Mitt may get it yet.
Thursday, the new U.S. senator from Utah did just what I said he should do. (Like he is so eager to take my advice.)
First, he voted for a bill that would have reopened the shuttered parts of the federal government, at least for a while, including money for the big, goofy border wall that the big, goofy president is demanding. Then, when that bill failed, Sen. Mitt Romney also voted for the other alternative, a reopen-the-government bill without money for a wall.
That was the kind of legislative compromise Congress has, in days gone by, been able to forge. It gives everyone a chance to vote for what they really, really want — or what will look good to the vocal parts of their constituency — and then, having made their point by voting for the perfect, make like Tom Brady and check down to voting for the good.
The good in this case being reopening the government, getting paychecks to all those furloughed and working-without-pay federal employees. Employees who, if they worked in France, would have been rioting in the streets. Employees who, as Romney rightly said in his first town hall meeting the other day, are being treated as pawns in this battle.
But the no-wall bill failed, too, in part because the other senator from Utah, Mike Lee, voted against both measures. He was miffed that even the with-wall bill “simply does not do enough to reform our immigration system or address the crisis at our southern border.”
Well, yes, it would have done very little to actually reform our mucked-up immigration system. That’s not what temporary funding bills are for. And, no, it didn’t do anything to address “the crisis at our southern border.” Because no act of Congress can address something that doesn’t exist.
Well, parts of the border are a disgrace. But the situation only hurts the people there, the children taken from their parents and chucked into baby concentration camps, the families denied the right guaranteed by U.S. and international law to seek asylum.
All of those are problems that could have been, and still could be, ameliorated, if not altogether solved, if our doofus in chief would employ translators, judges, lawyers and counselors to handle the flow, process the deserving, house the lost, heal the sick, reunite the families and gently turn back the ringers.
In other words, if our leadership had behaved as a great and wealthy nation would normally be expected to behave. At a fraction of the financial and human cost of this self-defeating tough-guy approach.
Then, Friday, the president said he was accepting a deal to reopen the government under the exact same terms he could have had 35 days before.
Amazing what the indictment of a close ally, combined with a slowdown in air traffic, can do.
Meanwhile, something else for Romney to learn: The mic is always hot.
One might think that Sen. 47 Percent would by now grasp that there is no such thing as off-the-record when you are as big a deal as he is. Yet he was a bit distressed when he discovered that his meeting with all three members of the Weber County Commission was open, as all meetings of such public bodies in Utah by law are supposed to be, to the press and public.
At least the only buck-passing he engaged in that day did not involve blaming the peasants for being so revolting. It was only to say it was all beyond his pay grade, residing in the respective laps of the president and of his new nemesis, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Ah. Here’s a chance to tweak the only Democrat in the Utah congressional delegation. All that campaign stuff from now-Rep. Ben McAdams that he wouldn’t vote for Pelosi to return as speaker — because the House needed “new leadership” — was so silly. Even though, in that tight race, it might really have helped him.
New leadership? Right now, Pelosi is the only leadership in town. She also put McAdams on the House Financial Services Committee, guaranteeing him huge bags of contributions from banks and hedge funders — you know, Mitt Romney’s friends — for his future campaigns.
And one thing Romney might offer to teach. He might take aside, if not the waxen-eared president, then, say, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and explain, filthy-rich white guy to filthy-rich white guy, that workers, contractors and those who make their living selling lunch and gas and movie tickets and shoes to those folks are really suffering.
(Oh stewardess, I speak plutocrat.)
They are suffering in a way that hurts the whole of the economy. Suffering in a way that is more likely than any “open border” to endanger the public when air traffic controllers, airport security screeners, FBI agents and Coast Guard crews have to worry about missing their next car payment or raiding their children’s college fund.
No, Wilbur, they can’t live off their stock portfolios. It’s been a really long time since the neighborhood grocer would let you just sign for your provisions and pay later.
It’s somewhat heartening to see the help some people are giving the abandoned federal workers. Pizza. Jazz tickets. Coffee and doughnuts. Kinda like during the Depression. Also caused by the exceedingly stupid acts of incredibly rich people.
Whether it’s desperate families seeking refuge in this nation of refugees, or federal employees who, to the shock of some of our nation’s elite, really provide a service, folks who don’t make big campaign contributions not only don’t matter to our high and mighty, they don’t even seem to live in the same dimension.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tribune staff. George Pyle.
George Pyle, the editorial page editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, offers his services as a translator between rich and poor. If the rich are buying the beer. gpyle@sltrib.com
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