The WSJ editors have outlined a number of Republican policies that would be good for our nation but that the Republican majority have not unacted on. Senate Republicans, especially, have much to answer for regarding the delays. Some of those are these:

• Permitting reform. A pending bipartisan deal to reform the country’s byzantine permitting system would impose some discipline on never-ending environmental reviews that hold up oil and renewable energy projects.
• Mr Trump proposed a $1.5 trillion defense budget that is realistic about the world’s rapidly compounding dangers. But $350 billion of that could be dead without a GOP budget bill.
• Confirm judges. Democrats will block any Supreme Court and nearly all appellate court nominees come January. Three judges are awaiting a Senate floor vote, and 18 district judges and two appellate nominees are pending in committee. Those for the Fifth and Eighth appellate courts are especially important. Confirm them all.
• Indexing capital gains for inflation. Republicans need a strong economy for the next two years or they’ll face even more losses in 2028.

John Solomon, Editor-in-Chief (and CEO) of Just the News, had salutary proposals of his own. Some of those are

• within the reconciliation bill, a mandatory 15% reduction in each agency’s spending over the next two years but leaving it to the agencies on where to make the cuts
• tax-exempt nonprofits that have ties to terrorism, anarchism, Communism, socialism, sex trafficking, abortion advocacy, medical harm to children too young to consent to transgender procedures, and/or engage in personal enrichment or overt political activity. Those all are violations of the requirement to be doing actual charitable work. Rescind their tax-exempt status
• sue to block the Democrat-led state compact seeking to end the Electoral College. Interstate compacts are required by our Constitution to have Congressional approval before they can occur.

Pass the full $1.5 trillion for Defense. No further cowardly dithering. Do it through reconciliation, and structure permitting reform to fit within the reconciliation parameters. Do it as part of a multi-year budget in parallel with the 15% reductions in allocations to individual non-Defense agencies, and do these before the current (idiotic, driven by Republican timidity) Continuing Resolution expires early next month.

Those judges should have been confirmed months ago. Senate Republicans have been hiding under their desks long enough on these.

I’ll add one. Pass the SAVE Act, or at least put it to a vote in the Senate. Force Republican Senators face, up close and personal, the consequences of their timidity for not sooner forcing a vote over Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s (R, SD) timidity.

This would create a busy schedule, but Republicans still have nearly two months in which to do them. Nor do their Senate days need to be kept to banker hours. They just need to get to work.

As somebody once said, repeatedly, during an earlier Presidential campaign, “What the hell have you got to lose?” Thune has a lot to answer for with his lack of leadership.

The first thing Republicans need to do, though, is as a group grow the hell up, stop their toddler-esque internal bickering, and work together. If they continue acting like children, then Senate Republican senior leadership (I know, a contradiction in terms in this session) must cancel the Christmas break and keep the Senators in town until they pass these measures, or at least go on the record with floor debate and votes.  Absent that, they’ll just commit another egregious failure on the heels of their collapse in the just concluded elections.

Action may not always be happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
–Benjamin Disraeli