do is remind people on our Facebook pages:

One vote on war and Congress is apparently all tuckered out.

House leaders announced Thursday that they were cutting their already abbreviated fall session short and sending lawmakers back home – and onto the campaign trail – more than a week early.

The decision came one day after the House approved both President Obama's request to arm Syrian rebels and a bill that prevents a government shutdown at the end of the month. The House had initially been scheduled to remain in Washington on Friday and during the first week of October, but Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told members they could leave on Thursday afternoon and wouldn't be called back until after the November congressional elections.

[...] Party leaders often shorten the floor schedule ahead of elections to give their members more time to campaign, but this year's session is brief even under those standards. Including the five-week summer recess, Congress will have been in session for a total of about eight days between the end of July and the middle of November.

But here's what they did find time to accomplish:

With very few days left to legislate before the election, House Republicans are rushing through the Jobs for America Act, which includes several provisions to curb regulations as well as a grab bag of over $520 billion in tax breaks for businesses over the next decade. These tax cuts will do more to expand the deficit than expand employment.

The House already approved each of these tax breaks as separate pieces of legislation that went nowhere in the Senate. The first three of the breaks described below are usually temporarily extended as part of the “tax extenders” legislation that Congress usually enacts every couple of years. Making these breaks permanent, as this House bill would do, would destroy any hope that lawmakers will ever come to their senses and end this wasteful practice.

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