This is, admittedly, unusual for me but I want to go on record saying that what I believe congress is doing right now is a blatant attempt to circumnavigate the constitution and that if congress is successful in getting the Affordable Healthcare Act (AKA Obamacare) overturned or amended as a condition to reopen the government, we will no longer be able to pretend that we are truly a democracy for the people and by the people. To me, this is not an issue of Republican vs. Democrat or whether or not you are for Obamacare or against it. It is about congress, and more importantly, one particular individual, the speaker of the house, having and using the ability to “coerce” the other branches into accepting the reversal of bills voted into law. The speaker of the house, by being in a position to control whether or not an authorization bill is brought to a vote, has the ability to threaten to shut down the government over any issue he or she chooses. And, in this case, the speaker is doing it in order to amend something that the combined branches of the government have repeatedly voted to keep in place under the procedures laid out in the constitution. Whether you want Obamacare repealed or not, we should all be very worried about the precedent that would be set by arbitrarily tying the viability of our government to function to the passage of bills that would not otherwise survive the checks and balances of our constitutional processes. It is imperative that this not happen and that the House and Senate be presented with an appropriations bill unfettered by bills unrelated to the appropriations itself. It is incumbent upon all of us to let our representatives know that we do not accept the tactic currently being exercised, that we want the procedures of the House amended so that one person cannot have this kind of control over the authorization process, and that this kind of destructive behavior will not serve them well come election time.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 20:22:55 +0000
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