Tick Tock, Dems

To say I remain unhappy with our Democratic “leadership” for caving on the withdrawal timeline for the Iraq Supplemental is an understatement, though this New York Times story notes that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid intend to return to this issue over the summer (and Meteor Blades at The Daily Kos has written some great posts on this, including here and here).

Meanwhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran an editorial on Monday describing the Democratic accomplishments while running Congress as “thin” (and you cannot appreciate how unintentionally funny that is until you see how the paper has shrunk since the beginning of the reign of Bruce Toll and Brian Tierney). This letter appeared today in response…

There are several fallacies in your Monday editorial "The Democratic Congress: Any day now." Democrats took control of Congress for the first time in more than a decade only four months ago. They have exercised more constitutionally mandated oversight in those four months than Republicans did in six years of their control of Congress.

Many legislative initiatives have been started; many passed in one or the other house, and there has been a complete change in the political discourse. There have been no ridiculous bills predicated on electoral wedge issues. There is serious debate about the problems facing the nation.

However, the Democrats have a one-vote majority in the Senate, which means Republicans can and have blocked most reasonable initiatives. The Democrats also face a president who, with nothing left to lose, has shown he intends to veto any sensible legislation that comes to his desk.

Let us not forget that Republicans used the strategy of block and blame to great advantage in 1994. It helped produce a Republican Congress for the first time in a generation.

Give the Democrats a little time. Congress was designed by the framers to work slowly. Democrats are changing the agenda to deal with the actual problems the nation faces. They are rooting out the deeply entrenched incompetence, corruption and blatant criminality Republicans condoned for six years.

Brandon Bittner
Royersford, PA

Bittner is right, of course.

And actually, slamming the Dems like this is a step forward for the paper, which ran a hard-hitting and insightful column on the danger of metal baseball bats used in the little leagues. I cannot hazard a guess as to why it appeared in the editorial section and not the sports page, however.