The back-and-forth between Obama and Boehner aptly demonstrates the partisan gulf. | AP Photos Congress 'worse than it's ever been'?

After three straight lopsided elections, Congress still can’t — or won’t — function.

Just 18 bills have become law through the first half of 2011, and 15 of those named a building after someone, temporarily extended expiring laws or appointed an official to the board of the Smithsonian Institution. Congress can’t decide what to do on critical issues like Libya, spending or the nation’s debt limit, and no compromise is in sight on a host of other issues.


President Barack Obama even mocked the congressional schedule during a Wednesday news conference, noting that the House’s two-weeks-on, one-week-off rotation — implemented by the GOP to give its 87 freshmen more time back home — means at least one of the two chambers is out of session at any given time for much of the summer.

Not that it matters substantively. When Congress is in, all it does is bash Obama.

“They’re in one week, they’re out one week, and then they’re saying, ‘Obama’s got to step in,’” the president quipped. “You need to be here. I’ve been here. I’ve been doing Afghanistan and bin Laden, … Greek crisis. You stay here. Let’s get it done.”

Obama’s GOP critics on Capitol Hill countered that the president’s cool detachment from debt-limit negotiations until last week has been a problem. Even the House Democrats who moved his agenda last year have fumed over Obama’s failure to include them in high-level negotiations now that they’re out of power.

“The president’s remarks today ignore legislative and economic reality and demonstrate remarkable irony,” Speaker John Boehner said in response to Obama’s comments. “The president has been AWOL from that debate.”

The back-and-forth between Obama and Boehner aptly demonstrates how the partisan gulf has only gotten worse since the GOP landslide in November, leaving Washington just as dysfunctional as before the election.

Throughout the 112th Congress, lawmakers and the White House have cut deals only when pushed to the very edge of political or budgetary disaster, and neither side has walked away from those agreements with its supporters pleased by the results. It is governing while balanced on a knife’s edge, yet neither side seems ready to back down — not with a presidential election looming next year.

Many current and former lawmakers complain that the stalemate on the Hill is worse than ever, even going back to the bitter partisan wars of the 1990s and the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

“I don’t think there’s a single person in the United States who thinks that Congress is working right now,” said former Rep. Artur Davis, a moderate Alabama Democrat who retired last November. “There’s a sense that the partisanship is worse than it’s ever been.”

A Libya vote last week is a case in point.

Most of Congress is upset over Obama’s unilateral use of force in Libya, but the House GOP leadership couldn’t round up enough votes to cut off funding for fighting for what the president insists is not a military action.

The extension of the PATRIOT Act was another example of governing by procrastination — Congress passed the bill only when law enforcement officials warned of a renewed terror threat if it failed to act.

And most seriously of all, despite dire warnings of economic calamity from Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the U.S. government seems to be stumbling toward defaulting on the nation’s $14.4 trillion national debt in early August.

A central theme of the dysfunction is a lack of trust: Republicans and Democrats don’t trust each other; rank-and-file freshman Republicans in the House and the Senate, many of whom won their seats thanks to tea party support, don’t always trust party leaders; there’s no love lost between Congress and the White House; and the public doesn’t trust government or other major institutions.

Even on an individual level, members of Congress are casting wary glances at each other — as the newly elected bash the institution and veteran lawmakers say they can’t fathom what motivates their junior colleagues.

“This is the first time that I can remember being confronted by members of the Congress, my colleagues, who say, ‘I don’t care if I get reelected or not, I want to cut the budget by $100 billion or whatever,’” said a bewildered Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), who was first elected to Congress in 1964. “I’ve never seen that kind of a member before. … It’s a dangerous point of view from my perspective.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo, a freshman Republican from Kansas who has never before served in elective office, explained that it is more a matter of “deep division” and “two sharp worldviews” between the parties than a lack of trust in specific party leaders.

But Pompeo questions what Obama, Geithner and even House GOP leaders are saying about the debt limit: It must be raised — and soon — to avert an economic calamity.

“There’s nothing in my judgment that indicates that Aug. 2 is a magic moment,” said Pompeo, who argues that a true financial meltdown will occur only if investors conclude that the government isn’t serious about repaying the debts it already has incurred.

The American public has seen what is happening on Capitol Hill, and so far, it doesn’t like it.

Approval ratings for Congress are at 17 percent, up slightly from the low point of 13 percent in December — right after the November elections — but down significantly from the spring.

Most of the time, it seems Republicans and Democrats aren’t even speaking the same language. House GOP leaders are working feverishly to appease a party base that wants the president’s health care law repealed, Medicare and Medicaid benefits slashed, business regulations overturned and income tax rates frozen or lowered — although most of their agenda will never be implemented with Democrats running the Senate and the White House. Democrats, for their part, are trying to motivate their own base, which is unhappy with Obama and any moderates who want to cut deals with GOP leaders.

Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.), who is suing Obama for not seeking authorization from Congress for the Libya military campaign, cautions that “most of the tough votes” are still to happen during coming months, meaning he is not ready to write off the 112th Congress — at least not yet.

“It’s a very fair question,” Capuano said when asked whether any leader from either party can control the House or Senate at this point. “Many of us are asking ourselves similar questions.”

Capuano added, “We all know that some of the new members … combine them with some of the people who’ve been there, you add to that the mix of personal ambition, and you have a potentially volatile situation.”

On the Senate side, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is pursuing a strategy of nonengagement. He hasn’t passed, or even offered, a 2012 budget, has given no indication that he intends to consider annual spending bills and has made sure that no legislation of consequence hits the Senate floor. The Senate has voted only 17 times so far in June, with nearly half of those being nominations or cloture motions.

Reid’s imperative is clear: Avoid the tough votes that could cost his party seats, and the majority, in the 2012 election.

Somehow, the most basic functions of Congress and the president — providing for government operations and safeguarding the nation’s credit — are now regarded as herculean political tasks.

“One of the greatest abdications of our fundamental responsibility is that the power of the purse has been relegated to continuing resolutions,” said Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, a former director of the Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush.

Yet some veteran lawmakers insist that all will work out in the end.

“We’ve seen this movie before,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). “It seems that when there’s an impasse, there’s always a breakthrough. I wouldn’t give up on Congress yet.”