Election sends clear message to Congress

By Staff
Scot Beard
Columnist
Last week the Democrat-led Senate was dealt a blow when voters in Massachusetts elected Republican Scott Brown to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Ted Kennedy.
With Brown’s election Democrats lose the 60-members needed to end Republican filibusters and push through legislation without lengthy debate.
In other words the Democrats loose the ability to pass whatever they want and not pass legislation they do not like.
This couldn’t have happened at a better time. Democrats spent much of 2009 passing bills that were highly unpopular with people across the nation.
It’s as if the Democrats — and this is not a column bashing Democrats because Republicans would have done the same thing if given the opportunity — wanted to see what they could get away with.
They were given the keys to the kingdom and acted like teenagers whose parents went out of town for the weekend.
Leading up to the election in Massachusetts Brown was asked about the seat he was pursuing. Ted Kennedy held the seat from the 1960s to his death last year, and a member of the Kennedy family has sat in it since 1952.
Many political pundants thought a republican would never sit in it again.
The moderator of a debate asked how Brown would use seat to vote in the national health care reform debate.
Brown responded by saying, "With all due respect, it's not the Kennedys' seat, and it's not the Democrats' seat, it's the people's seat."
Whether this response was how Brown really feels or was just a smart answer by a clever politician is not important. What is important is that he gave Americans, and Congress, a much-needed civics lesson.
This nation’s government is a republic. That means the public elects officials to represent them in the government.
That’s right the government works for the people.
Unfortunately many politicians have forgotten this over the years. More and more elected officials hold office only because it stokes their massive ego, not because they care about the constituents back home.
Since 2009, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, has not proposed much legislation that would benefit her constituents.
She has proposed three bills — one that would modify the Public Health Service Act to establish a Coordinated Environmental Public Health Network, one that would offer relief to two immigrants seeking to stay in the United States and another to change the name of a post office in San Francisco.
The only one to pass so far is the post office bill — the other two are in committee. Her constituents must be proud of the job she’s doing.
When Pelosi is not busy getting post offices renamed, she is standing side by side with the president as he tries to get Congress to pass legislation that many citizens of America do not want to become law.
Brown’s election in Massachusetts set a clear message to politicians in Washington. It showed them that voters would hold them responsible for their actions and that abuse of power would not be tolerated.
America is about the people, not the government.