Don't just do something - stand there.

Sometimes you wonder if even really smart people have not been paying attention. For example, in the Virginian Pilot (my local birdcage liner) today I found an op-ed that brought me up short. Jesse T. Richman, assistant professor of political science at Old Dominion University actually thought that it would be a good thing if Republicans and Democrats were able to get together after this election to enact major legislation.

I realize that professors of political science have a bias in favor of legislators legislating. The article does not specify exactly what congress should be legislating on, but the general thrust of the article was that while “cooperation is difficult,” he was optimistic that Democrats and Republicans in congress would be able to work together with Obama to pass laws that “address broad public concerns.”

Well, the public is broadly concerned about jobs, under-water mortgages, ObamaCare, multi-trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see and … if you have been shopping lately … the rising cost of food and fuel. Given that Obama seems to be fixated on spending as a way of stimulating the economy, has staked his Presidency on passing ObamaCare, and the Democrats in congress and Obama have passed housing legislation that has been a dismal failure, what are the chances that they will do a U-turn and agree with Republicans that taxes should be reduced, ObamaCare should be repealed and spending should be cut?

A call for major bipartisan legislation is, in my view, a call to tinker around the edges of the Liberal agenda; to make it work better so that we can go even faster to becoming a semi-fascist state where government makes the rules, tells us what will be produced, which technologies will be developed, where people who have “enough” will have it taken away from them to give to some other more politically connected class. The right to vote for the person who will tell us how to run all aspects of our lives is not how the experiment in American democracy should end.

Every sentient economist agrees that entitlement spending, which now represents about 80% of federal outlays, need fixing. What are the chances that the Democrats in congress and Obama agree to curb entitlements when they have spent every election since FDR scaring seniors by claiming that Republican want to take their social security away? What is the professor thinking is going to happen?

There is one other aspect of professor Richman’s op-ed that bothers me. It seems that passing legislation - major legislation - is viewed as a GOOD THING. I, and a lot of people in this country, do not agree. In the absence of a total repeal of all the laws passed by congress in the last two years, people on Wall Street and Main Street are hoping for gridlock. Some wag said that the mid-term election was a restraining order. Stop with the “major legislation” already because the deck is still stacked against this government, now thankfully divided, actually fixing our problems instead of making them worse.

Some people really believe that a legislature should be like a factory producing … cars or boots or iPods. And the more the factory produces the better. Can’t you hear the writer now? “You: yes YOU - Senator - don’t just sit there, pass a major law. The more pages the better; the more intrusive the better.  That’s your job.”

One of the great things about Virginia is that the legislature is only in session for about 60 days out of the year. The rest of the time, the Old Dominion is safe from the imperative of the legislature to do something.  So it leaves.