Monday, August 25, 2014

We must distinguish who is harming us (#2033)

Too many polls recently ask about the performance of Congress as a body and not enough polls ask about the two parties within Congress. Surely congress is made up of both parties but only one party, Republicans, are doing their best to thwart the will of our working/middle/poor class of folks. We in this group are the majority of Americans and therefore we are the ones who are being harmed by Republicans specifically, not Congress. Republicans control the House of Representatives and therefore have the leadership there. As such they determine which bills come up for a vote. Most every bill from the Democratic controlled Senate, including bipartisan supported bills are not getting a vote in the House. Democrats won the election of 2012 and have a mandate to govern as such. Since Republicans won the 2010 elections and gerrymandered US House districts so that it makes it really hard to get them out of the majority in the House, they have decided that despite our country wanting Democrats to lead, are obstructing that will the voters voted for. So from the outside it appears to look like Congress is dysfunctional, however it isn't Congress that is dysfunctional, it is the Republican party who are in lockstep to block any legislation coming from Democrats that are aimed at relieving the pain and suffering the American working/middle/poor class has been enduring since the last disastrous Republican administration. Republicans can block because of two factors, first, they are the majority in the House of Representatives and second, in the Senate they still have filibuster power requiring 60 Senators to agree to bring a bill to the floor for a vote. Democrats currently have the majority in the Senate but only with 55 Senators. So now hopefully all will see why I am advocating so hard for our Democrat voters, who are the majority party in our country, to get registered and vote this November regardless of how hard Republicans make that for us.

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