You threaten to take away their vacation.
"No Christmas vacation until you get your homework done," is essentially what Harry told them. Oh, they balked and whined and complained (and I think John Boehner cried) all over cable TV.
But this week, the Senate passed three important bills:
- The 9/11 First Responders bill
- The Repeal of Don't Ask / Don't Tell
- The Nuclear Arms Control Treaty (The START Treaty. "START" stands for Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.)
This means that:
- Congress will provide up to $4.2 billion in new aid to survivors of the 9/11 terrorism attack on the World Trade Center and responders who became ill working in its ruins
- Patriotic Americans in the US Armed Forces fighting for freedom and liberty will no longer have to deal with institutionalized discrimination against themselves
- The US and Russia would restart onsite weapons inspections Republicans should have endorsed all along, since Ronald Reagan's edict of "trust, but verify." (Reagan also spoke of his dream of a world without nuclear weapons at all. He would be a Democrat today.)