As Thanksgiving approaches, we find ourselves asking that important question. What do we have to be thankful for? Well, let's see, our health, family, friends – but very little that Congress has done this year.

Congress has stuffed 2003 with waste and bad policy. The fiscal year 2003 budget deficit reached historic levels of $374 billion in the red. Misguided legislation, to put it mildly, in tax, energy and forest policy has more than offset the few positive steps. To cap it off, it looks like Congress might finish up its work on the fiscal year 2004 budget in January with the mincemeat pie of all appropriations bills: an omnibus. Seven appropriations bills sandwiched together with enough fat to help grease passage through Congress.

Congress has given us a mixed bag on the energy bill. The bill itself was a veritable cornucopia of wasteful spending – enormous subsidies to oil and gas industries, nuclear and coal, none of which would reduce our dependence on foreign sources of energy. We are thankful that the Senate stood up and filibustered the bill. The filibuster didn't put this turkey out of its misery, but it did delay and will likely help kill the bill.

We are thankful that the House passed much needed reform for the National Flood Insurance Program to save money and help people out of harm's way in the floodplains. But at almost the same time, Congress passed the so-called Healthy Forest Initiative, which fails to target federal funding toward reducing fire hazards at high-risk communities, and instead stuffs dough into the timber industries' pockets.

We really are thankful that the House passed a few minimal measures to change the way the wasteful Army Corps of Engineers plans water projects, but did they have to smother these meager, inadequate reform provisions with billions of dollars of new project gravy?

At the Defense table, we're thankful that the Senate Armed Services Committee saved taxpayers billions by standing up to the Air Force on the Boeing tanker lease, and we're thankful that Congress cut funding for new, unnecessary nuclear weapons, but the Defense budget is still piled high with treats for defense companies, including billions for cold-war era weapons systems that have little place on today's battlefield.

We're thankful that a handful of deficit hawks in the Senate scaled down the President's $726 billion tax cut to roughly $350 billion, but to get there Congress employed gimmicks and tricks to make the bill appear smaller. In order to squeeze through annual tax cuts, Congress continues to studiously ignore the most important dinner table tax issue for the middle class: the looming $800 billion cost of fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is affecting more and more average Americans and will all but evaporate any other tax benefits.

We could go on and on, but as you can tell, the list of what we're thankful for is much, much shorter than the list of what we're angry about.

In the end, what we may be most thankful for is that Congress is leaving town, if only for a little while.