Capitol Hill Sausage Makers

Watching Congress this week brings back childhood memories of living next to a frankfurter factory. From dawn until dark, trucks backed up to loading docks, where men in long aprons with red and brown smears hauled haunches and pushed bins inside. What went on inside was a mystery, but the stains and smells made it clear that flesh was being hacked and ground to bits around the clock. Spicy seasonings could never mask the reek from that building.

The $800 billion-plus sausage that may emerge from the House today has been stuffed with so much pork and other red meat for voters that it's hard to keep track of the scraps, including tax relief for motor racing tracks, extending restaurant improvement credits and exempting from excise tax wooden arrow shafts for use by children.

"I am hopeful that there will be bipartisan, majority support for this bill that is critical to stabilizing our nation's economy for all working Americans," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said last night in anticipation of the debate that begins this morning.

The vote is expected to be close on what Paul Krugman calls "originally the Paulson plan, then the Paulson-Dodd-Frank plan, and now, I guess, the Paulson-Dodd-Frank-Pork plan (it’s been larded up since the House rejected it on Monday).

"I hope that it passes, simply because we’re in the middle of a financial panic, and another no vote would make the panic even worse. But that’s just another way of saying that the economy is now hostage to the Treasury Department’s blunders."

Pass the mustard.

McCain vs. McCain

In the three-ring circus over the financial rescue bill, the Republican candidate has shown an instinct for his own jugular, grasping the issue for political advantage and then becoming encoiled in his own flailings.

"Even before the House vote, voters blamed Republicans more than Democrats for the crisis. Then McCain suspended his campaign to come back to Washington to rally support for a rescue plan," says CNN political analyst Bill Schneider. "He failed, so he gets blamed by both supporters and opponents of the rescue plan."

When the bill appeared headed for passage, McCain took credit for influencing House Republicans to support it even though, during the tense Saturday evening negotiations, the McCains were having a leisurely dinner with the Liebermans at a posh Washington restaurant.

Now, after his purportedly convinced confreres brought the House bill down, the Republican nominee is back on the campaign trail in mournful mode: "Yesterday, the country and the world looked to Washington for leadership, and Congress once again came up empty-handed."

This now-detached analysis is coupled with criticism of Barack Obama for the contradictory offenses of injecting partisanship and just wanting to "phone it in" on the issue.

McCain could have saved himself all these contortions if, like Obama, he just showed up as one member of Congress and didn't try to play premature president for the TV cameras. The one in the White House ended up with egg on his face yesterday, and so did McCain.

"Washington is Broken" Food Fight

For almost two years, it has been a mantra for candidates of all stripes promising change, but the reality of a dysfunctional Washington was not fully seen until today, fittingly enough in the White House whose occupant has spent eight years politicking and polarizing without a semblance of the skills required to govern.

Today's meeting to achieve a consensus on the financial rescue package ended in a "verbal brawl" with Bush and the two presidential candidates helpless to say or doing anything to stop it.

Ironically, it is conservative House Republicans, after giving the Administration sheeplike devotion for years, who are now the biggest obstacle to bipartisan agreement.

The blight is not limited to one party. Congressional Democrats, after almost two years in charge, may be in less disarray now but have failed over that time to win public confidence that they know what they're doing.

So, with time out for the pointless McCain and Obama cameos, the pressure to do something before rushing home to campaign for their jobs increases on all sides amid an outpouring of public anger and uncertainty about what will actually work in the real world, which resembles Washington less with each passing day.

The President and Congress who take over in January have a lot of patching and mending to do before they can accomplish anything.