Why has the Senate been unable to pass anything? According to an extraordinary panel of mainstream-media personalities, it’s the fault of Republicans, or of the American people.

On a Sunday discussion on NBC’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory railed against the “Do-Nothing Congress” and played a brief clip of Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz pointing out that Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who controls the Senate agenda, is the logical person to hold accountable for stalled activities in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.



Though the Cruz clip (which Meet the Press had been advertising for several days) came to less than a minute, it provided food for a ravenous panel of experts, who variously blamed Cruz, his party, or the entire nation for the lack of new enacted legislation that would solve the nation’s problems.

“Ted Cruz must be Texan for chutzpah,” Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus quipped. After a pause to let the uproarious laughter subside, Marcus dismissed Cruz’s comments as “ridiculous,” “complaining,” and “lamenting.” Marcus, whose author bio claims she is the owner of “the world’s cutest dog,” also took a swipe at Republican representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin over what she suggests is the House leadership’s blocking of the Senate’s never-popular “Gang of Eight” immigration bill.

“Everybody understands that the Senate’s immigration bill, if it were allowed to go to the House floor, would pass,” Marcus said.


“I used to think the problem was Washington,” added New York Times columnist David Brooks. “Now I think the problem is the country.”