Politics & Power Quote by Chaka Fattah

Power, here, is framed less as an abstract principle than as a receipt. Fattah’s line is built to sound like a simple reminder, but it’s a prosecutorial move: you don’t get to run Congress and then act shocked by the bill. The repetition and slight stumble of “in charge... been charge” reads like live-fire political speech, the kind that prioritizes emphasis over polish. That roughness helps the intent: it’s meant to land as a commonsense correction to a talking point already in the air.

The target is a familiar maneuver in Washington messaging: claim the mantle of fiscal restraint while disowning the mechanics of governing. By pinning “Congress and spending” together, Fattah collapses the usual escape hatches: you can’t blame “Washington” as a faceless entity if your party has held the levers that write budgets, authorize programs, and decide what gets funded or cut. It’s an argument about accountability dressed as a timeline.

Context matters because “10 years” is less a precise ledger than a rhetorical cudgel. It invokes an era of sustained control, implying that any structural deficits or spending spikes aren’t inherited accidents but managed outcomes. The subtext is blunt: if you’ve been driving, you own the crashes. And it’s also a warning shot to voters tempted by opposition cosplay from incumbents: don’t let the party in power campaign as the party out of power.