House GOP Asleep at the Wheel

Americans need a government that is willing to work overtime to address the nation's priorities – not the Republican ‘hibernating Congress.'

More than 1.9 million long-term unemployed Americans have lost the critical benefits that allow them to make ends meet while they look for work.

Tens of millions of low wage workers and their families would benefit from increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour.

Instead of standing up and working with Democrats to address these issues, House Republicans are too busy strategizing their political future to worry about the needs and priorities of American workers and their families.

From POLITICO:

Republicans think they will expand their majority in the House — and perhaps take the Senate — by spending the remainder of 2014 concentrating on a still struggling-economy, cutting a raft of regulations and Obamacare's woes. Many senior figures see no need to open up a new policy discussion in February of an election year without a partner in the Senate and White House. [2/25]

California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes recently told The Washington Post:

"We don't have 218 votes in the House for the big issues, so what else are we going to do?"

And Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp explained to the National Journal, Republican leaders told the GOP conference they were finished after they passed the debt ceiling bill:

"That's what our leadership said—if we get past this one, we're done until the election."

Rutgers' congressional scholar Ross Baker put it bluntly:

"It's going to be all finger food and no main course…We're seeing a new, hibernating Congress. It sounds like they're going into their dens for the winter. It's really kind of interesting, because I think from the point of view of the Republicans in the House, their approach is to ‘do no harm,' which of course is hardly a rallying cry."