Dear Editor,
I’d like to take a different look at a recent Viewpoint article on Reforming the Senate Filibuster.
It brings to mind the increasingly popular false narrative. Driven not by the “will of the people”, but by the agenda of one party. We’ve had the two party system for all of our lives here in America. It’s always been okay to disagree. The design of this great nation allowed for discourse and protected the right to disagree.
One of the tenants of our constitution and bill of rights is that they are granted to the “individual”. They’re specifically designed to keep the power as local to the individual as possible.
Congress makes laws. Congress changes laws, but congress is held in check by that constitution along with executive and judicial branches.
It was absolutely brilliant in its design by our country’s founders. One party having a simple majority in house and senate along with the presidency may not impose their agenda without negotiating with the minority. Our founders allowed for amendments to be made to the constitution, via 60 votes in the Senate or by a convention of states requiring 34 of the 50 states to ratify changes.
I am certainly not a civics expert by any means. I do understand that to claim the “will of the people” it can’t be a near 50/50 split that gives the green light for fundamental changes to the country.
In the recent article titled Why Reforming the Senate Filibuster Matters, the false narrative is that it’s good for the country as a whole and supported by a majority of Americans. It’s presented as an impediment to “initiatives that appear to have popular support” then proceeds to list some of the most common democratic initiatives. Spend time researching those topics such as the $15.00 minimum wage, gun control, amnesty. These recognizable items lack the support needed to enact as law. Left out of the listed initiatives is one that actually has over 70% support nationwide, Mandatory Voter ID. A major push to reform the filibuster is a bill, HR1, that has passed the House of Representatives but does not have the necessary support in the Senate to become law. This is the only tool the minority has to keep a bill like HR1, a major transfer of voting laws to the federal government, from becoming law.
Remove the filibuster and nothing but restraint by the Democratic Party would keep things like Stacking the Supreme Court, & adding 2 states to the Union from being decided by the Vice President’s vote breaking the 50/50 tie in the Senate. Now that the Democrats are in control of both houses and the presidency, the filibuster is a critical issue for the nation. This is the same filibuster that was used over 200 times in 2020 in opposition to the Republican controlled Senate.
The writer of the story that motivated me to write my first ever letter to the editor is part of a machine currently running rampant in our TV, Print and Social media. Things that have a 50/50 split are far from settled in our country. If the people we send to Washington are not getting things done, which is the most accurate statement in the article, then we need to do our job and replace them. It’s more important than ever to understand what’s going on in our nation’s capital.
Rodney Norton
Fairfield, Texas
