Even Floods Can’t Get Congress to Act

The National Flood Insurance Program is the latest poster child for congressional incompetence.

Before leaving town for the month of August, the House passed a four-month extension of parts of the program that were about to expire. The Senate followed suit.

Four months?

Yeah, four months.

Before that, the House and Senate passed six short-term extensions of the program. Think that’s bad?

The program, the primary source of homeowner flood insurance, was extended 17 times between 2008 and 2012, according to the Congressional Research Service.

As usual, there are big policy and philosophical differences among lawmakers that are causing gridlock and keeping members from reaching a longer-term deal.

So Congress simply punts the ball down the field.

The NFIP legislation is but one example of lawmakers’ inability to do their jobs.

Appropriations legislation is another. Congress is supposed to pass individual pieces of legislation by the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year funding most federal programs.

That won’t happen. For instance, the Pew Research Center has reported that between FY11 and FY16, not a single appropriations bill was passed by the deadline.

Well, maybe having a new occupant in the White House could help.

Not a chance. President Trump has upped the ante and threatened not to sign appropriations bills if he doesn’t get his own way on immigration policy and the wall between the U.S. and Mexico. That could cause large parts of the federal government to shut down.

Putting Trump aside, the causes of gridlock are complex, and volumes have been written about them.

At its most simple level, the rules of the House and Senate lend themselves to gridlock.

The House Rules Committee establishes rules for debate and the House votes on the rules before debating a bill. Decades ago, some bills went to the floor with open rules, allowing the House to work its will.

Not anymore. Some bills go to the floor with closed rules and don’t allow any amendments to be offered, while others may go to the floor with structured rules, which allow only specified amendments to be offered.

The result? Legislation like House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling’s (R-Texas) Financial CHOICE Act.

Some folks may have liked provisions in the bill, but it was a political shipwreck from the moment it was introduced. And members knew it. But rather than mold it into a serious piece of legislation that could have formed the basis for serious negotiations with the Senate, the House simply passed it and sent it across the Capitol.

And for the second Congress in a row, it died.

And then there’s the Senate. Under its rules, the Senate generally can’t do anything without 60 votes. Those are the number of votes needed to break a threatened filibuster.

That leaves the Senate in a perpetual state of gridlock.

And so, the Senate can’t pass what the House passes and the House doesn’t want to pass what the Senate passes.

There’s no easy solution as long as lawmakers place a higher premium on scoring political points and try to cater to the party faithful or those who contribute to their campaigns.

Maybe the voters in November will figure it all out.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Twitter? No, Thanks

Geezer alert.

I am no fan of Twitter. I cannot think of anything I might want to say to hundreds or thousands of people that can’t wait a while.

In the really old days, you had to write a letter, put a stamp on it and mail it. The process gave you plenty of time to think about what you wrote and whether you wanted to mail it.

Then came email. That was the start of the trouble. You didn’t have to spend time thinking about what you wrote. But generally, those emails didn’t go to thousands of people.

But Twitter is even easier. You can send out individual thoughts and other drivel to thousands, if not millions of people.

And the garbage is retained somewhere and can easily come back to haunt you.

Take the case of Atlanta Braves pitcher Sean Newcomb. Last month, Newcomb lost a no-hitter, with two outs in the ninth inning.

By any account, he pitched a fantastic game.

But the second-year lefthander didn’t have much time to celebrate his accomplishment after the game.

Instead, he had to find some way to explain the homophobic and racist Tweets from high school that someone had dug up and was circulating.

I’m not a racist and I’m not homophobic, but I’m not sure that I would want someone looking at random thoughts I had when I was 18 years old.

You want to Tweet your every thought, no matter how ridiculous?

Fine. Count me out.

Unpatriotic?

The president of the United States is at it again, calling the free press “unpatriotic” and continuing to call journalists “the enemy of the people.”

And people are taking him seriously. At a recent rally in Florida, Trump supporters chanted, “CNN Sucks.”

Did the president discourage this behavior? Of course not. His son tweeted the news and Trump re-tweeted it.

The CNN correspondent covering the event, Jim Acosta, sent out a tweet of his own: “I’m very worried that the hostility whipped up by Trump and some in conservative media will result in somebody getting hurt. We should not treat our fellow Americans this way. The press is not the enemy.”

Well said.

Rudy

The sooner Rudy Giuliani goes away, the happier I’ll be. I’m tired of his act and I’m not sure that his wild-eyed defense of the president is doing Trump any good.

He’s spending so much time bloviating all over television defending Trump, I’m not sure when he has any time to give Trump any legal advice.

Years ago, the wonderful columnist Jimmy Breslin had the perfect description of the man once known as America’s Mayor. Giuliani, Breslin wrote, was “A small man in search of a balcony.”

There’s no topping that.

David Baumann is a correspondent-at-large for CU Times. He can be reached at dbaumann@cutimes.com.