The Federalist Papers were written to convince the people of New York and the rest of the fledgling states to ratify the Constitution that our democratic republic has labored under since the end of the 18th century. John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison were political theorists whose combined wisdom has stood the test of time. In Federalist 10, they address the impact of factions upon the unity that the Constitution was designed to solidify. They confronted the fear that domineering majorities would “…decide measures, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minority party but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.”
The Federalist Papers were concerned that the legitimate rights of people, whose opinions were not widely held, not be marginalized or discounted outright. Our Founding Fathers never envisioned that the reverse might be possible, that a small faction of people would be able to exercise its will over the majority to the detriment of the nation. In 2024, however, this is exactly what is taking place. A minority of legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives are bringing paralysis to the whole of Congress.
Sadly, this is nothing new. Since the current fiscal year began on the first of October, Congress has been unable to pass an annual budget. Because all revenue bills originate in the House, a minority of representatives have blocked consideration of legislation to fund the government through Sept. 30. Instead, the nation has been jerked around with threats of closing down the government only to see the passage of stop-gap measures that avoid disaster. All this brinkmanship does is stretch out the timeline for the eventual passage of an annual budget.
When the U.S. Senate recently passed a bipartisan bill aimed at addressing the crisis surrounding immigration at our southern border, one person in the House made a decision not to bring the legislation to the floor for discussion and a vote. He did so at the behest of a small faction of representatives who threatened to pull the rug out from under his speakership if he dared to go against their wishes. According to prognosticators and pundits, the legislation in question was the most sweeping and far-reaching immigration reform in the past four decades and was endorsed by the border agents who saw it as a giant leap forward in solving the ongoing border crisis.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died on Feb. 13, 2016 in the final year of President Barack Obama’s eight-year presidency. With almost a year left before a new president would take the Oath of Office in January of 2017, there was ample time for the Senate to confirm the president’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Instead, one man stood in the way. The Senate leader of the opposing party refused to entertain the president’s candidate in spite of the fact that the nominee was eminently qualified to sit on the high court and would have easily been confirmed. A minority of one frustrated even the opportunity for the majority of senators to consider filling the Supreme Court vacancy.
Tyranny by the minority is unfortunately becoming normalized in Congress today. Standard protocols and ways of doing business that are not codified in law are being ignored and trampled. The most overused word today is unprecedented, precisely because traditions of civility are breaking down all around us. To say that this is politics as usual is to diminish the slow unraveling of our federal system of governance. Not everything that traditionally happens in government is dictated by specific laws. Many things happen by courtesy and convention. As these common practices are being thrown out the window, the result is a paralysis that ignores the common good and exalts political expediency above all else.
The common good is more than a catching phrase. It is or should be the goal of every person who seeks office at whatever level in government. Correlatively, it is up to all enfranchised voters to hold all of our elected officials to this simple, basic standard.
Msgr. Paul V. Garrity is a senior priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and former pastor of St. Mary’s Parish and School in Lynn.
