A Do Nothing Congress breaks for 5 weeks with much work left undone

A five week break with no business done for the American people. What a shame? 

Lawmakers headed home for a five-week break with a lengthy list of uncompleted work and little to show for the past year and a half except an eye-popping amount of dissatisfaction: Nearly 80 percent of Americans are unhappy with them. The Republican-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate have set record lows for production and record highs for dysfunction.

Partisanship and election-year politics have left a drought-stricken nation wondering if new help will ever come and the U.S. Postal Service uncertain about its solvency. Some $110 billion in automatic, across-the-board cuts are due to hit military and domestic programs on Jan. 2, yet no bipartisan solution is in sight or even under discussion by those who really matter.

The standoff is what happens when a bitterly divided government mixes with election-year politics to throw sand in the gears of official Washington. The tea party-dominated House and a Senate controlled by Democrats struggling to keep their narrow majority in November view each other with a palpable disdain.

House Speaker John Boehner, who came to Washington in 1991, bluntly described the divide that has made consensus a rare commodity.

But common ground is scarce. This is a Congress that can't do the big stuff while even the small stuff, such as a one-year extension of student loan subsidies that passed in June, makes them sweat.

Republicans was not interested in passing any real reform or legislation for job growth and fixing the economy, once again they we have seen a Republican lead house focus on the wealth of the rich, not the middle class and repealing the Affordable Healthcare Act.

It can be easily said that House Speaker Boehner is scared to lead in a bi-partisan way, because of the kick back from the Tea Party that is taking over their long standing GOP (Grand Ole Party).

Congress stumbled out of Washington for a five-week vacation one day early on Thursday on a typical note: a GOP filibuster in the Senate of a bipartisan cybersecurity bill and the House's abandonment of a one-year extension, as Republican leaders had planned, of food and farm policy.

Senate Republicans were unhappy about being denied a chance to amend the cybersecurity bill. House Republicans were unable to find party unity on food stamps and farm subsidies.

More broadly, just 151 laws have been enacted in 19 months; more than two dozen of them were to rename post offices and courthouses, or add individuals to the Smithsonian board. By comparison, the previous Congress enacted 383 laws with President Barack Obama in the White House and Democrats controlling Capitol Hill.

Even in 2007-08, when Republican Bush was president and Democrats ran Congress, 460 laws were enacted.

"They think compromise is a dirty word when compromise is necessary to get things done in the era of divided government," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

A poll last month by CBS News and The New York Times found Congress with a 12 percent approval rating and 79 percent disapproval score.

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., eagerly talked about trying to work out a compromise in August, but other Republicans and Democrats have shown little interest, content to use the issue as a political club.