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 You know that feeling of relief you get when an obnoxious house guest finally leaves? I’m thinking that the segment of the US population who actually cares about these matters is feeling the same way now that Congress is off on a five-week vacation. Not that they exactly earned it: The House, for instance, is on pace to be the least productive- in terms of bills passed- in the history of the country. This is the same House that has voted 37 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act. What the House GOP lacks in imagination they sure make up for with persistence.

I have marveled for some years now at the combination of audacity and effectiveness with which more conservative Republicans have subverted governance at the national level. First there is the bait-and-switch: Make it clear to the average citizen that the Federal government is a tax-crazy, spend-thrift monster of oppression in order to garner popular support for dismantling those parts of the government which hinder the activities of select constituencies. The EPA, for instance, loathed by the energy industry, is slated to have its 2014 budget cut 34% if the House GOP has its way.* The IRS, which has seen its share of controversy this year, is being threatened with a 24% budget cut. Love it or hate it, the Federal tax collector has been relentlessly attacked since the House’s “Contract for America” days in the 1990’s; IRS staffing is down 20% since 1995 while the number of tax returns the agency processes has grown 15% in the same period.**

(To be even-handed here, the Democrats have been complicit in the wrong-headed- in macro-economic terms- rush to cut government spending. “Deficit reduction” is a term we grown accustomed to hearing since President Obama was inaugurated. Advantage: Republicans when it comes to messaging.)

On another track, going back to the Reagan Administration, there has been a constant push to foster a sense of ineptitude about Federal governance. The most egregious case was George W. Bush’s appointment of the spectacularly unqualified Michael Brown as head of FEMA, but there have been others. Many Federal regulatory agencies have been headed by people who come directly from the regulated industries, a rather bizarre form of symbiosis often resulting in the condition known as “regulatory capture”.

To borrow from pimple parlance, this has all come to a head with the 113^th Congress. It is not Republican control of the House that is the issue; it’s the “type” of Republicans that now sit in the people’s chamber. Since the 1970’s, the GOP has cobbled together a disparate coalition of fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, evangelicals, traditional business types and recently, Tea Party revelers. The stresses and strains of that coalition are now obvious. Combined with Republican control of a majority of state governments, re-districting after the 2010 Census and the GOP’s primary process, a cadre of right-wing populists hold sway over the House, forcing their leadership into an uncomfortable quandry. These people are scary in the way the ignorant often are.

So now Congress is on hiatus for five weeks. Good for us. As Mel Brooks’ Yiddish-speaking Indian chief character says in Blazing Saddles, ”Lass ihm gehen! (literally, “Let them go!”)

*Source: thehill.com

**Source: Forbes.com