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You can learn a lot about what’s wrong with the United States Congress by observing the kind of projects it spends its time on, and the kind of projects it ignores.

Earlier this year, when it became clear that the cost of keeping a home warm would break all previous records this winter, members of Congress promised the American people that they would help. The promised to pass a home heating assistance package that would help old people and working families earning the minimum wage with their heating bills. As the oil industry made record profits, thanks in part to billions of dollars of gifts from Congress, it only seemed fair that people in need would be protected from freezing to death in the cold shadow of the energy industry’s greed.

Congress failed to keep its promise. For weeks now, parts of the northern United States have been suffering from fatal below zero temperatures. Yet, in spite of all its hot talk, Congress has done nothing to help Americans keep the heat from getting shut off this winter.

So, what has Congress been doing instead? What has kept Congress so busy that it hasn’t had the time to keep its promise to prevent grandmothers on Social Security from freezing to death for the sake of oil company profits?

Congress has been busy organzing efforts to protect Christmas. No kidding. On Thursday, December 15, at 4:08 PM, the House of Representatives could have taken a vote to approve a package for home heating assistance. Instead, the House of Representatives took the time to overwhelmingly approve a resolution, H.RES.579, “Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected for those who celebrate Christmas.”

The symbols and traditions of Christmas need to be protected by the House of Representatives? Protected from what?

I’m sitting in an airport in Philadelphia as I write this, and since I arrived here, I’ve been listening to Christmas carols being piped through loudspeakers, walking past stores filled with Christmas symbols, and seeing people all around me wearing Christmas-themed sweaters and pins, carrying shopping bags decorated with Christmas designs. Twenty feet away from me, the Hudson’s News sign is decked with boughs of holly, pine cones and ribbons. Go ahead and turn on a television or a radio, and before you reach the end of the dial, you’ll get enough holly jolly Christmas to last ten years.

The traditions and symbols of Christmas needs to be protected like Jackie Chan needs a bodyguard.

Yet, for the sake of a feel-good vote to make the Christmas lights burn brighter, the House of Representatives has let American homes go without heat under the growing blast of winter.

It’s not Christmas that needs to be protected. Americans need to be protected from waking up with frost on their blankets because they can’t afford to pay record high home heating bills. You can’t heat your home with jingle bells.

Yet, the Religious Right is working overtime to convince Americans that the number one threat to the nation is some mythical War Against Christmas. War against Christmas? No, there’s a war in Iraq. It’s killed over 2,000 Americans. That’s a war. There is no war against Christmas.

172 Democrats in the House of Representatives joined with the Republican Party to please the paranoid hordes of right wing Christianity, and vote to protect Christmas. Shame on them for going along with the crass campaign to pander to the weird fantasies of the religious right.

Out of the hundreds of members of the House of Representatives, only 22 Democrats had the integrity to vote against the resolution to protect Christmas from imaginary armies of devils, or grinches, or chickens infected with bird flu, or business owners who have the umbrage to say “Happy Holidays”.

Thanks to this small group of Democrats, who showed that they have the intelligence to resist being swept away with the latest paranoid witch hunt:

Gary Ackerman
Earl Blumenauer
Lois Capps
Emanuel Cleaver
Diana DeGette
Jane Harman
Alcee Hastings
Michael Honda
Barbara Lee
John Lewis
Jim McDermott
George Miller
Gwen Moore
James Moran
Donald Payne
Bobby Rush
Jan Schakowsky
Robert Scott
Peter Stark
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Robert Wexler
Lynn Woolsey

The rest of the Democrats in the House of Representatives have some real explaining to do, letting people go cold while a bunch of holiday crazed snake oil salesmen run ragged over Congress.