Hearing the Falconer #6 ~ 14-March-2019 ~ Should the Minority in the House Have a Voice?

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world....
from The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats, 1919

The middle of the road is all of the usable surface.
The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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14-March-2019: Freshman Democrats Want to Weaken Republicans in the House
House Democrats Eye Ditching a Procedure That Gives Republicans a Voice
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Bad idea from Democrats

Seventeen freshman Democrats in the House want to end the ability of the minority party to offer a Motion to Recommit (MTR) a bill for a specific purpose. This procedure, which has been used since 1909, allows the minority party to make final suggestions before a bill is passed, and to get a vote on those suggestions.

It also allows the minority party to expose divisions in the majority by making a suggestion that some members of the majority will agree with, while others will not.

The Republicans have made good use of the MTR recently, using it about two dozen times, and actually getting changes made to two bills before they were passed.

For moderates and centrists the MTR is a good thing. It allows the minority party to be heard by giving them a way to put their ideas about a bill on the record and by forcing a vote on those ideas. Even if the MTR is used in "bad faith," just to expose disagreements in the majority party, this is still a service to the citizens of the country who are able to see more clearly where their representatives stand on issues.

The freshman Democrats who want to end the MTR are wrong. Ending the MTR is a bad idea.

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The "Hearing the Falconer" Library

Books for Indpendent Thinkers

Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today

The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It

Unapologetically Moderate: My Search for the Rational Center in American Politics

The Deliberate Moderate: Influencing From the Middle

Eisenhower: The White House Years