Time to get to work

Published 12:41 am Thursday, October 13, 2011

Political posturing continued on Capitol Hill this week as Senate Republicans killed President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill because it included a 5.6 percent surcharge on income exceeding $1 million.

Congressional leaders, unwilling to work out a plan to put the country back to work, appear prepared to kick the ball down the road until after the 2012 election. For many of the unemployed, they don’t have the luxury to wait that long – a sentiment lost on those in charge.

“We will keep organizing and we will keep pressuring and we will keep voting until this Congress finally meets its responsibilities and actually does something to put people back to work and improve the economy,” Obama said following the vote.

“Republicans will continue to seek out any Democrat who’s more interested in jobs than in political posturing and work with them on bipartisan legislation like the trade bills we’ll vote on tonight,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Wednesday. “What we will not do, though, is vote in favor of any more misguided stimulus bills because some bill writer slapped the word ‘jobs’ on the cover page.”

By now, we are all too familiar with the sound of a stalemate.

The irony in this cirque du Capitol Hill is that those who begged for our support so they could go make a difference are doing nothing to move the ball. Compromise has become a four-letter word that neither party is willing to say, much less do.

At least until they need our vote next year.