Republicans have broken government
WOKE UP AT 2:30 this morning (Dec. 2) to the news that the U.S. Senate has passed its “tax reform” package by a 1-vote margin. Congratulations to Senate Republicans who voted en masse — except for one solitary man of conscience — for a 500-plus-page package that none of them could possibly even have read through completely, especially in its hand-writtennotes-in-the-margin form, let alone studied for its impacts and ramifications.
Congratulations on demonstrating Senate Republicans’ genuflection to the donor class that demanded results forthwith, never mind deliberative discussion on something that affects all Americans. Congratulations on showing the Senate Republicans’ contempt for the process of good government in a constitutional republic and contempt for the citizens of this country who pay your salaries and benefits only to be demeaned by this unseemly display.
All of you who vote for this without studying it and understanding it in all its implications are demonstrating irrefutably to the people of this country that the governing process is well and truly broken. If the hope had any adherents that the Senate was one of our few remaining repositories of dignity and thoughtful and principled action in government, it died with your sham of a process last night.
And it is significant that this bill passed in the dead of night. It very much appears that Senate Republicans were too afraid of the light of day, too afraid of the examination and scrutiny of its product, too afraid of finding out what the American people actually thought. I can only hope that you will pay dearly at the voting booth for your actions last night, not for the content of the bill — how can any of us possibly know that at this point in time — but for your circumvention of the process. You hold the majorities in both houses. You have the votes. Therefore you must have been afraid of the exposure of the contents of your bill to the public. We have not had a chance to think and talk about a potentially exploding deficit and what programs are likely to be cut in the future to pay for it — Medicare? Medicaid? Social Security? Or maybe not? Maybe we grow our way out of it? We have not had a chance to have those discussions thanks to your unscrupulous haste. If the process is bad, the results are bad. Senate Republicans, you have finally broken our government. MARY VOGEL Albuquerque