To the Editor:
The G.O.P. insists that the people’s will in Massachusetts be given effect and that Senator-elect Scott Brown be seated immediately. Fair enough, and with that concession to the people’s will—since we claim to be a democracy—let’s get rid of the supermajority, 60 votes, required in the Senate and allow the soon-to-be 59 Democrats and independents in the Senate who represent approximately two-thirds of the people in America to vote for or against health care reform.
Every time these 40 (soon 41) united Republicans—representing a third of Americans, all of the insurance companies, all of big business, all of the demagogued and easily led—filibuster and prevent a vote, they violate the people’s will.
John E. Colbert
Chicago, Jan. 20, 2010
Note from KBJ: The letter writer acts as though there is no rationale for the 60-vote (supermajority) requirement. It's a Senate rule that's designed to bring reflection and stability to that branch of government, however it happens to be composed. (The Senate, as compared to the House of Representatives, is the contemplative body. The House, whose members are elected every two years, is much more given to emotion.) Do you suppose the letter writer would be complaining if Republicans, rather than Democrats, had 60 votes? Sometimes I wonder whether progressives have principles. A principled person would say, for example, that the 60-vote requirement is bad, whichever party is in power; or conversely, that the 60-vote requirement is good, whichever party is in power. What's unprincipled is to say that the 60-vote requirement is bad if and only if one's own party is in power. I can't be sure that the letter writer is unprincipled, but I would guess, from the tenor of his letter, that he is. Perhaps he will see this note and inform us. My question to him would be: "Would you say the same thing about the 60-vote requirement if the tables were turned?"
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 