I love this “calling out” by “Speaker-elect” Bob Gilligan:
Rep. Bob Gilligan, D-Sherwood Park, predicts his party’s increased influence in the House won’t change its ability to get bills signed unless there is a further shakeup in the Senate, where hot-button legislation historically meets its doom.
“I said this before the election: The fact that we would be the majority party in the House wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference,” said Gilligan, the frontrunner for speaker of the house when Democrats caucus tonight to elect party leaders for the 145th General Assembly. “I still stand by that remark.”
Gilligan cited the House’s passage of open government, equal protection for homosexuals and reforms at the Delaware Psychiatric Center, all of which withered in a desk drawer in the Senate. All are back at the top of the House Democrats’ priority list for this year, he added.
The desk drawer those progressive priorities withered in belongs to a man who should really contemplate retirement rather than obstruction. For reasons passing understanding, the power to essentially veto all legislation that passes through the Senate rests in the hands of the Senate President Pro Tempore Thurman Adams (D-Bridgeville). Normally, the position and title of President Pro Tempore is an honorary one, given to the oldest or longest serving member of the majority party. In the U.S. Senate, the President Pro Tempore is Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), and Mr. Byrd really has no power except to sit up on the dais next to Speaker Pelosi when the President addresses Congress, but only if the Vice President (the real President of the Senate) can’t make it. Oh yes, the the President Pro Tempore is also third in the line of succession for the Presidency after the Vice President and the Speaker of the House. But here in Delaware, we have inexplicably given the oldest and thus most out of touch member of the majority party the power to thwart the will of the majority.
Intent on keeping his powerful position, Thurman Adams has once again lied to his fellow Democrats by saying that open government legislation will come up for a vote this year. But he said that last year too, and the old bastard put the bill in his desk.
Democrats in the Senate, if they wish to get anything done, need to neutralize the lying Adams. If they don’t, then Adams will remain the lone obstacle to progressive legislation in Delaware, and he will very quickly become Enemy No. 1 for all Delaware Democrats.
To Speaker-elect Gilligan’s credit, he is not shying away from a showdown with Adams. He is forcing it. Gilligan said the House’s top priority will be the open-government bill, followed by legislation prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. Adams may think it is still the 1930’s, when deals were always made in a smoke filled back room, and where gays stayed in the closet if they knew what was good for them, but it is the 21st century, and either Adams gets out of our way on his own, or we will push him.