Dear editor,
What qualifies as “bipartisanship?”
When I hear “Washington is broken,” it’s usually blamed on either Democrats or Republicans. But if one party goes away, then we would have a one-party system, which is often communism. What we need is bipartisanship and I think I’ve been hearing that word used just a bit more, lately. Maybe people are sensing that MAGA equals chaos and is unlikely to achieve anything constructive; just emotional venting and chest-pounding. Maybe Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan smelled MAGA’s approach and decided to exit stage left.
Acting in a bipartisan manner is probably not always the best way to win an election, though. Politicians need money for campaigns and endorsements, and political influencers with dark money or significant popularity are often partisan.
In my opinion, to be bipartisan, politicians need to regularly sponsor legislation that has cosponsors from another party and they need to regularly co-sponsor legislation that another party authors. Voting the same way on a bill as members of another party may or may not indicate bipartisanship. It’s common for people from different parties to vote the same way on a bill for entirely different reasons. I don’t call that bipartisanship.
U.S. Congressman Tom Tiffany is an example of someone who has recently been using the word without demonstrating bipartisan behavior, as defined above. Congress.gov (May 22, 2024) shows that, during his time in office, Tiffany has authored 38 bills with a total of 181 co-sponsors. One hundred sixty-eight co-sponsors were Republicans and 13 were Democrats. Only one of those bills, costly and bureaucratic in nature, passed the House and has now (05-23-2024) been referred to a Senate Committee. It did not include any Democrat co-sponsors. Of the 13 Democrats, eight were co-sponsoring bills that named Wisconsin-based post offices. Excluding the bills naming post offices, just over 3 percent of Tiffany’s co-sponsors are Democrats. All by herself, co-MAGA-extremist Lauren Boebert made up over 4 percent of those bill’s co-sponsors.
I think this data shows that Congressman Tiffany doesn’t have a bipartisan bone in his body bigger than the fifth distal phalanx.
I think that Congressman Tiffany is great at singing to the choir, but will remain worse than ineffective in Washington as long as he refuses to find the common ground which is the basis of our form of government.
Peter Truitt of Danbury
Editor’s note: Wausau Pilot & Review gladly publishes commentary from readers, residents and candidates for local offices. The views of readers and columnists are independent of this newspaper and do not necessarily reflect the views of Wausau Pilot & Review. To submit, email [email protected] or mail to 500 N. Third St., Suite 208-8, Wausau, Wis. 54403.
