English: President Barack Obama speaks to a joint session of Congress regarding health care reform (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Republican senators staged a boycott of the nomination of Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency Thursday, surprising the top Democrat on the Senate committee in charge of the vote and furthering a pattern of delay that also postponed a confirmation vote on President Barack Obama’s Labor nominee Wednesday.” – May 9, 2013, US News.com

This is just the most recent example of Republicans in Congress acting as a block to stop Congress from functioning as intended.  The Republican members of both House and Senate are acting as a single well-trained army to take unilateral actions against the Obama administration.  Far too often, the extreme right-wing of the Republican party has denied our first black elected President any form of support and cooperation from the Republican party by taking control as a block to keep him from doing just about anything.

Polls show that the President has a 51% Approval Rating but our non-functional Congress is at its lowest Approval Rating in history at just 14%.  That indicates that the President represent the will of the people 3.6 times more in Approval Rating than Congress.  This contrast in Approval Rating should send Congress a very strong message.  Yet the Republican extremists continue to hold Congress hostage and make it as non-functional as possible in spite of claiming to represent their constituents.  How obviously wrong could they be?  What they fail to realize is that eventually voters will get tired of these antics and elect a super majority Democratic Congress as they did in California.  At last California does not need even one vote from the Republicans to support its Governor Jerry Brown to beef up the State government and avoid a recurrence of the fiscal collapse through strong and uncompromising legislation (see “Blueprint for a Responsible Budget”).

Frankly I do not subscribe to the dominance of a single party.  That is what exists in China, North Korea, Cuba and other non-Democratic governments.  It eventually leads to a dictatorship form of government which has a few good attributes and a lot of bad ones, namely too much power in the hands of too few or a single dictator, eventually leading to corruption.  However a non-functional two party Legislature is just about as bad. Instead of too much being done without consideration of the people, as in dictatorships or single party governments, a polarized two party Congress accomplishes absolutely nothing, especially the will of the people, and that is not what governments should be either.

I think that a two party system is no longer viable.  It simply results in more and more polarization and no action.  The sequestration exists today because of Congress’s inability to do its job to pass any kind of budget.  I believe that it is time to consider forming a third dominant party that represents the moderate point of view, and perhaps call it the Moderate party.  Moderates from both sides of the aisle could join this party to break deadlocks in Congress and prevent a quorum from being controlled by a single party.

I no longer can claim to others that America has the greatest government in the world.  I am now ashamed of what America has become: violent, inept, engaged in too many wars abroad to solve foreign problems yet unable to functionally represent the people, unconcerned about global warming, etc..  The two party system is not a Constitutional institution.  We did have other dominant parties in history, namely the Wigs in the 1830’s.  There now exist other parties such as the Green Party, Libertarian Party, Constitution Party, etc. each with their individual agendas but they have very limited memberships and resources, have limited overall appeal, and play little role in Congress.

A third Moderate party will reduce the likelihood of any party from dominating Congress.  It will force the other parties to compromise and deal with one another again.  It will help Congress to focus more on the people for a change as opposed to strong and powerful special interests.  It will promote a Congress capable of passing laws and dealing with budgets in a timely manner as is its intent.  It will help individual states as well which are also encountering polarization and inaction to become far more functional and make it less likely that single super-majority party domination such as exists in California will be necessary.  Sadly it seems that a two party system can no longer function effectively in our American government.