Having abandoned any thought of passing any substantial legislation before the mid-term elections, House Republican leadership has to find activities to keep the kids amused during their grueling calendar of 113 work days. Today, the gang took to Twitter to whine about the
#StacksOfBills passed by the House and awaiting action in the Senate. You know, the jobs bills.
Like H.R. 1406, which helps working families by taking away their overtime pay:
Or H.R 311, a gift to agri-business exempting them from oversight of oil storage on agricultural land (this is bound to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, just like the spill-waiting-to-happen that is the Keystone pipeline).
Or H.R. 3865, the "STOP TARGETING OF POLITICAL BELIEFS BY THE IRS ACT OF 2014", or as I like to call it, the "Stop Picking on Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers Act of 2014".
And there's H.R. 1797, the PAIN-CAPABLE UNBORN CHILD PROTECTION ACT, a ban on all abortions after 20 weeks.
Yes, American jobs ARE waiting on you Senator Reid! Stop fiddling around with things like raising the minimum wage, or extending unemployment benefits, or rebuilding our infrastructure, or [shudder] passing meaningful immigration reform. There are Post Offices to be renamed!
I too found myself with a little time on my hands this afternoon and, evil troll that I am, chose to point out that these same House Republican members are receiving #StacksOfBills from the fossil fuel industry. To do so (and this is the main point I wanted to make) I used a fantastic tool that has been developed by the fine folks at Oil Change International.
They've created this terrific database that allows you to see the contributions that a Senator or Congressman has been raking in from the fossil fuel industries. Here's Speaker Boehner's impressive haul:
I love this graphic. The database also tracks members vote of fossil-fuel-friendly bills, so you can see how funding correlates with voting.
This is a brilliant tool that, based on my impressions, is under-utilized. It is a very impactful way of showing people how beholden our corrupt Congress is to fossil fuel interests.
And so I had a good time needling the House GOP and I think they gave up on #StacksOfBills, at least for the day.