commentaries

I wonder about going completely the other way with legislative rules...what if the rules required a vote on any bill that has at least 1/3 of the legislative body as co-signers. Today, bills are large combinations of crap that have something in them for everyone. These large bills create an all or nothing approach to legislating…does that make sense to anyone? Assuming these legislators actually want to solve problems; this approach breaks almost every rule of problem solving. If 1/3 of the body could write narrowly focused bills to reduce spending or reduce the specific areas of over-reach by regulators or stop the DOJ or Homeland Security from trampling over our civil rights, maybe legislators could start chipping away at our problems. We might even find some agreement across party lines if legislation was narrowly focused. This is not a new problem. Years ago, Democratic Senator William Proxmire annually presented his Golden Fleece Award. In recent years, Republican Senator Tom Coburn regularly summarizes a long list of waste that most citizens would agree should be cut from the budget…yet this craziness has continued for the 30 years that I’ve been paying attention. Frankly, I haven’t paid much attention to the rules that these bodies choose to govern themselves by, but the more I think about it, the more it seems plausible that their processes once elected could play a significant role in the how divided we are as a country. Okay, let the abuse begin…

Funny, but I never saw any articles by the left wing media advocating for fillibuster reform when the Marxists routinely blocked ALL of president Bush's appointments. I wonder why.......