From a New York Times editorial, 9/24/04:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/24/opinion/24fri1.html

Congress Slouches Toward Home

The Republican-controlled Congress is shambling to the end of one of
the lightest workloads in decades without a hint of embarrassment,
concentrating on the defense of the flag, tax cuts and marriage while
failing at the most demanding obligations of government.

When the lawmakers get back home, voters should ask them how they
could quit their posts while leaving a dozen basic spending bills in
next year's budget unfinished - hung up once more in back-room feuds
about pork and logrolling.

The assault weapons ban was allowed to lapse to appease the gun lobby.

A simple $5 billion corporate-tax plan to satisfy a violation of
tariff laws remains mired in a $150 billion pork fest, while American
products suffer retaliatory sanctions in the billions.

As for fully financing and enforcing the No Child Left Behind Act,
voters have to settle for lawmakers' posing tenderly with
schoolchildren.

Equally disturbing is how our elected representatives have been
spending their time.

Eager to help the middle class, a goal no one can argue with, they
threw moderation to the winds this week on a $145 billion extension of
existing tax cuts benefiting families.

They hoped voters would not notice that they had not bothered to find
budget savings to offset the costs of this program, and that these tax
cuts will spawn a borrowing binge by the government from banks around
the world.

The loans will come due for America's children and grandchildren,
whose earnings may just as well be stamped "Payable to the Bank of
China."

Republican leaders did find the fiscal constraint to brush aside
proposals to extend minimal credits for millions of children in
working-poor families, only to add a $13 billion dollop of tax boons
to corporations.

The House began its work on the decades-delayed reform of the American
intelligence agencies by announcing that its kudzu patch of competing
committees, one of the central points of criticism by the 9/11
commission, was too sacred to touch.

Beyond that, House Republican leaders' most enthusiastic response to
the call for reform seemed to be in trying to tack on a Patriot Act
postscript that would grant law enforcement even more powers that
could curtail civil liberties.

Republican leaders have also been chipping away at the Constitution by
proposing to deny judges jurisdiction to review selected acts of
Congress.

The House passed a measure yesterday retaining the Pledge of
Allegiance's "under God" phrase and prohibiting any federal court -
including, outrageously, the Supreme Court - from judging the law's
constitutionality.

In essence, the House proposed to protect a patriotic ritual by
trashing the constitutional system it celebrates.

This measure was spurred by discontent over a 2002 federal appeals
court ruling that invalidated the recitation at public schools of the
pledge with the "under God" phrase in it, and the Supreme Court's
recent choice to dismiss the case on technical grounds rather than
addressing the merits.

It echoed the mean-spirited and unconstitutional Marriage Protection
Act, which the House approved in July to bar federal courts from
reviewing the legal definition of marriage.

The other day, Congressional Republicans celebrated the 10th
anniversary of their ascendancy to power with the Contract With
America, somehow failing to mention that their fervid conversion to
unchecked deficits was not exactly part of that contract.

Once upon a time, gridlock was considered the ultimate problem with
Congress.

That looks better than what we're getting right now.