Kayleigh McEnany Quotes
At certain moments, both the WEEE Act and the First Step Act appeared doomed to dead end in partisan gridlock and procedural hurdles.
McEnany, Kayleigh. "Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner are quietly racking up massive wins." The Hill, Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., 15 Jan. 2019.
At the time Congress was gridlocked in bitter hyperpartisan conflict. Most people called for more comity and bipartisanship and most politicians wanted more bipartisanship but blamed the other party for the rift. Mourdock, arguing for less bipartisanship and no compromise defeated Richard Lugar in the Republican Senatorial Primary election. Lugar, one of the most respected and effective Senators was a statesman who worked with any and all to find effective compromises to reach national solutions. The nation was so politically polarized that the Republican Indiana voters ousted one of their most senior senators because he was effective at developing national solutions. See {626717} and {302706} for other Mourdock’s outrageous comments. While this rhetoric won in the Primary, it lost him the general election in a state where Republicans had a strong majority and should have had the seat.
Conservatives in the Senate were filibustering the bill at the time.
Because of the filibuster and other procedural individual prerogatives, it is easy for a few Senators or often a single Senator to prevent a bill from ever coming to a vote. Much imaginative and excellent legislation has died in the United States Senate.
With its multiplicity of committees and the polarization of the parties, Congress has been unable to legislate on large, comprehensive problems that involve more than a single issue at a time.
If a party controls one of the two houses of Congress, they can block any legislation. But governing involves passing legislation, and in our bi-cameral Congress, control of one house is not sufficient to pass legislation.
the largest economic and banking reform in decades The Dodd-Frank reform legislation was very complicated. It was extensively debated including attacks against provisions that were not even in the bill (See {632833}.) Few of the supporters and fewer of the opponents understood the bill. Many members on both sides had not even read the entire bill. It passed.
The objective of a large proportion of the Congress then was not to improve the nation or even pass legislation, but to preserve their ideology and attack and weaken the other party. Compromise for example is probably the best legislative practice, but that Congress had a substantial number of Tea Party and other ultra conservatives who believed that any compromise at all was an immoral abandonment of principle.
Kayleigh McEnany is an American conservative political commentator and author who served as the 33rd White House press secretary for the Trump administration from April 2020 to January 2021.
