Republican-controlled Congress plus Democratic president don’t mix well

Composition of House of Representatives this congressional year showing Republicans taking control.

photo via wikipedia.org under Creative Commons license

Composition of House of Representatives this congressional year showing Republicans taking control.

In January of 2015, the 114th United States Congress was elected and the Republican party took control over Congress. With 54% of the Senate and 56.6% of the House of Representatives being part of the Republican Party, the government cannot possibly function efficiently since our president is a Democrat and has opposing views.

President Barack Obama is known to be one of the few presidents who rarely uses his ability to veto laws. Since being elected to the office of presidency, Obama has used his veto power only four times; that will probably increase dramatically in his last two remaining years as president due to the Republican-led Congress.

In the first six years of his presidency, Obama only vetoed two laws Congress passed. But in these last three months alone (ever since the GOP took control over Congress), he has already vetoed two other laws — which allows us to safely assume he will veto many more in these next two years since the Legislative and Executive branches apparently cannot agree on anything.

Ever since Obama took office in Jan. 2009, Congress has been getting more unproductive, as very few laws are actually being passed. The 112th Congress, 2012, was officially the least productive Congress of all time, passing only 283 laws all year; the 113th ended slightly better with 296 laws passed.

Composition of Senate this congressional year showing full Republican control over Senate.
photo via wikipedia.org under Creative Commons license
Composition of Senate this congressional year showing full Republican control over Senate.

Congress’ approval rating among Americans has been record low since Obama took office. In 2013, only 14% of Americans rated Congress’ performance to be good or excellent, according to Gallup polling. And in 2014, it rose to about 15% but is starting to crash back down with the way things are going now.

All that Congress has been trying to do for the past several years is repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act supported by Obama. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed that Congress has attempted to repeal it 50 times! Instead of spending time on creating more jobs, lowering the debt ceiling or improving our economy, they are just focused on taking away what the President has worked so hard to build up since the beginning; at this point it’s not as much business as it is personal.

Obama has never seemed to really work well with Congress since he became president, but it has gotten much worse since the beginning of 2015. All the two branches do are bicker and belittle each other publically. That does not only lower their reputations but also makes themselves seem like absolute fools.

Obama has never seemed to really work well with Congress since he became president, but it has gotten much worse since the beginning of 2015.

— Argeen Ghazarian

Congress is so against Obama that in March of this year, 47 GOP Senators sent an open letter to Iran warning them that any deal reached between them and the Obama Administration regarding nuclear weapons could be easily undone by the next president or Congress in the future; the worst part is that they did this behind the president’s back! Technically, this was illegal and they could all go to jail for doing this. In 1799, the Logan Act was passed which prohibits any U.S. citizen from influencing disputes or controversies involving the U.S. and a foreign country without official U.S. authority, which the Senators did not have. So not only was what they did illegal, but it also proves to the American people that Congress is completely unwilling to work with Obama and be reasonable.

If Congress doesn’t learn to be reasonable and work with the president on both domestic and foreign matters, nothing is going to get solved and the economy is in no way going to get better. They can’t work together, and it’s not because they are completely firm in what they believe in, it is that they cannot step away from their egos and agree to work well with each other for the greater good. How they are acting now is very immature and childlike; it is an embarrassment to the entire world.

According to polls Fox News has conducted, Hillary Clinton has the best odds to win the presidential race in 2016. That means another Democrat is going to take office with a Republican-run Congress — which means, nothing is going to get done again, oh joy.

Americans have to either decide to vote in more Democratic Congress members so that Democrats control both houses of Congress once again and join a Democratic president in 2016, or they need to keep things the way they are and vote in a Republican president because apparently the American government is too childish to properly function and get along with others who do not entirely agree with them.

American politics do not work, plain and simple. For an example, look to the government shutdown in 2013 which occurred because Congress didn’t want to raise the debt ceiling unless Obama defunded Obamacare. Republicans don’t care for the economy, they just want what they want when they want it and refuse to negotiate, again, that is childish. An analyst at Guggenheim Securities, Chris Krueger, estimates that money will run out once again by October, and unless Congress can agree with Obama, the government will be forced into another shutdown.

The sooner Congress stops acting like children and begins working with Obama, the sooner the economy will stand strong once again like it was prior to the recession. The last couple months have been completely unproductive and embarrassing. Way to go America!