Bipartisan means ‘Do it my way’

If you have ever heard a politician tout the virtues of bipartisanship, you should know that it means nothing.

Oh, it’s true that “bipartisanship” comes in some forms. Usually it arrives on a meager bill like designating the Potato Commission, or to authorizing a special theme for a license plate. But that’s not true bipartisanship. Those are nonpartisan issues – how can you be bipartisan on an issue where no party line exists?

What politicians usually mean when lobbing bipartisan idiom is that the other side needs to adopt their views.

A perfect example of this came last week when Senate Republicans released their budget solutions. Senator Joseph Zarelli (R- Ridgefield) revealed that the half billion dollar tax increase wasn’t necessary, but that Democrats weren’t willing to quit spending.

House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler (D-Hoquiam) said Republicans should quite trying to make political hay and adopt a bipartisan spirit. “I wish they would work with us instead of jamming us with all this tax-and-spend criticism,” she said.

Kessler and her colleagues don’t really want to meet in the middle to fix the state’s budget woes. If you listened to any of the floor debate on the budget, you’d see that clearly. Instead our legislators should look to find a solution that does more than band-aids our budget with continued excessive spending. All else is drivel.