July 29, 2011 05:53 AM UTC

You Can't Make This Up: House Stops Debt Debate to Name Post Offices

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• by: Colorado Pols

If you thought the messaging troubles for the Republicans couldn’t get any worse…you were wrong. As ABC News reports, House Republicans managed to figure out a way to make themselves look even worse on the night that they failed to even call a vote on the debt ceiling:

Despite what some government officials have billed as a possible financial Armageddon looming four days away and with no viable deal yet reached to raise the debt ceiling, lawmakers took a break from the debt debate Thursday night.

What did they turn to? Post offices.

Eight post office naming bills came to the House floor just two days after the U.S. Postal Service announced its plans to close nearly 3,700 post offices this year in order to deal with its $8.3 billion budget deficit.

Yes, that looks really, really bad. But the good news is that it doesn’t look quite as bad as this:

So far this year, almost 50 bills to rename post offices have been introduced. Three of those bills have made it to the president’s desk, representing a full 13 percent of all legislation signed by President Obama this year. [Pols emphasis]

Throughout the previous legislative session, the 111th Congress introduced 427 bills to name post offices and passed more than 70 of them.

That’s right — a Republican majority in the House of Representatives has managed in seven months to do little else besides naming post offices. Incapable of governing? It’s getting harder and harder for Republicans to say anything otherwise.