A functioning Congress
With the defeat of Mary Landrieu in the Louisiana Senate runoff, the election season officially has come to a close. Here’s staff writer Libby Grygar’s take on what this means for America.
Election Day this year was a bittersweet day for half of all Minnesotans. Both Minnesotan Republican candidates for Senate and Governor were defeated in the primary election by their Democratic, incumbent, counterparts. However, on the national level of elections, the Republican Party was victorious in their efforts to take back a majority in the Senate and solidify their control of the House. This leadership change is much needed too, seeing as the last cycle of the Senate has been dubbed the “least productive Senate ever.” Now with a Congressional majority that has shifted to the Republican Party we may finally see a decrease of political obstruction that characterized the Senate under Democrat Harry Reid and an increase in real governing and real legislation landing on the President’s desk.
The last round of Senators was largely ineffective because of the lack of willpower to work together on issues near and dear to the American voters. The absence of bipartisan work within Senators and an inability to compromise has caused a downtrend in bills passed in this Senate when compared to past Senates. However, the 300 bills sitting in the Senate is nothing unusual–what is unusual is the number of bills proposed by Senators. Reflecting on the last 5 Congresses it can be noted that there is the about the same number of bills waiting to be voted on and discussed but the amount of bills proposed has decreased.
But that’s all set to change, with the Republicans taking the Senate, giving them an overall majority in both Congresses, one can logically assume that more bills will be proposed and passed. In the past Republicans have worked on bipartisan bills that were able to pass in Congresses at both the state and national level, so one can presume that the joint efforts will continue going into the 114th congress.
Sure, things might not be signed by the President, but at least they’ll land on his desk. And whenever a bill lands on the President’s guess there’s a chance that it’ll be looked at, maybe even passed, and for our current Congress, that’s a pretty big step up.
