Congress Sits Idle While Economy Falters

There are two big focus points in Congress right now and one of them being the economic stimulus package, which President Barack Obama named the American Jobs Act. As of right now, the bill has not passed and it has been a month since this bill became announced. The House of Representatives will not hold any votes for this bill and the Senate doesn’t have enough democratic votes to pass the bill either. The unemployment rate as of today is about 9.1% and the economic growth is extremely slow. Congress is stuck in the middle because they have the Senate, which is made up on Democrats, and the House made up of Republicans leading to tension. Both parties disagree though on what the best way is to stimulate the economy. Republicans are saying leave it alone and eventually it will fix itself and that the government should stay out of it. But then democrats feel that the best way to fix the economy is to add more taxes to the wealthy and use the money towards helping the general public.

All Americans want is for the economy to be at least good if not great and for there to be at least some peace amongst Congress. As of right now, Americans aren’t getting either one of those things. In this particular instance, Congress is put in a tough spot with the decision of passing the American Jobs Act or not. Like learned in Hardball, one way that the Senate could convince the House that this bill would help stimulate the economy is to spin it or position it right. By spinning the issue, it might show a positive light on the bill because it will show that adding more jobs will eventually benefit the economy in the long run. That is a difficult thing to do because both parties have strong political views on how things should be done when it comes to the national government. If Congress maybe positions them in the right way then maybe it will show both sides of the issue. Either the House or the Senate needs to eventually give in, otherwise this issue will NEVER resolved. Lastly, the idea of popular sovereignty comes into mind because if the power comes from the people who are sitting in Congress than they need to do what’s right for the ENTIRE country and not base their decisions on what’s best for them. Like mentioned earlier, the unemployment rate is EXTREMELY high and by adding more jobs, eventually it will stimulate the economy.

Article: http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/06/news/economy/congress_stimulus/index.htm

From a Summer Focused on the Debt, Congress Now Pivots to Jobs

The high rate of unemployment in the nation is a focus of the article but so are the competing Democratic and Republican plans to address this issue in Congress this fall. Six weeks ago, Congress was focused on getting the United States out of debt, because the debt crisis has been tamed, Congress has made the creation of jobs a top priority. The people of the United States have voiced their worry to their elected representatives and jobs are their top concern. Five Republican senators held a news conference about their own job plan. This included the ideas of free trade agreements and tax code changes. Eric Cantor (Virginia Republican and House majority leader) said from the Republican view in Congress, that they were going to have different opinion from those of the President and the Congressional Democrats. The Republican Party wanted to voice their opinion before the President spoke about his plan to help the job crisis on September 8, 2011. Congress is in the process of working on a structured plan to solve the unemployment catastrophe in the United States. However, their ability to deal with the crisis will depend on how well they can compromise with one another.

The United States Congress is working on putting a plan together to relieve 14 million people from the unemployment crisis. Unemployment is a growing problem and I think it’s a smart decision for Congress to begin to create a job plan even though not all democrats and republicans will agree. This will improve the reputation of Congress because they are beginning to create jobs plans, which is going to help the United States citizens tremendously. This article also illustrates the relationship between the Republican and Democratic Party. Congress is not willing to work together on this issue; both parties are coming up with different strategies and plans. Congress’ ratings from the citizens are very low which exemplifies how well Congress is addressing the people’s wants. The unwilling relationship between the two parties to come to a solid decision may be the reason for these ratings.

Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/us/politics/08congress.html?ref=senate