Congress: Divided, discourteous, taking a break

WASHINGTON (AP) — The accomplishments are few, the chaos plentiful in the 113th Congress, a discourteous model of divided government now beginning a five-week break.

"Have senators sit down and shut up, OK?" Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blurted out on Thursday as lawmakers milled about noisily at a time Sen. Susan Collins was trying to speak.

There was political calculation even in that. Democrats knew the Maine Republican was about rip into her own party's leadership, and wanted to make sure her indictment could be heard.

Across the Capitol, unsteady bookends tell the story of the House's first seven months in this two-year term. Internal dissent among Republicans nearly toppled Speaker John Boehner when lawmakers first convened in January. And leadership's grip is no surer now: A routine spending bill was pulled from the floor this week, two days before the monthlong August break, for fear it would fall in a crossfire between opposing GOP factions.

A few weeks earlier, Boehner suggested a new standard for Congress. "We should not be judged on how many new laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws that we repeal," he said as Republicans voted for the 38th and 39th time since 2011 to repeal or otherwise neuter the health care law known as Obamacare.