Political Quotes

“Madam President, I would like to follow up on the last point Senator Udall of New Mexico made about our Founders. I have in my hand three of the Federalist Papers, Federalist Papers 22, 75, and 58. These are by Madison and Hamilton, and they explore this issue of the supermajority. It was a very conscious decision that a supermajority was not put into the Constitution for decisions of these Chambers. And the reason why--and they explained it more eloquently--is essentially that if you take the path that the minority thinks is the right path rather than the path the majority thinks is the right path, then over time you make a series of worse decisions. The minority might be right on occasion, but most of the time the viewpoint brought by those representing the greatest number of States in this case or the greatest number of citizens on the House side is the path that makes sense. And they warned about the supermajority as an instrument that would bring paralysis. It is almost as if they could look forward 200 years to this moment and say: Don't do that because you will end up with paralysis. This is from Federalist Paper No. 22 by Alexander Hamilton. He wrote this in 1787, and he notes in commenting about the issue of a simple majority that ``there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward.…”