Congress really good at renaming post offices

It sure seems that nothing gets done in Congress these days. The two parties, divided down the middle, can’t agree on much of anything. The infrastructure bill, raising the debt ceiling and other sweeping pieces of legislation remain unpassed. After a year of reckoning over the death of George Floyd, members of Congress could not find common ground on one single idea for tracking police misconduct. Those talks broke off with no federal response to the ongoing national crisis. It seems all they do is bluster, but we see no real action. A closer look however finds there is one area where our elected officials in Washington, members of both parties, actually work together to pass legislation. Unfortunately, that bipartisanship seems reserved for the renaming of post offices. Wisconsin’s U.S. Senators Ron Johnson and Tammy Baldwin have reintroduced legislation to rename the post office in New Richmond, Wisconsin as the “Captain Robert C. Harmon and Private John R. Pierson Post Office.” The two half-brothers both died in World War II. A deserving honor. But almost 20% of all legislation passed by Congress in the last 5 years has been to rename post offices. It is troubling that seems to be the only issue our political parties can agree on these days.