Democrats
The democrats had the biggest majority in our nation’s history and even though they currently lost one seat in the Senate, they now have the second largest majority in history. Many people are scratching their heads asking why can’t they get anything done? Health care reform seemed to be the number one issue to democrats in both houses of congress during 2009, but they still were not able to get a bill to President Obama’s desk. Now the major task at hand seems to be job creation and they are currently having trouble with that as well as economic reform. Now that they lost the super majority of 60-40 in the Senate, the republicans can now filibuster any legislation that a democrat proposes. However, they did not have this excuse last year. Many democrats are now suggesting that their party uses reconciliation in order to get fellow democrat’s bills passed. Many in the liberal media are encouraging democrats to speak out more against the miss information that the republican party has been saying about all of their proposed legislation especially health care reform. However, some democrats are nervous of doing that because of the 2010 midterm elections that are coming up in November. Every democrat needs to make their message clear. They have the majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate because the majority of the American public voted for them. This means that most American citizens are in favor of their agenda, so they should act on that in order to make good strong policies that change the ways of our health care and economic systems.
If one democrat suggests reconciliation to get health care reform passed, why isn’t the rest of it’s supporters backing them up? Reconciliation would allow the bill to go through both the House of Representatives and the Senate without be subjected to a filibuster. Instead of needed 60 votes to be passed, it will only need 50. It is not clear on why the democrats are pushing for this. Some republicans claim that a bill passed by reconciliation is not a good idea because that means that it will be a bi-partisan bill. This claim does not make much sense, when they could easily contribute to the debate instead of just saying “no”. Every democrat should rally behind this idea if they really want health care reform for the country.
The public is growing weary of the lack of progress in both houses of congress. However, it is unfair to blame only democrats. The republican party must be held accountable and do their part in running the country as well. It is unfair to the American people for the republican party to say “no” to everything and then claim that it’s the democrat’s fault that nothing gets done because they have the majority. This situation has gone passed the point of politics as usual and now seems to be more like an argument between bullies on an elementary school playground. The democrats need to act now because our country needs change, like it was promised when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States.