Monday 2 January 2012

Congress Really Is As Bad As You Think, Scholars Say


"I think you'd have to go back to the 1850s to find a period of congressional dysfunction like the one we're in today," says Daniel Feller, a professor of U.S. history at the University of Tennessee

"There have been plenty of times when the rhetorical heat has been high, sometimes higher than now," Feller says. "What's most amazing today is not fiery words, but the inability to do necessary business."

If today's Congress really is the least effective since before the Civil War, "it's disappointing, but not surprising," Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia says.

And the stalemate occurs at a time when America can afford only "the smallest margin for error," he says.

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