Opinion

Stop fighting, start working for solutions

The quality of life in this country would undoubtedly improve if we’d get back to dealing with facts. For just one salient example, the Republicans are jumping all over Democrats in Washington, D.C., crying that their opponents are not doing anything but picking on the “poor” president of the United States. Yet, House Democrats have compiled a list showing that they, in the majority since the 2017 election, have passed 290 bills now stalled in the Senate by GOP leadership, the largest number of bills held up between the houses of Congress in the nation’s history.

What are examples of the stalled bills? The include healthcare reform, climate change, food safety, financial aid for the U.S. Postal Service, a job security act for wounded veterans, a Civil War battlefield preservation act, vision care for children, the naming of a federal courthouse in Iowa after former Representative Jim Leach (R-Iowa), a National Historic Park named for Jimmy Carter, a bill to improve absentee ballot voting, a bill to improve cybersecurity, and the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Not incidentally, 60 of these bills have been approved by Republican votes.

The reader may agree or disagree with the examples and look at the entire list and find the pluses and minuses in his and her opinion. Whatever the case, it would seem rather obvious that the American people in general have items of importance and concern about stalled bills in Congress because these people can’t get along due to partisan intransigence.

Is it not high time that we demanded maturity among these people to get over blaming each other for everything in order for them to selfishly and self-centeredly to win votes and, instead, began again to conduct the business of government for which the national representatives and senators were sent to Washington, D.C. and swore an oath to conduct and uphold.

And while they are at it, how about dealing with the American people by truth and honesty. We want a government that tells it like it is rather than each side trying to outdo the other in their chronic, daily lies, half-truths and exaggerations solely to win re-election while the United States of America comes to nothing but dead ends by failure to deliver on needs basic to continuation as a viable country. And that goes also to the goals of U.S. foreign policy which are constitutionally established to protect American interests and American security not sacrificed for any one individual’s political or personal gain such as we are suffering through by days and weeks of energy spent to deal with unacceptable behavior that has led to charges and countercharges by politics at its worst.

The time is overdue for Americans to stand up and be counted, demanding that we get back to a rational and productive government. That condition of work in Washington, D.C. is the only way we can expect this great country of ours to be there for all of us in needs now and for young Americans in the future.

(Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer and shares his opinion frequently in the Keizertimes.)