Who’s Got The Mandate?
The party out of power in a legislature or Congress always complains that the party in power is steamrolling things through without bipartisan consultation. And elections do have consequences, so when your party has the majority, your voters expect you to do things.
But how far you go, and how fast, depends on the scope of your majority.
Let’s take the Iowa General Assembly, for example. There are 50 seats in the state Senate…32 Republicans and 18 Democrats…a number that has been fairly constant for the past four years. There are 100 seats in the Iowa House of Representatives…59 are Republicans, 41 Democrats…that’s a number that has increased over the past four years, including a pickup of six seats by the GOP in last November’s election alone.
That’s 59 percent Republicans in the House, and 64 percent Republicans in the Senate.
Contrast that with the U.S. Congress. There are 100 seats in the Senate, and as we are all aware, it’s 50-50…actually, it’s 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats, and 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats. The Republicans had a narrow 52-48 margin until earlier this year. As for the House, there are 435 seats…218 Democrats, 211 Republicans and 6 that are vacant. That’s 50.1 percent Democrats, 48.5 percent Republicans, 1.4 percent vacant.
So literally…Democrats have to get Independents to get to 50 percent in the U.S. Senate, and they have 50.1 percent in the U.S. House.
So much for a federal mandate. But the way they’re acting…you’d think they had Iowa-like majorities.
