Republicans have controlled Congress For 17 of the last 21 Years

What do we have to show for it?  Lets have a look;

Climate change - Republicans as a party have spent most of the last 21 years denying that the climate was changing. Now it is becoming so obvious they are not saying much about it but still dragging their feet about doing anything to try to slow climate change down. 

Tax law - For the last 21 years our tax laws have been universally acknowledged to be extraordinarily verbose, complicated and complex and produce ridiculous results - some very wealthy individuals pay nothing while middle income and low income people pay a lot.  Every election cycle some Republican has been pounding on the issue.  But if anything the tax laws have become unremittingly more complex and convoluted during the last 21 years.

The Deficit - In the last 21 years Republican policies (invading Iraq and turning Banks loose to blow up the economy) have greatly increased the deficit.  Republicans pound the table about our deficit but all they ever actually recommend is tax cuts - like cutting the nation's income is going to pay off the debt?

Immigration - For all of the last 21 years our "failed" immigration laws have been an election issue pounded hard by Republicans.  Yet comprehensive immigration reform never makes much headway in Congress.  

Economic Competitiveness - Setting aside the fact after the first decade of Republican control their anti-regulatory and tax policies set the stage for a worldwide financial collapse we are still trying to pull ourselves out of, in the last few years the Congress controlled by Republicans has scarcely sent a single bill to the President to try to improve our economy.  (see related post-  http://motrvoter.blogspot.com/2016/02/fact-check-democratic-president-v.html )   

Civil Rights - For most of the last 21 years Republicans have pushed policies making gays second class citizens.   But when the issue was finally presented to a Republican dominated Supreme Court even they couldn't find a way to justify discriminating against gays under the constitution.  This is another issue current Republicans are doing their best to ignore hoping folks will forget about their past table pounding.

Education - In 2002 the Republican Congress sent our Republican President the "No Child Left Behind act" over the complaints of many educators who said its focus on testing would lower the quality of teaching and not improve student learning.  It was enacted amid much fanfare.    Fast forward to December of 2015 when President Obama signed a law replacing the "No Child Left Behind" act with the "Every Child Succeeds" act sent to him by the Republican Congress (with strong Bipartisan support in Congress).  The consensus was the 2002 bill made teachers spend far to much time on testing, rather than teaching critical thinking.  Pretty much exactly what the critics said in 2002.

Republicans have also heavily promoted Charter Schools for the last twenty years and Republican money has funded an influential non-profit to push for Charter Schools - the Center For Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) based out of Stanford University.  In 2009 CREDO heavily promoted a film (waiting for Superman) based on their first round of research in which CREDO claimed 1 in 5 Charter Schools outperformed public schools (actually their numbers showed 17%), but neglecting to mention that their own study found that twice as many (37%) did worse than public schools.

Then in 2013 a new CREDO study found that Charter School Students were one one-hundredth of 1 percent (.01%) better readers than non-charter schools.  CREDO issued press releases trumpeting that Charter School Students do better at reading than public school students, neglecting to mention the difference is statistically insignificant.

The National Education Policy Center recently reviewed all the research, both CREDO and other independent researchers, on the topic and concluded the data shows no significant difference in test performance between students in public schools and students in charter schools.  A couple of decades of uproar orchestrated by Republican think tanks to make no forward progress.  Perhaps we should have been talking to teachers instead of castigating them?

Foreign Policy -  In 2003 our Republican President and Republican Congress led us into an invasion of Iraq that has resulted in a middle east spiraling into region wide chaos.  More recently, not having a like minded President, they have actively sought to undermine virtually every foreign policy initiative of the Obama administration.

Lots of Republican are talking this election season about what bad shape our country is in.   Seems to me If Republicans want to see the cause for the current state of the Union they only need to look in the mirror.