The way it's supposed to work is you pass a bill out of the House, you pass a bill out of the Senate, you go to conference on it, and you iron out the differences.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
If you push down that pyramid of power and spread out the base, every member gets a chance to file their bill and have it heard and file their amendment and have it heard, as opposed to the system that we have now, which closes out, closes down bills, limits debate, and so forth.
Let a bill, or law, be read, in the one branch or the other, every one instantly thinks how it will affect his constituents.
What I find is most people have a civics book understanding for how Congress works and how a bill moves.
You can't go to Washington as a congressman and a senator and expect to make a difference all at once. You have to earn your way.
Here's where I'm different from a senator. We pass continuing resolutions. We pass appropriations bills.
When you have a Senate that is 50 Democrats and 49 Republicans and one independent, it's quite obvious that the only way we are going to get something done is if we work together.
I'm used to being cut out of the conference meetings, but now they are cutting us out even before the bill's are written or either the House or Senate Acts.
Getting one bill passed is close to impossible. Ask any kid who has spent a summer in Washington, or better yet a semester, and can't understand how people tolerate its menu of constant frustration. Imagine mastering it.
It's got to be both houses and the people coming together in unanimous decision when you start messing with the Constitution.
When you work in the United States Senate, and you are around people of all different ideas and beliefs, you realize that what our Founding Fathers did that was so genius, is that they made the Senate the place where compromises are supposed to happen because of the makeup of the Senate.
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