The Congress of the U.S. Needs to Reform Itself and Find a Backbone

by Bill Seebeck

Every day it seems, the U.S. Senate fails to act on some measure because it needs 60 plus votes to pass anything. Like most citizens, I ask why? What happened to I have more than 50 votes and you win or lose?

In the U.S. Senate, the minority has the right to filibuster legislation. Ok, many of us saw Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". Yet the filibuster was generally viewed as an extreme measure that could be employed, to draw public attention to legislation and a point of view that the minority believed wasn't being presented.

Today, it seems that the Senate views the need of 60 plus votes as an every day occurrence, fearing possible filibuster.

Now, I don't know about the rest of the citizenry, but I have had it with the House and the Senate. Who are you working for ladies and gentlemen? Us or the special interests? You have to choose!

We elected a new president, a new Congress and where are we? Nowhere different it seems to me.

We are still at war and every day losing very brave young men and women and tens of thousands are in harms way right now.

We are still in dire financial straits with more crises to come including, and as lawyers always say, but not limited to: Collapse of the Commercial Real Estate Market, more foreclosures in the spring since the Banks have not been processing Government programs to rewrite mortgages, and the collapse of the credit card asset backed derivative marketplace, the other shoe yet to fall.

We still have no new health care despite millions and millions of American workers out of work with no insurance or so under insured that they are hanging by their thumbs.

Our cities, towns, villages and our states are fast going bankrupt and with it our schools, police protection and social support systems.

Who is running this country?

My message to the Congress is this: Take off your $1,000 suits and golden cufflinks, put on a pair of jeans if you can fit into them and start working day and night to take the burden of the corporations and government off the backs of the American people.

If you don't, I don't care what political party you belong to, We, the people will throw you out of office next November. If you don't have a spine Mr. or Ms. elected official, FIND ONE!

There is not a fellow American that I speak to who doesn't have serious problems, families are in trouble, the gap between haves and have nots is now so wide that neither group can see one another. It is truly a great divide that if left widening will forever change this nation of ours, this great experiment in democracy. As Mr. Franklin said after the Constitutional Convention, when asked what kind of government had been decided upon, "You have a Republic, if you can keep it!"

We are now at that place where we have to decide that question once and for all.