Some members of Congress, including Maine’s Rep. Mike Michaud and Sen. Olympia Snowe, say they would like to return to Washington to end their winter recess early and get back to work. Seeing as how this is the least popular Congress in the history of polling, we are not sure how to respond.

If they are going back to pander and posture and threaten to shut down the government, maybe a little more vacation wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

The signals coming out from many senators and House members don’t bode well for a change of tone over the dysfunctional political circus we witnessed in 2011.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins and other Republicans have been critical of President Obama for sidestepping the Senate and appointing Richard Cordray to serve as the head of a new consumer watchdog agency, saying Obama was disregarding the Senate’s constitutional role in confirming appointments. Collins failed to mention that the Cordray appointment followed months where she and other Republican senators used a trick of Senate rules — not the Constitution — to delay a vote unless the Democrats agreed to weaken the new agency’s ability to regulate financial institutions.

In fact, they attempted to continue to block the appointment even after leaving town by keeping a few senators around to hold pro forma sessions that lasted seconds a day.

Obama rejected that fiction and made a recess appointment, which has reportedly made the Republicans mad. Some say they will be less willing to work with the White House when they return.

Considering how little the parties were able to work together before this great offense, our expectations for the rest of this election year session are fairly low. Obama, for his part, has signaled that he plans to focus his campaign in November against Congress, and, looking at congressional poll numbers, it’s hard to see why he wouldn’t.

Close to a year of sniping will give both parties what they seem to want — something to take to the voters in November. For the rest of us, that’s a long way off, and it’s hard to see how we’ll benefit from such an empty exercise.

 

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