Politics swallowing up the task of governing

We touched on this with the bill prohibiting sex-selection abortion, but here it is again, reported in a matter-of-fact way:

Democrats will bring to the Senate floor on Tuesday the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that is supposed to help close the wage gap between men and women.

The measure will fail, as intended, because at its core it is not so much a legislative vehicle as a political one intended to embarrass Republicans and help President Obama and congressional Democrats with female voters in November.

Democrats are making an obvious connection between the two as the ‘war on women’ loses traction as an election issue.

The bill, which needs 60 votes to clear procedural hurdles, faces almost certain defeat because most Republicans plan to vote against it. But Obama and Senate Democrats are hoping those votes will give them the opportunity to paint congressional Republicans as hostile to women’s interests.

The strategy is part of an increasingly common practice in Congress of moving legislation aimed solely at producing political results. For House Republicans, the strategy means votes to roll back parts of the Obama 2010 health-care reform bill or votes to highlight rising gasoline prices.

In the Senate, Democrats believe a sustained focus on women’s issues should help them maintain a slim majority after the November elections.

via Paycheck Fairness Act expected to fail – The Washington Post.

“The measure will fail as intended”!  The purpose of the legislation is just to score political points by embarrassing those who vote against it.   Of course, bills before the legislature often have a political sub-text.  But here Congress isn’t even trying to govern.  The members are only trying to get re-elected with seemingly no thought of the constitutional purpose of their institution; namely, to govern the country.