“No Man’s life liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session”.

- attributed to NY State Judge Gideon Tucker



Monday, July 6, 2009

Ending One-Party Legislation in Congress

I'm working my way through the the points in this post, in which I enumerated what I consider to be 10 serious flaws in our Constitution.

Today I want to discuss my third point,

"Passage of legislation over significant minority opposition with no attempt at compromise"

This year, with a president and both chambers of Congress controlled by one party, but not in a landslide fashion for any of the three, we have already seen Democrats stiff-arm Republicans over the stimulus and 'cap and trade' bills. Threats have been made about using a 'reconciliation' method to pass universal health care, so that there could be no attempt to discuss it. And the president has consented to this, whether tacitly or explicitly.

In all of these cases, the worst results is that, contrary to what voters want, which is sensible deliberation and compromise, the Democrats have simply ignored any input from Republicans.

Does anybody really think our country is best-served by one party shoving its ideas through by narrow margins? Especially on sweeping issues such as the largest single spending bill in our nation's history, or bills totally restructuing energy and healthcare sectors of the economy to have much more explicit governmental interference?

These are issues which affect large parts of every American's life. Surely whatever landmark legislation is passed needs to respect the concerns of a sizable minority.

Thus, my suggestion that all Congressional bills must pass with a 75% majority. That way, either significant collaboration from both parties must be gained, or one party must truly have overwhelming sway with voters.

The Constitution's article regarding Congress must be modified to clearly state that each bill, in order to become law, must have a 3/4 majority of each House- nothing less.

This nonsense of passing 'cap and trade' legislation in the House by 7 out of 435 votes serves nobody at all.

It's a disgrace to all Americans that our Congress treats the welfare of voters so diffidently as to play politics on such core areas of our lives.

No comments: