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George Soros
The Man Behind the Throne

August 22, 2016

When you hire employees you expect them to accomplish the job you have hired them to do.  Likewise, when you become someone’s employee you sign on to diligently strive to accomplish the goals your employer has set for you.

When a person runs for political office, just like the employee, he or she needs to be cognizant of responsibility associated with the job.   It doesn’t matter if the person is running for a local city or school district office or even President of the United States, the focus should be on keeping promises, getting the job done, and never forgetting the responsibility the elected official has to those who elected him or her.  

Elected officials are the employees and those who elected them are the employers.  Never get those two roles confused.  Elected officials should be about doing the people’s business which leads us to our main point.

The Congress has not been doing its job.  It’s a sign of a lack of good leadership.  The Congress has the responsibility of passing twelve appropriation bills each year in order to fund the government.   As of the August Congressional recess here is how they are doing:

• Six of the twelve have been reported by the House or Senate Appropriations committees but have failed to be considered on either the House or Senate floors!
  
  
• Five have passed the House but are dying in the Senate because they haven’t been considered or because the Senate cannot get the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture.

But the bottom line is none of the twelve appropriation bills has been enacted!  Not one!

So what does that mean?  It means we are once again heading toward a stop-gap continuing resolution (CR).  In an election year there’s a lot of pressure to keep the government from shutting down.   In the process, Congress includes in the CR some programs that many would otherwise oppose because of the alternatives; especially to members who value their positions more than rendering service.

For example, the last CR fully funded Obamacare and provided funding for Planned Parenthood.  At the same time it lifted the ban on crude oil exports (which is important for jobs in Texas) and scaled back funding for the EPA.  What’s a member of the House or Senate to do when faced with these kinds of choices?

Here is one possible solution?  The first step is to get better leadership in Congress.  The chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriation Committees/Subcommittees need to be held accountable.   If they cannot get their jobs done sooner in the process, they need to be replaced.

Next the House and Senate leadership also needs to be held accountable.  In order for each appropriation bill to be considered on its merits, the goal should be to ensure the House and Senate have passed all twelve bills prior to the members departing for their five week August  recess.  If they can’t, cancel the recess! 

Getting the job done is hard work, but good employees are not afraid of hard work and accomplishing goals!
In the meantime, standby for another Continuing Resolution which is likely to have a lot of things embedded within it that are not to your liking! 

Bill, Mark, and John