Nancy Pelosi's open letter to House Speaker John Boehner asking him to work through next week's planned recess is basically political posturing, but the House minority leader has a point. A congress widely regarded as do-nothing should probably not take nine weeks of vacation in the first half of the year and get a few things done.

Pelosi and other congressional leaders have pulled this move before, and sometimes Congress actually does it. But the main reason for calling to cancel recess is to show you're more serious than the other side. Really, though, someone needs to get serious here. As The Atlantic Wire's Elspeth Reeve noted on Tuesday, Congress last year passed fewer bills than in any year since 1971, and this year isn'g going much better. So when Pelosi writes to Boehner, "I call on you to cancel next week’s recess – our ninth week-long recess of the year – and instead commit the House to working round the clock to address the highway and student loan laws, and to extend the middle-income tax cut without further delay," she has a legitimate gripe.

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Adam Martin