EDITORIAL: Resolutions: The list is long for elected leaders in 2022

Jan. 2—At the top of the New Year's resolution list for elected leaders should be a goal to be more bipartisan and get things done. Period.

Republican. Democrat. Your examples of partisanship are glaring in case you hadn't noticed or heard. These pages have taken issue with both sides, but we can find more examples among Republicans, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell getting the disruptor of the year award.

And then there's House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who even went against his own in a kind of double-Dutch partisan attack on Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for doing the right thing in helping investigate the Jan. 6 attempted coup.

Other Republicans have buried the needle on partisanship, with Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene advocating red and blue states in the U.S. get "divorced," Rep. Lauren Boebert calling a Democratic colleague a terrorist and Rep. Paul Gosar concocting an anime on social media showing him killing Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez.

Aside from these hopeless cases, we'd like to see both sides up their partisan rhetoric to their "get-things-done" ratio by aiming for a 50-50 split. Being partisan only 50 percent of the time would be a vast improvement.

We implore elected leaders to speak to their constituents before they go on social media to speak to the Twitterverse or to factually devoid Facebook chat rooms. Every time elected leaders speak to thousands on their followers on Facebook pages — many of whom are not constituents — they should talk to thousands of their constituents in person.

These are simple behavioral things that can be accomplished by individual choice.

On the policy side, we'd like to see compromise. There are plenty of options.

Republicans and Democrats should compromise on President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan. Make it less costly if that's the way forward to providing the many benefits in the bill that will help the middle class which ever way they vote.

Compromise on voting rights. There's nothing more fundamental to American democracy. Solid, commonsense plans that simply address discrimination in voting are a few votes away from bipartisan support in the 50-50 U.S. Senate, already having passed the House.

Compromise on making the tax code more fair. Hedge fund managers still pay lower rates that working class people. Some corporations still pay zero taxes. These tax fairness policies have widespread support among Americans of all stripes and affiliations.

A 15 percent minimum tax on all corporations is part of the Build Back Better Bill. Get it done.

Lower prescription drug prices. There is probably no single policy over decades that has been more supported by a vast majority of Americans and both parties. Yet, Republicans and Democrats have failed to pass anything. President Donald Trump attempted it and failed. A small step to begin allowing the Medicaare to negotiate with drug companies is in the Build Back Better bill.

Representative democracy is on the ropes and the villain is partisanship.

We urge all to send their elected leaders their list of things to get done, and then demand to be heard.