Ware is a freshman political science major from Griffin. He is involved in Young Democrats.

Americans have witnessed the despicable lack of governing by Congress for the past four years. Many bills that are introduced to the House and Senate floor have no chance of gaining support across party lines, let alone ending up on the president’s desk.

Americans are always given the short end of the stick while our elected leaders focus only on racking up political points. Our senators, who have failed to pass a budget in the past five years, are especially out of control. If a Democratic senator introduces a bill, it’s expected that Republicans will not sign on, and if a Republican senator introduces the bill, it’s expected that Democrats will not sign on either. The toxic relationship between the two parties is the major problem, but there is something that can be done to spark some action, and it deals with the filibuster.

The filibuster is an action made by a senator who wishes to stop a vote on a particular bill. If a Senator does not like a bill and has the backing of at least 40 senators, he or she can enact an “endless debate” on a particular bill that will ultimately lead to the death of that bill. Senators go about enacting filibusters now by simply stating they want to filibuster a particular bill. But it hasn’t always been like that.

Before filibuster rules changed, if a senator wanted to filibuster a bill, that senator had to stand in front of the Senate and literally waste time until the bill was talked to death. Senators have been known to read books or just babble for hours, with Strom Thurmond holding the longest attempted filibuster of 24 hours and 18 minutes.

When senators had to actually stand and filibuster a bill, the use of the filibuster was few and far between. However, when the rule was changed to where senators no longer had to actually speak to filibuster, the use of the filibuster skyrocketed, leading to stalled bills and inaction.

If I had anything to do with it, I would re-instate the old rules of the filibuster. We voted for our senators to strengthen our country through legislation, not destroy it through the lack of governing. If our senators were forced to actually filibuster a bill on the Senate floor in front of a C-SPAN camera, I am confident in the notion that their lack of work would disappear. We’ve been letting our leaders off too easily, and I know many agree the filibuster rule should be changed for the sake of the general welfare for our nation.