Wastebook - Senator Tom Coburn - U.S. Senate

Wastebook 2013These include the production of National Baseball Hall of Fame commemorative coins, the naming of abridge, and the renaming of a previously passed law. But perhaps this Congress is better known forwhat it did not pass— a 2014 budget and not a single regular appropriations bill to set spending levelsfor agencies, including NASA.This dysfunction is reflected in Americans’ dismal attitudes towards the job performance of thelegislative branch. Congress’s job approval for 2013 is “on track to be the lowest yearly average” in thefour decades that the Gallup polling company has been surveying Americans’ attitudes. Only 9percent of Americans surveyed approved of the job Congress was doing. 311 A poll by The Economist rates312 313Congress even lower, with an approval rating of 6 percent.Most college graduates have taken a course in American Government (or at the very least, seenSchoolhouse Rock) and are familiar with how a bill becomes a law. It doesn’t take a degree in rocketscience, however, to know that the current Congress has failed to perform its most basic tasks. NASAwould be far better off looking for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.44