But that is the Congress that voters will get unless Democrats take bold and decisive action to end Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans’ rule of Congress. The same Mitch McConnell, who pledged to make former President Barack Obama a one-term president through a universal obstruction to everything, is already using the same playbook again.
Let’s be clear. The party of Donald Trump, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz is not serious about governance. It is a party at war with fact and reason that spends more time spreading lies and conspiracy theories than advocating for any policy position.
For the good of the nation, Democrats must stop pretending that Republicans are acting in good faith or have any desire to be a governing party. Put simply: Democrats must abandon the notion of bipartisanship if they actually want to get anything done.
The chances of the Greene-Hawley-Cruz party coming to the table to earnestly work to advance legislation that would help everyday people is just as likely as me, a 5-foot-4-inch woman, playing center for the Washington Wizards tonight. In other words, it’s not going to happen.
Democrats have a choice: continue to chase the false hope of bipartisanship or take bold and meaningful action to help our country deal with COVID, rebuild our economy and strengthen our democracy.
Senator Chuck Schumer’s majority party can either go big—and earn some real wins—or they can allow Republicans to obstruct—and get nothing. And the choice Democrats make over the next few weeks will have a large role in determining who controls Congress in two years. Voters want action. They want a Washington that works. They need economic relief.
And they need it now. We don’t have time to waste in using the Democrats’ partisan power and edge. Immediately, COVID relief is on the minds of working families, teachers and frontline workers—the danger in this moment is not in doing too much, it’s in doing too little.
Recovering from a year of inaction and insufficient attention to the needs of America’s workers and families demands a massive response commensurate to the task at hand. Republicans want to talk bipartisanship, but judging by the Senate Republicans’ counterproposals, bipartisanship isn’t going to deliver the relief that we desperately need.
Even $1,400 relief checks are going to be a drop in the bucket for families who are nearly 12 months behind in rent, and Republicans want to decrease even this amount of relief to American households.
It’s not just COVID that demands bold action. Schumer must also implement changes to prevent the minority party from hijacking the democratic process. The filibuster has been used for decades to block civil rights bills, but its use reached a fever pitch during the Obama administration, when the Senate routinely used the filibuster to block the Democratic agenda.
It’s nearly impossible to govern an entire nation when a single senator can stop debate—let alone legislation—squarely in its tracks. Now that Democrats control the Senate, they must fix the rules so we can improve our democracy and make progress on the important issues of our time.
If the filibuster remains intact, the newly elected Democratic majority will be hamstrung in their ability to deliver to the American people on a range of critical issues. Republicans will fight progress tooth and nail, whether it’s criminal justice reform, clean energy, voting rights, or gerrymandering. And they’ve shown us they will use every obstructionist tool to stymie Democrats at every turn.
This is an unfortunate reality, because I think we can all agree that bipartisanship once was an imperfect ideal. But it requires a foundation that quite frankly no longer exists. It demands good faith and fair dealing, and it means agreeing on big pictures and battling over details. But if there were ever a time to question the very premise of bipartisanship, it would be in the weeks after members of the Republican Party supported a deadly insurrection at our nation’s Capitol. If the republic depends on bipartisanship, what is to be made of a party’s stars supporting the destruction of the republic itself?
Now is the time to fix the Senate’s rules so opponents of progress are unable to thwart it at every turn. For the first time since 2012, Democrats hold the majority in the upper chamber. They write the rules. They set the agenda. We the people elected them to do just that. Schumer must lead, and Democrats must use every ounce of their mandate to prevent the obstructionism of minority rule.
Democrats must continue to be bold. And while it can start by pushing for a real COVID relief package in the coming days, it must not end there. Fixing how the Senate does business going forward is a means to delivering on an agenda that will improve the lives and well-being of the American people right now.
Voters will again be making decisions in 2022, and how Democrats responded in 2021 will be front of mind. Republicans had their chance to lead. They failed. Now they just want to obstruct—again.
Voters didn’t vote for gridlock and obstruction, and Democrats have the power to stop the GOP’s tired tactics. Now more than ever, they must use it.
Rahna Epting is executive director of MoveOn.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
