People say that politics is extremely complicated; there are so many complex issues to investigate.
Voters must account for the hundreds, possibly thousands, of votes that politicians will make before casting their own votes.
This election year, the midterm election will be dominated by just three votes on three key pieces of legislation.
The first legislation occurred in September 2008, when the financial crisis hit and the stock market plummeted over 700 points in one day.
Congress feared a 1929-style meltdown, and the Department of the Treasury convinced them that the only escape hatch was to bail out the firms that were in danger of failing.
The measure passed with bipartisan support, though a quarter of Congress felt bailing out firms was a bad decision that would go too far.
Congress allotted $700 billion to this task. At that time it was the largest bill many of us had ever seen.
The second legislative point of inspection came in February 2009, when Congress passed the $800 billion-plus stimulus bill.
This was aimed at stemming America’s rising unemployment rate, however much of that bill contained public works projects that were otherwise known as pork barrel spending.
The final bill that will be judged is the health care overhaul bill.
This bill, which I wrote about in-depth in the past, puts new regulations on the health care market as well as on insurers.
In terms of page count, the latter two bills were the largest in American history.
The Wall Street bailout was seen in the moment as a necessary evil to prevent another Great Depression.
Now, it is being used by that quarter of the Congress who opposed it as a political football to attack those who voted for it as “bailing out irresponsible folks on Wall Street.”
Many credit the bailout for spawning the motivation for the Tea Party movement.
The stimulus didn’t stimulate very much. The president’s own economists promised that if the stimulus passed, the unemployment rate would not rise above 8 percent.
After it passed, the rate peaked at 10.2 percent and has been above 9.5 percent for almost two years.
A possible reason might be the absence of what the president called “shovel ready” projects.
In a recent interview however, President Obama admitted that the so-called “shovel ready” projects that formed the rationale for spending almost a trillion dollars didn’t exist.
It was also troubling when congressmen and women were questioned about the length of the bill and the large amount of money being spent.
Many admitted they didn’t even read the bills before they voted for them.
The opposition to the health care bill was two-fronted.
First, it was seen as out of place, when Americans were still trying to find a job.
Second, the monstrosity of the bill did little to actually reform the health care industry.
In reality, it dug deeper into an already failed system of employer-provided coverage.
Congress did more in the last two years than those three items, but rightly or wrongly, those laws will be the basis for whether they will keep their job or lose it tomorrow.
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