Americans are hurting. Joblessness hovers at 9 percent. Teachers are laid off. Returning veterans can't find work. Roads, bridges and schools go unbuilt.
The public is increasingly impatient with congressional inaction. Two-thirds of Americans reportedly support passage of President Barack Obama's coordinated jobs bill, but GOP leaders in the House and Senate stubbornly refuse to allow an up-or-down vote.Economists estimate the president's bill, including elimination of millionaire tax loopholes, would create 1.9 million productive jobs and be deficit-free.Senate filibusterers threaten to block action, even though a majority of senators approve the program. House schedules are jammed with trivia and diversionary tactics. A nation waits for action. And waits. Weeks pass.Has America's carefully cultivated and long-cherished political system become victim to some self-imposed paralysis?And, if so, to what purpose? Simply to spite the president? Do GOP and tea party spokesmen dislike and resent Obama that harshly? Or is it mainly to pamper and placate a few huge campaign contributors who insist on continuing to avoid paying a fairer share in national taxation?"Politics," proclaimed Andrew Oliver in Boston two centuries ago, is the "noblest of all professions." He insisted this was true, in spite of all its "temptations and degradations" because it has the capacity to produce "so much good to [our] fellow creatures."Today, one is forced to wonder what that old founding father would say as we watch Republican leaders in the House and Senate artfully contrive delays, simply to prevent any affirmative decision on Obama's proposed jobs bill package.It is hard to avoid the harshly disappointing conclusion that these legislative leaders actually want economic conditions to worsen, in spite of avoidable human suffering, so that a disappointed public will abandon Obama in an election that is still more than a year away.In the 66 years since the end of World War II, America has had 12 presidents -- six Republicans and six Democrats.For more than half that time, there has been a president of one party and at least one house of Congress dominated by the other. Not one of these presidents has enjoyed eight straight years with partisan backing in both houses.Yet we, Democrats and Republicans, have accommodated, adjusted, respected one another, often compromised, tried to put the country first and -- for most of this protracted period -- prospered both nationally and individually.With only the rarest exceptions, congressional leadership has sought to uphold and defend the major national goals and personal honor of our nation's chief executive -- even though he be of the opposing political party.Democratic leaders helped President Dwight Eisenhower develop and enact his epochal interstate highway program. Numbers of Republicans stood behind John F. Kennedy's space and Peace Corps initiatives. Some GOP lawmakers backed Johnson's ground-breaking Medicare and civil rights reforms. Enough Democrats joined Ronald Reagan to change budget and taxing priorities, and enough Republicans coalesced with Bill Clinton to produce both our nation's longest period of continuous economic growth and our history's biggest annual budget surplus.Massively, Democrats rallied to adopt George W. Bush's pack of initiatives and strengthen his hand following 9-11. Congress put the nation's interest first!Now, to the disappointment of ordinary Americans, this tradition of prioritizing the country's immediate needs ahead of political partisanship has been abruptly terminated during in the first 10 months of this calendar year. The prime objective and overriding consideration of the current GOP congressional leadership is not to lift our national economy out of its painful jobless slump, but -- in the coldly calculating words of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell -- to guarantee that Barack Obama is "a one-term president."That's right. You heard him! The first priority is not to rescue the economy, improve educational opportunities, promote jobs for Americans or save many thousand homes from foreclosure.No, the GOP's first legislative objective has been to embarrass, blame, discredit and ultimately -- late next year -- defeat President Obama in the election. Meanwhile, they act to assure that goal at whatever interim cost, to guarantee that there are no national successes for which the president might get some slight personal credit.Think it through. This is the clear, cold attitude that prevails. Calculating congressional leaders not only admit to it. They boast of it.Jim Wright is a former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.P.O. Box 1413, Fort Worth, TX 76101Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
