I've been casting around for additional clues as to why the US Senate -- like the US House of Representatives before it -- has become a meaner, less collegial place to conduct the nation's business, I happened upon a possible answer in my local grocery store today. Right there, among the other canned foods, was this:
http://efoodpantry.com/...
It's the Dominique brand of canned soups, and the particular variety I spied was US Senate Bean Soup, which the maker describes this way: "A re-creation of the original turn of the century recipe served everyday in the Senate Dining Room."
For one thing, US Senate Bean Soup is made with navy beans -- and anyone who has looked in the past several decades at military appropriations coming out of Congress knows that our elected representatives loves them some Navy.
Then there's this ingredient in the soup: Smoked pork fat. And we do see quite a lot of pork coming out of the Capitol, too.
But the single biggest clue is the soup's sodium content: A whopping thousand milligrams or so per serving, according to the nutrition labeling on the can I inspected -- although, unaccountably, online nutrition labeling for the same product lists the sodium content in a one-cup serving as a smaller but still garish 800 mg.
So, a cup of this very potent if tasty stuff provides somewhere between a third and half of all the salt the government itself says you should consume in an entire day of meals. Now, those who have tried this brand of bean soup are almost unanimous in implying the soup is so good you aren't likely to stop at one cup. So why should we expect any US senator to hold back? Belly up to that soup pot, sirs and ladies!
Yes, the clues make it quite obvious: The Senate's collegiality problem is that too many members are loaded up on salt from bean soup, and that their collective blood pressure has blasted through the roof. Plus, as anyone who watches C-Span knows, there's lots of gas and farting around these days on the Senate floor.
One must ask, however indelicately: Would the nation's most august deliberative body more often achieve genuine compromise and consensus if, say, Ron Johnson or Rand Paul instead focused on consuming soy burgers in the Senate dining room?
Meanwhile, over in the House, budget committee chair Paul Ryan (R-Wis), a budget hawk of draconian proportions, was recently spotted drinking lavishly expensive wine and consuming rich dishes at a tony beltway restaurant with lobbyists. Ryan's problem may not be that his blood pressure is amped, but rather that his blood vessels are clogged with fat-cat cholesterol. That might in turn explain his swelled head and addled thinking. Get this man a plate of watercress, celery sticks and carrots, stat!