Do we elect them to fight the good fight, come up short and, in the end do absolutely nothing? No.
We elect them to get stuff done, even if it is only “any sort of line they can sign no matter how minuscule.”
We don’t live in a dictatorship where President Obama can sign executive order after executive order and allocate money and resources and make laws. We live in a federal republic where power is split between the federal and state governments and where within each of those governments power is further split between the various branches. Given that the Republicans currently control the House, that means some Republicans must vote for any piece of legislation before it can even reach President Obama’s desk.
Yes, there are certain things President Obama can get done with executive orders, but not the heavy lifting. He cannot unilaterally raise taxes. He cannot unilaterally reallocate funds from one line in the budget to another. He cannot unilaterally raise or cut spending. Similarly, he cannot change immigration rules; he can only direct the relevant agencies to exercise prosecutorial discretion, an action easily reversed by his successors in the absence of legislation.
Sometimes five or ten percent of what you want is all you can get done. It might not be much, but it’s certainly better than nothing. President Obama and our fellow Democrats cannot, nor should they, be blamed for recognizing, and acceding to, political realities. It is not the fault of Democrats that the Republican-controlled House will not pass anything close to resembling liberal or progressive legislation. Democrats simply don’t have the votes to make such legislation a reality.
Now, before anyone goes off and says “Democrats control the Senate,” and “Reid should go nuclear,” keep in mind that even if Harry Reid invoked the nuclear option, where, exactly, would that leave the legislation in the end? Would it get to President Obama’s desk? The answer to that question, of course, is no. It would not get to President Obama’s desk because it would not pass the Republican House.
In some ways, the filibuster threat that Senate Republicans maintain is a good thing in the current environment because, as we saw earlier this year, it is a way to put pressure on the Republican House. When Reid and Mitch McConnell strike a deal the pressure hits House Republicans. After all, there’s now a bipartisan compromise and it’s House Republicans that stand in the way of its implementation. If we believe that our leaders should get stuff done, rather than display ideological rigidity, then it’s not a bad thing considering the current makeup of Congress.
And, in the end, there is one way to push legislation to the left: Elect a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress. We saw the legislation that became law between 2009 and 2011. It might not have been perfect, but it was certainly a hell of a lot better than what we’re getting now. Ideological rigidity gets us nowhere. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ll take that line and then work to fight for the rest because it means getting stuff done, which is what we elect our leaders to do in the first place.
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