All Life Is Problem Solving

When the Senate cut Education Funding, Aid to the States, Aid to Low Income Families, Renewable Energy Investments, Health Information Technology, and Science Funding, all of which would have produced $.57 for each dollar invested, and, instead, increased wasteful tax cuts which will produce an additional $.02 gain on each dollar invested, I began to receive e-mails from associations dedicated to one or another of these interests. Basically, the e-mails all express outrage over the Senate’s actions and want me to sign a petition, call or Fax my Senators, and donate funds to “fight” to restore finding for their favored interest. I think this is nonsense because it feeds into the divide and conquer strategy of the obstructionists.

As I said a few days ago, what the Senate does or does not do in relation to the Recovery act is determined by its maintenance of the procedural rule enabling the filibuster. If there were no filibuster none of these cuts would have occurred. The wasteful tax cuts would not be in the bill, we would not be looking at 438,000 – 530,000 less jobs resulting from the Recovery legislation than we were expecting from the House Bill, and the “gang of four” Senators who framed this foolish “compromise,” would have had no power to damage the House Bill. Furthermore without the Senate Filibuster and the anticipated reaction of the Senate to their actions, the House might even have constructed and the Senate may have acquiesced to a bill that could be expected to produce more than the 3 – 4 million jobs expected from the House Bill.

In short, the key to easing the dissatisfaction of everyone who wants to have their needs addressed by the Recovery Act is to join together and to end, once and for all, the power of the Senate to obstruct and the power of a few Senators to damage needed legislation by exacting a high price in return for their willingness to break a filibuster. All those who are disappointed and angry about the way the Recovery Act has been shaping up need to join together and pressure Harry Reid and the Obama Administration to exercise the “nuclear option,” and free us from the filibuster’s yoke. They all ought to gift us with a single e-mail in our inbox tomorrow, and that e-mail should call for the “nuclear option” and the immediate end of the filibuster. The constitution provided for majority rule in the Senate; not for the rule of a 60 vote super-majority. Those who want change should not have to cope any longer with the tyranny of an obsessive, ideological, and arrogant minority, who never met a tax cut they didn’t like.