Strange Washington Signals – Things Getting Done

Something out of the ordinary is almost always a sign that trouble may be afoot. That scratchy feeling in your throat, the car that chugs instead of purrs, the clothes dryer that sounds like The Incredible Hulk – all are signals experience has taught us to handle.

But there’s something extraordinary happening in Washington lately, and it’s so strange that most of us have no idea what to do. Difficult as it is to believe, it must be said in the open:

Washington is getting things done.

Now that’s not supposed to happen, of course. Washington in general and Congress in particular is where good ideas and citizens go to languish and fade. It is supposed to be a place of bitter partisan strife and naked personal ambition where duty and expediency are synonyms.

So how did it happen that the United States Senate passed a bill allowing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco at last, giving it broad powers over the product that kills 400,000 Americans a year? The bill is expected to be accepted by the House, which passed a similar measure earlier. President Obama, himself a struggling sometimes smoker, is eager to sign it.

This 79-17 Senate vote ends more than four decades of malign neglect after the first warnings that smoking cigarettes could kill you. And it happened in Washington.

That’s the same place where Congress and regulatory agencies nodded complacently while corporations floated all sorts of financial balloons and paid lavishly for the executive hot air that filled them. Or it was until the balloons popped. Now Washington is into regulation, whether by public law or public shame, to curb the worst excesses.

Corporate fat cats coughing up compensation hairballs are only part of the picture. Washington seems determined to do something about the national health system.

Started by employers trying to compete around World War II wage freezes, employer-provided health insurance became an assumption for most Americans – except those who didn’t have it.

As the have-not numbers increased and American health standings fell to a par with former Soviet republics, insurers and doctors wrapped themselves in the banner of free enterprise and fought off all attempts at change with the mighty club of “socialized medicine.”.

Now Washington is not talking about whether we will have health care reform, but what it will look like – an earthquake change in assumptions. “Socialized medicine” is now not so much a club as one of several proposals. That overdue earthquake follows economic legislation and other action that happened with a speed and sense of purpose not seen in Washington in decades.

Since any president’s administration takes lumps for things it couldn’t have controlled and accepts bouquets for being just plain lucky, it’s too soon to hand laurels for this change of tone and pace to an Obama administration yet to celebrate its first anniversary.

But it’s not too soon to say that a Washington where more problems are solved than are caused could get to be a pretty comfortable thing.

Let’s see if it continues.

###