Pass this bill! Pass this bill!
But no Democrat has filed the bill in the US House.
Maybe because Democrats went to the mat for ObamaCare in March 2010, and lost big for it in November 2010.
Democrats in the House are obviously letting The One twist in the wind right now because The One did nothing to help them win re-election last autumn. Obama let them twist in the wind while he went on vacation every six weeks during 2010.
To rub the Democrats' noses in it, Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert finally has taken advantage of the lack of initiative and co-opted the bill with one of his own by the same name, as reported here:
President Obama repeatedly asked members of Congress to pass the American Jobs Act last week. But when no Democrat filed Obama’s bill after he presented it to Congress, a conservative congressman swiped the name for his own legislation.
The American Jobs Act introduced in the House of Representatives looks quite different from the version President Obama outlined in his speech to Congress. Instead of hiking taxes on working Americans to pay for another stimulus, Rep. Louie Gohmert’s (R-TX) legislation offers a tax cut.
UPDATE: Gohmert’s bill now has a number. It’s HR 2911.
Democrats can't say Gohmert didn't give them plenty of time, considering the urgency of the matter as put forward by Obama.
The fact of the matter is, when Obama and the Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate and the Executive from the beginning of 2009 into early 2010, it was the Senate which stalled almost everything sent to it by Speaker Pelosi and Company. Hundreds of measures passed by the Democrat House never saw the light of day in the Democrat Senate.
The point is that the problem for "legislative progress" is "structural" as the economists want it. The problem is with the US Senate, no matter which party controls it.
Gov. Rick Perry is wise in recognizing that the problem specifically has to do with who elects the Senate, which is no longer the State Legislatures, the way prescribed by the Constitution.
The consequence of the 17th Amendment is that we now have two legislative houses in competition for mere populist sentiment, which is a recipe for inaction, not action, because the legislative cycle distributes populist urgency differently in the two houses of our legislature. In changing the manner of election in the 17th Amendment, they forgot to change the timing.
As it is, only one third of the Senate is up for election/re-election every two years with the House, which still keeps most of the Senate largely behind the schedule of the mere popular whim, just as the Constitution intended, and the popular whim changes so fast these days that it's usually only a Senator (!) who notices it, and he or she bides his or her time, knowing popular whim will be forgotten in two years' time, or four. Better to wait and catch the next wave, which will doubtless be different.
Obama should be so smart.
