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Congress is a dysfunctional, partisan and unproductive, but the nation's leaders seem to agree that being in Congress, especially in the Senate, is pretty miserable.
According to Paul Kane at The Washington Post, both Democratic and Republican senators feel like "pawns" in Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid's deeply personal fight for power. And in The Hill, Republicans are arguing that it's much easier being the minority party in the House than in the Senate, since the House allows votes on Democrats' amendments. They just left out the fact that the amendments are on bills that will likely never become law.
Pawns in the Reid/McConnell war
According to Kane, morale in the Senate has been crushed because the vast majority of votes are on unfulfilling matters, like approved ambassadors. In June, the Senate voted 53 times, but only seven votes were on legislative matters. The other 46 were on nominations.
“It’s pretty bad, and I don’t think there’s any way to fix it,” said Democrat Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. The problem is that it's an election year. If Reid allows votes on GOP amendments, endangered Democrats "would be forced to vote on carefully crafted GOP amendments designed to hurt them in November." Or worse, in the case of McConnell's amendment to cut coal regulations, a vote might make it seem like a Republican did something productive.