What Happened to the "Up or Down" Vote?

What ever happened to the up or down vote?  In today's political culture, it is almost impossible for the citizenry to discern the positions our legislators take because they are rarely faced with actually voting on the things that matter.

This is because leaders have discoverd the concept of stating an idea is Dead On Arrival (DOA) - meaning a county executive, governor or president will send a bill to their respective legislatures and those leaders wiill shield their members from having to take difficult positions by declaring the idea DOA.

Who wins? The political party in charge. Who loses? The rest of us.

Who cares? Nobody: because we don't pay attention and they know it.

We see this at home in Mineola, a tad farther away in Albany and on the 6 O'Clock news out of Washington D.C. We rarely get to truly know what our county, state and federal representatives believe on key issues because their leaders don't want us to. That is a real shame because if the leaders are making these decisions, what is the point of even having a legislature?

For example, Speaker of the House John Boehner recently declared President Obama's jobs bill "Dead On Arrival." Why? Why not debate it and have an up or down vote in Congress on it?

If it fails, then send it back to the president and work on something new. Why not?  Because there are some difficult provisions in the bill that individual, politically vulnerable members of Congress would have to stake out positions on. So it is just easier to not put them in a vice - make them never have to deal with the issue so their voters won't have a reason to question them.

It seems to me that most voters would support taxing millionaires more because most voters aren't millionaires. But then again, wouldn't the opposition then paint them as lying about their promises to not raise taxes, even though those taxes are only born by 1 percent of the people? Ahhh yes the conundrum begins to take shape.

It is very difficult for counties, states and the federal government to function under this process.  Individual representatives tend to be more concerned with their own districts than the good of the body as a whole while the chief executive always has their eye on the larger picture.

In the short term, this makes political and sometimes even community sense. In the long term however, this harms us all.

We elect our county executives, governors and presidents to govern - to manage the day to day operations of our governments and to make decisions based on the good of the many. We elect or county legislators, state senators / assembly members and our Congress members / senators to represent us in providing checks and balances to the executives as well as to be mindful of our own communities.

This is the best system in the world, however its very design will always give way to gridlock and the DOA principle is a major catalyst of this gridlock because it gives the ability for legislative leaders to styme chief executives while at the same time protecting their members from political fallout. So what to do?

Across the board on every level of government, local charters, state constitutions and the United States Constitution should be amended to require that any bill from the chief executive gets an up or down vote. This will force our representatives to have to take positions which will in turn force legislative leaders to negotiate in good faith. It will also force chief executives, wary of their policies being met with failure, to negotiate in good faith as well.

In short, the up or down vote would remove a little bit of politics from our system.  Who doesn't think that guarantees a better way?