By William Cassidy If the last election demonstrates anything, it shows that the American people are equally divided. The makeup of the House of Representatives and Senate reflects this perfectly. Out of the 435-person chamber, Democrats only hold a six-vote majority. The Senate is an even 50-50 split. During inauguration, President Biden spoke to this evenness of division when he said he wanted to be a unity president. If our common goal is a greater future for our country, I join that call for unity. Unfortunately, the president's words were window dressing on a highly partisan agenda. Earnest offers of bipartisanship by Republicans have been slandered as inadequate or insincere to justify a partisan path. Finding common ground and bipartisanship is hard. It takes a long time. That's the way the Senate was structured. Requiring 60 votes forces that hard work. It reflects the large majority of Americans as opposed to a portion of one-half. Ending the filibuster is an attempt to only represent a portion of one-half. In 2005, Biden took to the Senate floor in opposing attempts to eliminate the Senate's 60-vote threshold saying, "At its core, the filibuster is not about stopping a nominee or a bill -- it's about compromise and moderation." He went on to state resolutely that eliminating this parliamentary procedure is "ultimately an example of the arrogance of power. It is a fundamental power grab by the majority party … and designed to change the reading of the Constitution." Democrats used the filibuster liberally under President Trump to hinder national security by blocking funding for the construction of the border wall and twice as an obstacle for coronavirus relief during the passage of the CARES Act at the beginning of the pandemic. Now that they are in power, they are targeting the Senate mechanism they used to great effect. They call it racist and a relic of Jim Crow. Were my Democrat colleagues engaging in racism when they used it to block Sen. Tim Scott's (R-SC) police reform bill? Of course not. The Founders warned us about this -- the tyranny of the majority -- as it results in the oppression of the minority. Democrats will pursue their far-left agenda at the expense of any other view. Democrats are already proposing legislation they know Republicans will not support. Camouflaging the Green New Deal in an infrastructure bill, infringing on the Second Amendment, forcing taxpayers to fund political campaigns and banning the enforcement of election security laws that prevent noncitizens from voting. They are deliberately orchestrating gridlock to justify eliminating of the filibuster. We can come together, negotiate, find common ground, and pass real solutions. It will be hard and slow. It won't garner media headlines or provide fundraising bait, but it is better for our country. The best legislation we have seen as a country -- and usually the longest lasting -- are bipartisan. The filibuster requires that they are. Democrats no longer wish for bipartisanship. They will say many things to justify why bipartisanship is impossible and thus the filibuster must be eliminated. The more correct analysis is that they do not wish to engage in bipartisanship. If hypocrisy is the compliment vice gives to virtue, then maintaining the filibuster is clearly virtuous. Let's heed the words of President Biden: "The Senate ought not act rashly by changing its rules to satisfy a strong-willed majority acting in the heat of the moment."

By Bill Cassidy Democrats argue that H.R. 1 is about voting rights, but this bill attempts to do a heck of a lot more than that -- and it's not a good thing. It's a recipe for election disaster and fraud. We can all agree that every legal vote cast should be counted. But that's not what this bill does. This bill bans states from enforcing voter ID laws that ensure each ballot belongs to the person filling it out. If you need to show an ID to get on an airplane, you should have to show an ID to vote. This bill would also mandate same-day voter registration at polling locations. This would make it more difficult to secure our elections. Same-day registration without checking IDs means individuals can vote in our elections without even being a U.S. citizen, let alone a resident of that district. This is especially problematic given our concern over foreign interference in our elections. H.R. 1 would allow for unlimited ballot harvesting like in California where political operatives can go to a homeless shelter, where many are mentally ill or addicted -- or any large gathering -- and solicit individuals to fill out a ballot. Then those political operatives can decide which votes they want to turn in, the ones that support their chosen candidate. This is a recipe for fraud. It would add extra barriers for states that want to occasionally clear out their rolls to make sure people are not registered in multiple states or that ballots are being sent to those who are no longer alive. After hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Louisiana reviewed our rolls to see if someone was registered to vote in Atlanta or Houston and also a different parish. If they were, their registration was removed from the Louisiana rolls. That's a good thing -- you should not be able to vote more than once in a single election. While Democrats are proposing plan after plan to increase your taxes, H.R. 1 would take that money and give it to politicians to fund their campaigns. There is a laundry list of provisions in this bill that have nothing to do with voting rights. We should work to make voting more convenient. We should embrace early voting. We should increase the number of polling places to reduce lines. We should work to make elections more safe and secure. These are all things that ensure eligible voters are able to vote. This is not a voting rights bill. Ballot harvesting, letting non-citizens vote -- this is an attempt to rig the system to help Democratic politicians stay in power.

By Senator Christopher Coons Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, the American people have been reminded of just how much we rely on health care professionals, first responders, and many others who help keep us safe and healthy. These men and women have rightly been called heroes, but the scale of this public health and economic crisis has made one thing plainly clear: We need more of them.To safely reopen our country and our economy, public health leaders estimate we will need as many as 300,000 new workers to test millions of Americans and rapidly trace the contacts of those who are or may be infected. The question is: Where will these people come from, and who will recruit them, train them, and supervise them? We believe the answer is to rapidly expand our existing national service programs like AmeriCorps and build on our country's proud history of citizen-led response to times of national crisis.We know we can do this because Americans have done it before. More than 80 years ago, our nation rose to the challenge of the Great Depression with the creation of citizen service programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Millions participated, developing skills and earning a paycheck while building our nation's infrastructure. Today's national service programs, like AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and the 21st Century Conservation Service Corps, carry on the legacy of the CCC and WPA.To meet the historic challenges we face today, we should start by expanding the number of people that national service programs can deploy into American communities. Right now, roughly 75,000 Americans serve our country with AmeriCorps each year, with many more applying to serve. While the impact of the existing nationwide constellation of locally-driven AmeriCorps programs is great, that number needs to be multiplied several times over to meet the demands of this moment. Fortunately, there is an infrastructure already in place to achieve this: An existing network of state commissions in every state and territory, with federal support and local matching funding, already coordinates between local NGOs, state and local governments and the private sector to help design and support the recruitment, training and service of AmeriCorps members in their state.We should also make national service economically sustainable for more Americans. AmeriCorps members receive living allowances that on average are roughly $15,000 for a year's service, far from enough to cover living expenses in many parts of the country. Members also receive a modest education award to help with the cost of college or with repaying student loans, but it pales in comparison to the average debt carried by many college graduates. To inspire, engage and educate the next generation of public health workers and leaders to serve in these critical new roles, we need to ensure that the new workers and leaders can afford to live in the communities in which they serve.Finally, we believe that it's time to significantly expand partnerships between AmeriCorps and federal and state public health agencies. There's strong precedent for this kind of collaboration: FEMA Corps, a partnership between the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has played a key role in expanding our response capacity after tragedies like Hurricane Sandy.A similar partnership between CNCS and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) could provide the CDC with a surge capacity to respond to new hotspots as we attempt to re-open businesses and communities before a vaccine is developed. At the same time, providing funding to every state AmeriCorps commission would allow them to design and launch a locally-driven program to recruit and deploy contact tracers, screeners, and outreach workers to sustain local efforts around testing, tracing and -- eventually -- vaccination.We'll also need hundreds of thousands more new workers in national service to meet our community needs in fields like education, workforce training, conservation, and combating hunger that will be essential to our pandemic recovery. Fortunately, Congress has already passed a law, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, that authorizes up to 250,000 national service members per year, and existing national networks are already addressing public safety, hunger, education and conservation needs, doing work in our communities both urban and rural, and improving our national parks and public lands.Over the past month, we've seen in communities all across our country the incredible strength, spirit, and resilience of the American people. From everyday people who have stepped up and volunteered to help their vulnerable neighbors to businesses that have re-made themselves overnight to produce desperately needed medical equipment, it's clear that our country is determined to weather this storm.Right now, the American people are eager to get back to work and looking for ways to help our country in its time of need. If we offer our citizens opportunities to serve their communities and help our country recover from this crisis -- all while building skills and earning a paycheck along the way -- we know that hundreds of thousands will raise their hands, roll up their sleeves, and get to work.