Chuck McGee: Liberal columnists aren't providing both sides of the story in opinion pieces

To The Daily Sun,

I take exception to David Shribman’s almost full-page op-ed ("Government Dysfunction, 2023 edition") claiming our government is in disarray due to Republican actions. To the contrary, the recent House speakership battle revolved around House rules over the past decade, which essentially gave the speaker and minority leader total control of the legislative agenda. Under recent past speakers, the other 400-plus members were relegated to either voting for or against a piece of legislation (sometimes thousands of pages) that they were given little, or no, time to read or digest. If your congressperson wasn’t part of “leadership,” you effectively had no input on anything. Not right. Not fair. This was especially prevalent under Nancy Pelosi, as witnessed by the continuing omnibus spending bills that combined numerous different appropriations into one huge bill.

As a result of the recent rules changes, one congressperson can now call for a vote of confidence to remove the speaker. For practical purposes, this means that if the speaker doesn’t honor the commitments he (or she) made when elected speaker, one congressperson can call for his (or her) removal. This is an important, significant change. It’s annoying that Shribman and his liberal contemporaries continue to write pieces that lack objectivity and balance and do not tell the complete story. Jeff Robbins and Shribman are two of the worst offenders. They would do readers a better service by providing an accurate, unbiased, picture of events. Unlikely. Just wishful thinking on my part.

Chuck McGee

Moultonborough