http:\/\/1.usa.gov\/1d0GuGu):<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Over the past several years, those of us who are fortunate enough to serve here have engaged in many fierce debates\u2026.<\/p>\n
Despite the daily drumbeat of headlines about gridlock and dysfunction in Washington, the truth is, an activist president and a Democrat-controlled Senate have managed to check off an awful lot of items on their wish list, one way or another. And yet just as important as what they did is how they did it, because that\u2019s also been at the heart of so many of the fights we\u2019ve had around here over the past several years. These conflicts haven\u2019t stemmed from personal grievances or contempt, as some would have it. They are, instead, the inevitable consequence of an administration that was in such a hurry to impose its agenda that it neglected to persuade the public of its wisdom, and then cast aside one of the greatest tools we have in this country for guaranteeing a durable and stable legislative consensus \u2014 and that\u2019s the Senate\u2026.<\/p>\n
[E]ven if you\u2019re completely at peace about what happened in November, even if you think it was perfectly fine to violate the all-important rule that says changing the rules requires the assent of two-thirds of Senators duly elected and sworn, none of us should be happy with the trajectory the Senate was on even before that day, or the condition we find it in 225 years after it was created\u2026.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a time for making a political point, even scoring points. I know that as well as anybody. But it can\u2019t be only thing we do here\u2026.<\/p>\n
The only institution that can make stable and enduring laws is the only one we have in which all 50 states are represented equally, and where every single Senator therefore has a say in the laws we pass here. This is what the Senate was designed for. It\u2019s what the Senate is supposed to be all about, and almost always has been.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust take a look at some of the most far-reaching legislation of the past century. Look at the vote tallies. Medicare and Medicaid were both approved with the support of about half the members of the minority. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed with the votes of 30 out of 32 members of the Republican minority \u2014 all but two. Only six Senators voted against the Social Security Act. And only eight voted against the Americans with Disabilities Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of this happened by throwing these bills together in a backroom and dropping them on the floor with a stopwatch running. It happened through a laborious process of legislating, persuasion, and coalition-building. It took time and patience and hard work, and it guaranteed that every one of these laws had stability.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow compare that to the attitude behind Obamacare. When Democrats couldn\u2019t convince any of us that this bill was worth supporting as written, they decided to do it on their own and pass it on a party line vote. And now we\u2019re seeing the result. The chaos this law has visited on our country isn\u2019t just deeply tragic, it was entirely predictable. And that will always be the case if you approach legislation without regard for the views of the other side. Without some meaningful buy-in, you guarantee a food fight. You guarantee instability and strife. It may very well have been the case that on Obamacare, the will of the country was not to pass the bill at all. That\u2019s what I would have concluded if Republicans couldn\u2019t get a single Democrat vote for legislation of this magnitude. I\u2019d have thought, maybe this isn\u2019t such a great idea. But Democrats plowed forward anyway. They didn\u2019t want to hear it. And the results are clear. It\u2019s a mess.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Senate exists to prevent that. Because without a moderating institution like the Senate, today\u2019s majority passes something and tomorrow\u2019s majority repeals it; today\u2019s majority proposes something, tomorrow\u2019s majority opposes it. We see that in the House all the time. But when the Senate is allowed to work the way it was designed to, it arrives at a result that\u2019s acceptable to people all along the political spectrum\u2026.<\/p>\n
[I]f America is to face up to the challenges we face in the decades ahead, she\u2019ll need the Senate the Founders in their wisdom intended, not the hollow shell of the Senate we have today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Perhaps like me you were taught in school that the nation\u2019s founders feared popular rule.\u00a0 That view is wrong.\u00a0 The Founders wanted\u00a0enduring\u00a0popular rule.\u00a0 They feared that rule by narrow, fleeting majorities would lead to wild swings of policy, undermining the public\u2019s own trust in popular rule. So to ensure government by durable majorities, they created, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[12,192,63],"class_list":["post-1703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constitution-and-law","tag-hugh-hewitt","tag-mcconnell","tag-senate"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1704,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions\/1704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}