Just another rotten, expensive day on Capitol Hill

We all know that Washington, D.C. is broken. But Congress recently provided a 24-hour window where onlookers could peek inside and see how rotten Capitol Hill truly is.

For a brief moment of bipartisan civility on December 13, the Senate passed a resolution that withdrew U.S. military support of the Saudi Arabian proxy war in Yemen.

What might seem like an example of the legislative branch working effectively turns out to be an astonishing failure when you contextualize it.

First, this was the only time that the Senate utilized its power to stop unauthorized military actions since that authority was granted to them by the War Powers Act of 1973. That’s right — 1973! Pause for a moment and calculate the amount of blood and treasure amassed in the last approximate half century, in which lawmakers have shirked their responsibility to rein in the foreign policy of the executive branch.

Second, consider the timing of the vote. What’s happening in Yemen isn’t new. This civil war has been raging since 2015, and the results have been devastating. As one of the most underreported humanitarian crises of our lifetime, this conflict has resulted in over 50,000 Yemeni civilians dead (either as a causality of war or the eventual death caused by famine and disease that both have become rampant in the vacuum of this failed state), 2 million forced to leave their homes, 8 million starving or at risk of starvation, and 22 million lacking access to basic services and infrastructure (healthcare, water, food, etc.).

But, for some reason, this level of tragedy didn’t meet the moral threshold of our legislators.

What set everything in motion was the actions of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman, who just was credited with the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. We would never side with a violent authoritarian, right? Never mind our decades-long alliance with Saudi Arabia while the United States turned its head and whistled, while this despotic Middle Eastern theocracy trampled on civil liberties and human dignity without repute. Political expediency is a funny and tragic thing.

(To make matters worse for Coloradans, our very own Cory Gardner voted against the Senate resolution. While the rest of the Senate managed to hit this political softball out of the park, Gardner struck out swinging.)

Third, what makes this ordeal even more frustrating is the fact that the House — not to be outdone — had already one-upped the Senate with their own brand of head-scratching behavior the day before. While debating the Farm Bill, legislators tacked on a procedural rule that prevented a future floor vote on any war powers resolutions for the remaining year. Yes, Congress blocked Congress from exercising its legal Congressional duty while debating agricultural subsidies. One would be hard pressed to find a better example of why we need a “one subject at a time” law that restricts lawmakers from cluttering legislation with red herring additions that distract from its original intent.

Finally, behind the scenes of this political kabuki, the specter of government shutdown looms due to the standoff between Congress and President Trump, who is demanding funding for the border wall that he promised on the campaign trail. The likely result of this — as it has been for years and years — is another stopgap measure that temporarily funds the government and kicks the proverbial can down the road until the next time that we can all get bent out of shape about it.

Keep in mind that the federal debt is currently over $21 trillion, and continues to trend upward due to our voracious deficit spending, which is, of course, exacerbated by our costly foreign policies and agricultural subsidies. Our federal government is on the verge of shutting down because warring parties cannot agree upon how to spend the imaginary money that we don’t have.

Watching the federal government in action is eerily similar to listening to your children play in the other room where you keep the fine china. Infantile bantering is periodically interrupted with the sound of something crashing, leaving us with the same parting thought: “I don’t know what just happened, but I bet it sure sounded expensive.”

Let’s recap: negligent public servants, foreign atrocities, political gamesmanship, wasteful spending, and an impending debt crisis. This is just another day on Capitol Hill.