Gherald says:

Okay, here's Ezra Klein praising how much of the Democratic agenda was passed in the 09-10 Congress:

[...] if you see the point of politics as actually getting things done, the last two years, for Democrats, have been a stunning, historic success. Whatever else you can say about the 111th Congress, it got things done.

There was health-care reform, of course. The bill is projected to cover 32 million Americans (lifting us above 95 percent insured) while cutting the deficit by about $140 billion in the first 10 years — and by more after that. It creates competitive insurance markets in every state and ends the days in which insurers could turn you away or jack up your premiums because you have preexisting conditions. It empowers an independent commission to cut Medicare's costs and begins to ratchet back the tax break for employer-sponsored health-care insurance that's been at the root of many of our system's dysfunctions. Mark McClellan, who directed the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services under George W. Bush, says the bill is "an important step" and that the provisions that try to move our fee-for-service system to a pay-for-performance regime "are significant in terms of their potential for reducing spending growth." And then there were the parts that few noticed, like adding nutritional information to menus and drive-through boards at chain restaurants.

There was financial regulation, too. If you were looking for a bill that reformed the financial-services sector, as I was, Dodd-Frank probably didn't go as far as you hoped. But it did what it set out to do, creating a 21st century financial-regulation system that now includes a regulator for the consumer-financial products that filled the bubble, a systemic-risk regulator able to watch the institutions that turned the bubble into a crisis, and an array of new methods and powers that can be used to take down the firms that pose a threat to the system. And there were even some of those industry reforms that people like me wanted, notably the effort to force derivatives out of the darkness and onto exchanges and clearinghouses.

Then there was the stimulus. Too small? Absolutely. Were there votes to make it much bigger? Probably not. And even putting aside the economic relief that the expansions of Medicaid, COBRA, food stamps, tax cuts and unemployment benefits gave to millions of Americans, or the millions of jobs the Congressional Budget Office estimates the legislation created or saved, there were the investments designed to pay dividends down the road: We've begun more than 75,000 infrastructure projects, kicked off digitization of the nation's medical records, made massive investments in green energy, started a "Race to the Top" program that even conservatives agree is changing the education system, sent billions to the National Institute of Health, and more.

And those are just the big bills: The 111th Congress also passed Ted Kennedy's national service legislation, and the expansion of the Children's Health Insurance Program to four million more kids, and new regulations on tobacco, and the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Got that?

If you're a progressive Democrat, obviously there's a lot to praise up there.

But if you're a libertarian or a Republican, the sheer amount of activity there should fucking FREAK YOU OUT.

It does freak me out.

- That's why I'm quite glad Republicans forced so many cloture motions. If they had not been blocking bills, Democrats would have gone for MORE--including, among other things, double the stimulus and a public option health care.

- That's why I voted for a Republican congressman first chance I got. The filibuster was our last line of defense, and a fragile one that depended on the whims of individuals like Ben Nelson and Olympia Snowe.

The House is a much more reliable block, and ought to force compromises and reduce congressional action from those distressingly high 09-10 levels.

You also said:

[Boehner's] job until 2012 will be to make sure that absolutely nothing gets done that could possibly help the country. so obama is faced with a shitty economy again and they can get a chance of defeating him.

First of all I reject your assumption that the high amount of Congressional action we saw in 09-10 is better than no action at all. I have the opposite perspective.

Secondly, I'm sure it's not the case that "absolutely nothing" will get done. Some stuff is gonna get done, and it might even be a lot more than you're expecting. I don't know, and unlike you I don't pretend to know, nor do I assume there's anything resembling a 1:1 correlation between Republican campaign rhetoric and subsequent legislative (in)action.

So again, we have an opposite perspective on the merits of congressional action. To me, less is more, and I'm quite happy to err on the side of doing nothing--whereas you'd rather we be erring on the side of Prime Minister Dennis Kucinich and Chancellor of the Exchequer Paul Krugman