REQUIRE A SUPER MAJORITY FOR PASSAGE OF BILLS IN CONGRESS

This suggestion is to require a three-fifths super-majority instead of a simple majority for approval of Bills presented to Congress. In other words, neither house of congress gets to do anything unless 60% of its members are for it. Some will say, “But that’s just going to create gridlock!” Yes, it will. That’s part of the point.

The real intent of this change, of course, is to prevent the continual passage of boneheaded Bills by something like 51% of the politicians that were elected by 51% of the voting population. In other words, to prevent politicians elected by roughly twenty-five percent of the total population to continue the headlong rush into financial and societal oblivion. This simple majority nonsense is a ridiculously low level to set the bar in passing regulations that are gradually ruining one of the greatest countries that ever existed. 

Such a change would also mute the horrid effects of our existing two-party system. The Founding Fathers, by the way, were taken aback by the rapidity at which early politics coalesced into a two-party system. They did indeed envision senators and congressman generally squaring off into two groups on either side of a specific issue, but they expected the groups to divide again and “re-coalesce” along different lines each time the underlying issue changed. Instead, the two groups divided once, but didn’t dissolve and re-form again, breaking essentially into the forerunners of today’s two parties. I think if the Founders could have foreseen how quickly (and perpetually?) the country formed into two parties, they would have demanded a threshold higher than a mere majority for congressional action. (Alternatively, they could have mandated that a third party appear on every ballot just to keep things off-balance, but this suggestion may just reflect my own inherent disgust with the two existing parties.) 

As it is, the two-party system allows each party to trade a minimal amount of votes to the other side in order to receive back, quid pro quo, the minimal amount of votes they need to get their idiotic or self-serving legislation passed. Raising the bar to a 60% approval requirement to get anything done in

Washington might just make this otherwise routine horse-trading difficult or unpalatable enough to reduce it. And even if it doesn’t turn out that way, it certainly can’t hurt. Again, remember, the single strongest over-riding desire of the Founding Fathers was to make it more difficult, not less, for the government to run roughshod over the citizenry. As Thomas Paine said, “That government is best which governs least.” 

Naturally, this super-majority should also apply to any congressional approval to declare war. Which reminds me, congress should be absolutely prohibited from granting to the President the authority to pull the trigger on going to war, as congress did with George W. Bush in going to

Iraq. Requiring congress to declare war was a specific requirement, well thought out by the Founding Fathers. This recent slight-of-hand by senators and congressmen in granting that authority so they could later blame Bush for poor execution is pure Bull Shista. 

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