As Senators headed home on Thursday afternoon, with House members ready to join them on Friday for a five week vacation, lawmakers in Congress are leaving Washington with precious few achievements to show the folks back home.
For some voters, that's just fine - they don't want Congress to do much; for others, the lack of action on major issues shows how screwed up things are in Washington, D.C.
It has been 19 years since the Congress finished its budget work by the end of the fiscal year (September 30). Neither the House nor the Senate will come close this year.
The House has passed four of the 12 budget bills.
The Senate has passed none of them.
As of Thursday afternoon, the Congress had sent only 23 bills to President Obama for his signature, the latest being a bill that rolls back a recent increase in student loan interest rates.
One thing I've talked about for years is how much less work is being done by both the House and Senate - and figures produced by one of my colleagues bears that out.
Lisa Desjardins of CNN went back through the last five years, and found that 2013 has had the least amount of Congressional activity.
For example, in 2009, the Senate met for 113 days before the August break - 24 more days than in 2013.
Think about that - basically the Senate worked five more weeks in 2009 up until this point of the year, than Senators did in 2013.
The difference in the House was 19 days - almost four full work weeks.
Seems pretty logical to me that if you aren't in Washington for work in Congress, you aren't going to get much done in the House or Senate.
The last time the Senate voted on a Friday was in March. ?
The House didn't schedule one five day work week on the floor for the entire year.
For the next five weeks, the Congress is out. Then lawmakers are back for two weeks, and then they take the next week off.
By then, it is September 30, the end of the fiscal year.
Before that date, the House and Senate must approve a temporary, stop-gap budget to keep the government running.
Or, we have a government shutdown.
Source: http://www.wsbradio.com/weblogs/jamie-dupree/2013/aug/01/congress-leaves-until-after-labor-day/
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