Back in November, the State of Texas elected Ted Cruz to be its junior senator. A number of other newly elected senators were sent to Washington but most of them the general public has not heard about as yet. Not so with Senator Ted Cruz. He has made a real impression in the nation’s capital.
I am told that it is a long tradition that freshmen congressmen and senators should sit quietly for a period of time until they get the lay of the land and familiarize themselves with the mode of operation present into which ever house they have been elected. Not so Senator Ted Cruz.
After the tragic killing of children and students at Newtown, Connecticut, Senator Cruz accused the president of the United States of using this incident in such a way as to further his own political agenda. The Senate Arms Services Committee was reviewing the appropriateness of former senator Chuck Hagal for the office of Secretary of Defense. Senator Cruz shocked many in his own party for his rudeness, misuse of facts and innuendos. Then it started immediately to be said that “we have another Senator Joe McCarthy,” we have another person whose approach is simply to attack without data – to charge, to accuse and, if necessary, to really hurt his opposition.
Time marches on and people forget. Joseph McCarthy was a senator from Wisconsin who dominated American politics in the early ‘50’s. He was brutally dishonest, ultimately censured by his fellow senators and gave his name to a period that was synonymous with destructive conflict.
Senator Ted Cruz has only been in office for a few weeks. It may very well be that he has learned that the old tradition of sitting and listening for a while is a good approach. I wish him every success in that effort.
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I am glad to see thoughtful and fair-minded people beginning to talk about the need to raise the national minimum wage. While 19 states have set their own minimum wage above that set by the federal government, Texas’ current political leaders wouldn’t begin to think about raising it. The federal level has been locked in at $7.25 a hour since 2009. In view of that, I hope that Congress will raise the minimum wage this year. It is interesting to see Congress arguing that $7.25 is just fine after they have spent months arguing that poor people who only make a million or more dollars a year should not have to pay additional taxes. Did you know that there is a minimum wage for waitresses and other “tipped” workers? It is $2.13 an hour and it has been that way for almost 15 years!
If efforts to raise the minimum wage would begin to get traction, you can expect to hear arguments that small businesses CANNOT AFFORD to pay a higher wage. The evidence shows that most low wage employees work for large companies. Raising the minimum wage would also put pressure to bring higher wages to those working above that minimum level. Let’s face it. The middle class has been caught in a terrible squeeze for more than two decades and the nation needs to begin determined efforts to increase the share of the economic pie that the middle class receives.
Regretfully, it has been several decades since the average American family could be supported by one wage earner. It is taken for granted that the majority of our families require two paychecks to simply get by. If one or both of those paychecks is based on $7.25 an hour, you can be sure that this family is living in poverty, real poverty. Wealth continues to soar in this country. Production and profits are up but it seems that the lower levels of the economy continue to be squeezed.
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Well, everybody is breathing just a little bit easier and so they should. For months and months we have heard endless debate on an agonizingly difficult financial situation where the Congress had locked itself into both forced cuts and increased taxes, a terrible combination which would have induced possibly a very severe recession. Since we are not completely out of the one that began in 2008, it would have been disastrous for a portion of the American people. In my opinion, the negotiators did not negotiate. They danced!
For the past several months, instead of hard, tough negotiation sessions, the two sides debated with each other through the evening news. I am no economist and certainly no prophet but I said in this space two months ago that we should not worry and although our representatives in Congress may not be all that bright, they are not insane. Now they have proven me correct on that score at least.
The decision arrived at between the president and the Republican controlled House is not perfect and not final but it has averted a temporary disaster and we can all be appreciative of that. Why did such a serious issue have to be handled by theatrics? Why is the word “bipartisan” become obscene and the word “compromise” despised as meaningless? Republicans never had the chance to win on this issue in any positive way. The president was elected after repeating countless times that the super rich had to pay a little more of their share of the cost of running the country. The position of the Tea Party was that rather than raising even $10 on the super rich, they would rather force a situation where taxes would increase sharply on the poor and middle class, ultimately an untenable position for them, but they stuck to that position until the last hour.
We squeaked by on this one. Let’s hope that the elected officials can deal with the debt ceiling in a little more reasonable manner.
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The United States of America has been a functioning democracy since late in the 18th century. Being a democracy, its people (utilizing our complex governmental structures) ultimately make the decision on how our limited resources will be utilized. Currently, the various forces in Congress are struggling over the national budget. Those who have the most votes will win on various individual issues and the total budget itself.
In my opinion, the House, which is naturally vitally concerned about the size of budget deficits, has just made a very sad decision, a mistaken decision! The United States is involved in two wars simultaneously and the threats of conflagration in other parts of the world are all too obvious. The House Finance Committee has voted to suppress the small budget of the U.S. Institute for Peace. The Institute’s budget was roughly equivalent to what we spend each morning to wage war in Afghanistan.
Something is certainly wrong with our priorities. We don’t bat an eye spending billions and even trillions of dollars to wage war but this small structure, which is aimed at making peace in various conflicted situations around the world, was cut to zero. For me, the Institute for Peace was more symbolic. It represented the fact that the United States, although it has been at war for most of the last 30 years, is really interested in peace and is willing to hire peacemakers and place them in conflicted situations around the world. That has been our position since the mid-1980’s when the Institute was set up at the height of the Cold War. It is now closing down! What a pity. How sad.
Onward through the fog.
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Want to imagine a difficult situation? Consider a 12-year-old Mexican kid whose parents brought him to this country illegally when he was a small baby. Because of the family’s lack of legal status, this little kid faces very real obstacles in the future. Now we have a wonderful suggestion for removing those barriers and permitting these young people to pursue a promising future through education and military service.
Naturally, there are conditions. The person must have entered the United States before the age of 16, lived here for five continuous years, graduated from high school or gained admission to an institute of higher learning, not guilty of any crimes and have good moral character.
The DREAM act has always had strong bipartisan support and the U.S. bishops have themselves been long standing supporters. However, we are in the last days of Congress. The bill could come up within the next week or so. It could easily die during these jammed days in the congressional calendar. Letters and calls from all of us could really make a difference. Why don’t you take five minutes, call your representative or senator, and ask them to support the DREAM act?
U.S. Senate: (202) 224-3121
House of Representatives: (202) 225-3121
Make the dream real.
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Gridlock! Anger! Lack of cooperation and lack of trust!
These are words used repeatedly to describe one or another aspect of the actions of our Congress. The senators and the congressmen seem to have a very difficult time of working together with any degree of effectiveness. This is tragic for our country and bad for the members themselves.
There are many issues but I would like to raise one that would surprise some people. In my opinion, the problem is that both House and Senate members go back home too frequently. Before jet travel, it was impossible for anyone other than a few congressmen from the greater Washington area to get home on weekends. With jet travel and pressure in the home district to spend more time in their district, a large majority of the congressmen are out of Washington by Friday returning on Sunday night or Monday. Gone are the weekend barbecues, gone are the long, relaxed conversations over a drink. When they do get back to their families, however, many are so busy with the never-ending burden of raising money that they don’t even have the world’s best possible hours with their families. This results in members who are tired, over-extended and do not know each other personally as well as they used to.
Hey, congressmen. Give yourself a break and calmly stay in Washington for more weekends. Get to know those people on the other side of the aisle as friends and develop relationships of trust that can enable our country to move forward effectively.
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They’re at it again. How can all those intelligent men and women that we send to Congress to guide us in the running of this country be so difficult?
Do you remember the months of “pleasant discussion” regarding healthcare reform? Now, of course, they are locked in nearly mortal combat over the restructuring of the reworking of financial structure. On top of that, immigration reform raises its head, unveiling yet more sweetness and light on Capitol Hill on both sides of the aisle. All of these issues center about the word reform. The reason that we require so much reformation of our structure is that Congress doesn’t have the ablility to deal with issues as they come up one by one, and so finally the situation gets so seriously out of kilter that the subject cannot be dealt with without a major overhaul. And of course, if the Congress has difficulty with relatively minor issues, you can imagine the fireworks when truly substantial reforms are needed or attempted. Who knows where this will take us? Regardless of the course, rest assured that the pattern will recur.
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Comments (1) 
Back in November, the State of Texas elected Ted Cruz to be its junior senator. A number of other newly elected senators were sent to Washington but most of them the general public has not heard about as yet. Not so with Senator Ted Cruz. He has made a real impression in the nation’s capital.
Themocracy