A Modest Proposal: Performance Reviews for Senators

It seems as though only one thing motivates Congress to act – the threat of elections.

That’s why both the House and Senate have moved to pass a continuing resolution to keep funding the government until December. Originally funding was going to run out on Oct. 1, the date that was decided during the last shutdown crisis.

But with virtually every member of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate up for election in November, almost no one in Congress wanted to call attention to their own inaction by letting a new shutdown occur.

It’s the political version of Pavlov’s dogs. You know, the famous experiment by the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov who trained canines to salivate at the sound of a bell because they associated the bell with the expectation of food being served.