Blowing Past Deadlines
We all need deadlines of one sort or another…that’s how we get things accomplished, I suppose. Some of us…and I include myself in that category…hold off on getting things done until the deadline is staring us smack in the face, and then sometimes beg for an extension. I’m going to try to be better about that.
I’m reminded of this because of certain embarrassing displays in Congress lately. The first was the passage of the omnibus spending bill right before Christmas…again, only done because they blew the deadline for passing a budget according to the regular schedule…and then set up deadlines of getting things done before Christmas, or before that Congress’ terms expired.
That one you can blame on Democrats…but since it worked to their advantage in terms of getting what they wanted, don’t expect the behavior to change any time soon.
The more recent one was the drama that played out on national television last week concerning election of a Speaker of the House. Probably will be “all’s well that ends well” and it will be pretty much forgotten sooner than later.
But it was completely unnecessary, because all this wrangling over positions, all this posturing over supporting one person or another, all this negotiation could have been done long before the deadline of the first day of a new Congress. We’ve known since mid-November that the Republicans would have a slim majority, and we’ve known who the individuals voting on the Speaker would be.
None of the issues raised last week were new, none were a surprise. So why in the world could they not get together and figure things out in any of the six weeks before the first of 14 failed votes for Speaker?
Short answer is that some people did not take certain other people or their threats to withhold a vote seriously enough. They waited until there was a deadline, and then a crisis due to a missed deadline, before coming together.
That may turn out to be the lasting legacy of all this…the continued failure to do things in a timely manner, whether on the floor or behind the scenes. And that’s not going to bode well in terms of governing.
