The Responsibility That Comes With Congressional Oversight

It's the coldest day, minus twenty without the windchill, of the statistically coldest week of the year, my kids just boarded a plane for Hawaii and my "streak" of Thursdays is preserved. "Who could ask for anything more?" you are saying to yourself. Well, I for one.

You see, now is the time for a new Congress to start setting its agenda for Congressional Oversight hearings. This is where the rubber hits the road in terms of doing the Peoples business. Will the Republicans and their sub caucus, the tea party, led by their self-anointed, delusional, national candidate wanna be and Minnesota's joke to the nation Michele Bachmann actually buckle down , live up to their alleged fiscal conservative roots and hold hearings on issues of national financial significance and that could make a real dent in attacking our economic problems?

Well if the latest actions of Minnesota's newly minted Republicanized legislature are any indication, this country is in for alot of empty posturing. Yesterday, the re-bubba-cans in the Minnesota House chamber passed a bill to get at the roots of the over $6 Billion Dollar Deficit aka the Pawlenty Legacy Budget: require all EBT card users (food stamps and government assistance recipients)to show photo id at every transaction, restrict their use out of state, restrict the ability to receive cash back, and restrictions on what can be purchased (no tobacco, lottery tickets, alcohol, etc.).

While all of the above may sound like practical solutions in search of a problem, there is already a mechanism to go after welfare fraud and abuse and more importantly, I truly don't believe that micro-managing and blaming a powerless class of people like welfare recipients are the keys to solving our dire fiscal catastrophe. But hey, thanks Timmy and how's that book tour going for you? Down in Florida, I suppose.