Recent Floor Action

The past three months have already seen the legislature entertain hundreds of written mandates, regulations, State code, and other such legislation. Among these bills have been several highly unneeded and highly controversial bills.

With a Democratic Supermajority (over two-thirds in both the House and Senate) and a very liberal Governor, the whole legislative process seems like a joke. There is no balance, there is no fair play, and every committee is more or less a dictatorship.

It can be completely infuriating to stand by and watch as the majority does pretty much what they want.

At the beginning of session there was many a floor comment by Democratic leadership expressing the hope that everyone will get along. But as would come to find out, their definition of “getting along” pretty much meant that there would be less controversy if Republicans would just shut up, sit down, and ask no questions.

For example, the senate has just recently wrapped up a two week floor session to hear all Senate bills that had been passed out of Senate committees. During this time, strategy and scheduling are key and it just so happens that Democratic leadership sought to exhibit these measures in their efforts to approve a highly controversial sexual education bill.

This measure would eliminate all “abstinence only” programs from the public schools in our State and mandate a “medically accurate” curriculum. This not only strips the decision making authority on this issue away from each public school district, but also implements a curriculum that is controlled by the State (a very nasty loophole just waiting to be exploited by the sodomites).

The democratic leadership knew that this was going to be an issue of much controversy so they attempted to strong arm the issue by scheduling the bill right before the 5:30 dinner break. Republican leadership responded by requesting the issue be tabled until the following day or at least until after dinner, but their counterparts thought they had their opposition just where they wanted them.

But then the amendments started coming, and coming, and continued to come. And with each amendment came another floor speech by a pleading Senator.

Two hours of more amendments and floor speeches later, the Democrats didn’t feel like they had their opponents up against a wall anymore and the Lt. Governor started gripping at them about ruining his dinner break. Granted, everyone on the floor knew that the bill would pass, but the fight continued for another hour until the amendments ran out.

With the dinner break long since over, the legislature had to vote on the bill and move on through the night. And vote they did. But move on they did not.

Following the passage of the bill, every one of the Republican Senators walked off of the floor in protest, thus hindering further bill passage.

It is reassuring that on moral issues we typically have two consistent Democratic swing votes, thus upping our vote count from 18 to 20, but this still keeps us under two-thirds and without much teeth.

However, as the events of this night show, there are still a few good men and women who are willing to sink their gums into the super-beast of the majority in the fight against the ever increasing socialist form of government our State seems to be morphing into.

Persevero!