Marc Croes, Kingwood Area Democrats membership chairman wrote yet another article in the Kingwood Observer.
Marc Croes says,
The government is shut down as I write this. I hope the problem is resolved by the time this appears in print. Unfortunately, we have reached this point because a minority of the House of Representatives refuses to allow a vote on a ‘clean’ continuing resolution (CR) which would obviously pass, and permit our government to get back to business. The clean CR has already passed the Senate, and President Obama has pledged to sign it. The American people and all three branches of our government are being held hostage by a minority of the House. Recent polls of Congressman by both CNN and the Washington Post show that over 220 Congressmen and women publicly support a clean CR, and only 218 votes are needed to pass.
How does this happen? Speaker Boehner and the Republican Caucus operate since the mid-90’s under a verbal agreement called the Hastert Rule, sometimes called the “majority of the majority” rule. This precept does not allow the House of Representatives to vote on a bill unless a majority of the Republicans support it. Currently that means that 116 Republicans can prevent a vote, even if the other 310 members of the House support one. This rule, which the Democratic Caucus does NOT use, is a significant contributor to the partisan acrimony we see in Washington. It strips power from the moderate center of both parties, and hands that power to the extremists. The rule makes it impossible for 150 moderate Democrats to join with 100 moderate Republicans, ignore the extremists from BOTH parties, and pass compromise legislation if the Republicans control the House.
Read the entire article below.
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