Letter from Maureen Dill

Legislative Riders Bad for Country

Once again in this week’s news we are hearing warnings of the consequences if the House should fail to approve the Senate bill passed more than a month ago calling for $60 billion in aid for Ukraine.

The bill is currently stalled in the House of Representatives due to an attached amendment known as a “legislative rider.” A legislative rider is an additional provision or amendment attached to a bill under consideration that may often have no connection to the proposed bill.

A rider may often be used as a weapon of partisan politics by some members of Congress, sometimes called a “wrecking amendment,” as is the case of the border security amendment attached to the Senate bill in question.

That Senate bill, currently in the hands of House Speaker Mike Johnson, has been deliberately stalled, with Johnson refusing to send the bill to committee unless the attached border security legislative rider is approved as well. This rider is a double-edged sword, designed to not only kill the bill but also to further the political agenda of our former president, who has no intention of aiding Ukraine but who, in fact, intends to use the border crisis as his platform for a presidential campaign.
Another consequence of attaching riders to proposed legislation is to constrain the veto power of the executive branch of our government, as there can be no line-item vetoes.

Without additional U.S. aid, Ukraine will not be able to withstand the barrage from the Russian army. We who are hoping to get the aid to Ukraine believe its defense is central to U.S. national security as well. Russia’s Vladimir Putin is counting on the partisan politics at play here in America to further his plan to annex Ukraine while, at the same time, weaken the position of the United States in the world view.

While it may be too late to affect the outcome of this Senate bill currently before the House, those of us who are concerned about preserving the integrity of our democratic legislative process must immediately call upon our elected representatives to enact the Single-subject Rule at the federal legislative level. The Single-subject Rule stipulates that line items in any proposed legislation may deal solely with the primary legislative issue, thus preventing legislators from attaching a rider that may be unpopular or one that is intended to cause the primary proposed legislation to be rejected. This is a rule currently in place in many sovereign nations, including the United Kingdom, as well as in 43 of our 50 states here in the U.S.

The division in our country today is palpable. Fueled by uncontrolled political agendas, we have reached a critical moment in the future of our democracy. We must not allow partisan politics to destroy our image on the global stage. Unlike Las Vegas, what happens in America doesn’t stay here in America.

Maureen Dill
Morris