WHY CONGRESS CAN'T GET ANYTHING DONE

One of the things that contributes to congress getting so little done is the power of the Leader of the Senate and the Speaker Of The House because they control which bills get voted on.  We have recently seen the power pf these chairman excellently displayed.

Recall that the Senate considered a bill that the President said he would sign and it passed unanimously in the Senate, yes, unanimously with no dissenting vote.

But the President then said he didn't like the bill so that Paul Ryan didn't even bring it up in the House.  Also a powerful lobby of Republicans was against it.  So the bill was scuttled.

But that is not all.

In the midterm elections, Democrats took over the House and, under Nancy Pelosi, voted on the the bill that passed the Senate unanimously, and passed it.  Then Mitch McConnell would not bring it up for a vote in the Senate. 

So this bill got whipsawed both ways.

It shows why it pays to permit a few renegades being elected in your party as it may lead to your party getting control of the Senate or House where the leader can control what gets voted on.

Another example was an immigration bill* passed in the Senate with 67 votes, but which John Boehner did not bring up for a vote in the House.   I feel he should have fell on his sword over this one as he later was forced to resign anyway for keeping the government open.  I can't forgive his inaction.

The bill was called The Border Security, Economic Opportunity,And Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 that was a compromise by the "gang of eight,' a group of Republican and Democratic Senators formed to come up with a bill.  It would have added 19,000 border agents for a total of 40,000, more drones, more towers.  It included a merit based system for future immigration.  A sticking point was that it contained a pathway to citizenship for many illegal immigrants already in the country prior to 2011.  For a detailed discussion of this bill, see the reference.*

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Security,_Economic_Opportunity,_and_Immigration_Modernization_Act_of_2013