They may not get quite as wild as some of the fraternity boys making their way to Florida’s beaches, but your congressmen and senators are going on Spring Break too!
Funding for border security remains inadequate for the ongoing crisis, dozens of judicial and executive appointments linger in committee, and no action is being taken on the paid family leave and childcare proposals in the White House FY 2020 budget plan released last week. But Congress is going to take the whole week off anyhow.
Don’t worry, they’ll be back in session next week for three whole weeks before they get another two weeks off.
It might seem silly to quibble about congressional “recesses,” but the practice of periodically fleeing the capital while major issues remain unresolved illustrates just how much of what goes on in Washington is the political equivalent of professional wrestling.
If there were realistic solutions on the table, you can bet your bottom dollar that lawmakers would be sticking around to get them done, if only so they could run home and brag to their constituents about their legislative brilliance. Instead, it’s usually just a matter of running out the clock until the bell sounds for the next recess while each side tries to make it look like it’s beating the opposition.
Recess is when the congressional vacationers get to break character, as the Democrats’ new “quirky” socialist wing was quick to show us. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, everyone’s favorite wrestler, posted a video of her doing six whole pushups with California’s Jimmy Gomez. Rashida Tlaib “is just LAUGHING at us in the background,” AOC tells us.
If they were any more wacky and fun than this, we might confuse them with their college age fans moshing on the drunken beaches.
Some Senate Republicans couldn’t even wait for the recess to officially start before they got the fun started. Presumably as some sort of prank, 12 of them voted against the one policy solution that’s actually breaking the Washington gridlock: President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the southern border.
The President just vetoed the measure to overturn his declaration, so the vote was meaningless, but this is Spring Break, and anything goes.
Don’t worry, though, the goofing around will stop when Congress gets back to work. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already let us know that her first order of business when she gets back behind the gavel will be to call a vote to override the President’s veto. It’s got no chance of passing, but hey, when recess is over, it’s time to get the wrestling match started again!
Maybe we should ask Congress to stay on recess until the next election. They’d get about the same amount done, and we know they’d have a lot more fun.
Kaya Jones is a conservative commentator and a former singer for The Pussycat Dolls.
