Friday, December 24, 2010

Are Americans better off than they were a year ago?

It's Christmas Eve and all through the House, not a creature is stirring, not even a representative, and nothing's happening in the Senate Chamber either.

But out in the media, it's the same old, same old. Don't those pundits, correspondents, reporters and what have you ever sleep? And you can be sure they're still keeping score on which politician is winning and which one is not, regardless of the legislation passed or possibly in the works for the next session.

I mean, what's more important: how much stuff was passed due to or in spite of Barack Obama or whether or not Americans are safer and better off than they were at his inauguration? The ranks of the unemployed might vote in the negative.

Ronald Brownstein over at the National Journal gives it a go this morning, calling the past congressional year One for the Books :


This month’s final flurry of legislative successes for President Obama and the Democratic Congress underscores the difficulty of rendering a single verdict on their tumultuous two years in power.

In November, Democrats forfeited control of the House after suffering the largest midterm losses for either party since 1938. They absorbed stinging defeats in the Senate as well. But before that, and to an utterly unexpected extent after that as well, Obama and congressional Democrats passed into law an enormous agenda. This Congress will enter the history books for the magnitude of both its political losses and its legislative victories.

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