Olympia Snowe Resigns

Saying:

Everyone has to stand back and understand, what is the essence of public service? It's all about solving problems. What are our obligations to the country and to the people we represent? It's the coming up with effective solutions, sitting down and working with the issues. Sitting around table and sorting through the differences.

You can never solve a problem without talking to people with whom you disagree. The United States Senate is predicated and based on consensus building. That was certainly the vision of the founding fathers. And if we abandon that approach, then we do it at the expense of the country and the issues that we need to address to put us back on track. . . .

We are not working out issues anymore. We are working on a parallel universe, with competing proposals, up or down votes. And you know, as the National Journal said recently, we’re coming close to a parliamentary system. Well, that’s not how the Senate was designed. That’s not how our founding fathers envisioned the United States Senate and the overall Congress.

Indeed we are moving toward a Parliamentary system, in which nothing can be done unless one party holds the Presidency and both houses of Congress. That might actually work better than the old insistence on cross-party coalition building, but only if the voters consistently support a single party rather than splitting their votes, and only if the Senate changes its rules to abolish the filibuster.