The new House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, had a disastrous post-election week in which her first priority seemed to be settling scores rather than solving these big problems. Shame on her!
I know I'm just an idiot with a cable modem and David Ignatius gets to write for the Washington Post, but for the record the Speaker of the House is currently Dennis Hastert. He's running the show. The Democrats don't take control for another couple of months. If big problems aren't being solved, it's because Dennis Hastert isn't trying to solve them. The Democrats had leadership elections, as did the Republicans. People took sides in those elections. That's pretty normal stuff. Some people won, and some people did not. The Republicans had an incredibly divisive election in the Senate in which John McCain's favorite segregation-loving candidate won by one vote. It's a real shame that McCain, who is currently in the majority in the Senate, apparently spent time on this stuff instead of solving the Big Problems, but hey that's how things apparently work. There's an election which is immediately followed by leadership elections. Then the new leadership takes control in January. This stuff happens every two years. It's not that complicated.