As a reality check, here is a list of items Speaker Boehner did decide to bring for a vote on New Year’s Day before Congress fled for the night/year, provoking well-deserved outcries from New York Republicans like Pete King and Michael Grimm. These are the items that are apparently more urgent than Hurricane Sandy relief, excluding multiple post-office renamings.

• Drywall safety
• Frank Buckles WWI Memorial
• Redesignate Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research
Center and Hugh L. Dryden Test Range
• Conveyance of certain property in Kotzebue, AK

None of these items exactly screams urgency. The World War I memorial has waited 96 years, and drywall safety seems like the definition of optional. Paying tribute to Neil Armstrong is always welcome but could have waited until the next Congress or for that matter been passed earlier without much objection. And as far as the “Conveyance of certain property in Kotzebue, AK”—after multiple readings, I don’t have a clue what it means, and I’m willing to guess that the vast majority of congressman who voted for it don’t either, although I’m sure it’s important to the 3,201 people who live there.

Read it and weep. This is what our dysfunctional divided Congress took time on New Year’s Day to vote on while deciding to tell the hundreds of thousands of people who are still digging out and rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy to suck it up—you’re on your own. It is not compassionate, it is not wise, and it reflects a completely inverted sense of priorities.