Congress produces naught, but takes a vacation anyway

It's difficult putting a finger on what Congress has done so far this year to earn the six-week vacation members have just begun.
Certainly Congress has not applied itself to budgetary matters in a manner that warrants time off.
The budget was supposed to be passed last spring. It hasn't been. And it won't be, meaning that once again government will be forced to operate on a patchwork of continuing resolutions. It will be virtually impossible for Congress to approve all 13 spending bills that fund government operations between its return to Washington after Labor Day and the Oct. 1 deadline. One was passed the other day.
Where's the money?
Of course, it's difficult to pass spending bills when you don't know what your income is going to be, and between the House, the Senate and the White House, tax policy is a mess.
What should have been a relatively simple tax bill designed to correct for elimination of a $5 billion export subsidy that the World Trade Organization ruled illegal two years ago, emerged a monster. It is a hodgepodge of tax breaks for dozens of special interests that have absolutely nothing to do with responding to the WTO complaint.
Some were so petty that they would be laughable, if it weren't for the fact that every dollar is coming out of someone else's pocket (or, in the case of dollars added to the deficit, out of some other generation's pocket).
There were breaks for Alaskan fishing captains, bow-and-arrow makers, Oldsmobile dealers, NASCAR racetrack owners, land developers, ranchers, small-airplane manufacturers, commodity traders and distillers. Oh, and a $12 billion buyout for tobacco farmers.
The implications of one are so ominous that Americans should be outraged. General Electric Co. won House approval of a complex provision enabling it and other multinational firms to avoid paying $2 billion a year in U.S. taxes on foreign earnings. At a time when politicians on both sides of the aisle are mouthing their support for saving American jobs, this give-away would encourage companies to shift sales operations overseas.
Some of the most egregious provisions of this package could be eliminated in House-Senate conference committee sessions, but don't count on it.
Highway congestion
Meanwhile, passage of the highway bill, now more than a year overdue, continues to be stalled. The House and Senate versions are both over $280 billion and President Bush has threatened to veto anything over $256 billion -- which he might just do, so as to avoid going down in history as the first president in modern history not to exercise the veto though an entire term.
The White House has also taken a strong line on extending a number of tax cuts that are due to expire at the end of the year. Among them are child-care credits, a break for married couples and a freeze of the alternative minimum tax. Democrats and Republican deficit hawks were willing to extend the cuts for two years, but the White House and its congressional allies are holding out for five years.
Of course, if it turns out that the country can't afford to lose that much revenue over five years, the problem of balancing the budget or dealing with the need to eliminate the cuts in 2009 would not fall to President Bush -- even if he won re-election.
The only thing Congress managed to do on time was get out of town. Go figure.