This Congress hasn’t done *nothing*. It’s brought us to the brink with Iran…so there’s that.
Remember the flap over that National Defense Authorization Act? There was another not-so-awesome proviso in it. As MJ’s Adam Weinstein and Hamed Aleaziz explain:
Over New Year’s weekend [Obama] signed a defense-spending bill with an amendment that effectively freezes international deals with Iran’s Central Bank. If successful, it would halt much of Iran’s oil sales and further destabilize its currency. It would also hurt European trade and likely cause global oil prices to soar. The threat posed by the amendment may help explain why Iran ratcheted up its rhetoric over the weekend. The White House had strongly opposed the legislation despite bipartisan support for it in Congress, but Obama went on to sign the bill anyway. Why? Apart from the fact that defense spending isn’t really optional, the politics of the situation didn’t seem to favor the White House. As Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), one of the amendment’s sponsors, put it, “[A]s you enter a presidential contest, there’s no upside to being soft on Iran.”
That’s as good an excuse as any to start another Mideast war for oil, we guess. Sigh.
