Politics is a game. It's a 4D chess battle between not only your opposition but also your colleagues to get them exactly where you want them before you make your big move. It's never clean and if someone is being too friendly with you it's because they want something. Everything is hidden behind a veil and few politicians actually deliver the truth more often than they lie or tell half-truths.
But while a politician can lie through their words, what they can't do is lie through their actions. This is why, sometimes, you can force a politician to tell the truth about where they stand by forcing them to confront legislation.
I've seen multiple people in my social media feeds, as well as the comments section of this site, why people introduce legislation that they know will fail. From the outset, it looks like a waste of time and money, but really it's like turning on a light for a moment to see where the roaches truly are.
Take, for instance, the recent article I wrote on Thomas Massie's bill to kill the Department of Education:
On Wednesday, Massie announced on X that he introduced H.R. 899, a bill that would obliterate the DoE.
"I introduced a bill to end the Department of Education," Massie posted. "We must return the money and authority back to states, school districts, teachers, and parents before it’s too late."
(READ: This Is the Way: Thomas Massie Introduces Bill to Demolish the Department of Education)
H.R. 899 has a snowball's chance of doing anything at all. Even if it does make it through the House and Senate by some miracle, it would be vetoed the moment it hits President Joe Biden's desk. The Democrats love the DoE because it gives them an element of power over the nation's schools, and the radicalized left has a very keen interest in indoctrinating your kids as much as possible.
I'm pretty sure that, in order to fully root out every bit of corruption and money mismanagement going through the DoE, you would need three consecutive administrations willing to come down on it and destroy it, because I'm pretty sure that the only way the only way to fully clean the DoE is with a nuke from orbit.
But that the Democrats would refuse to destroy the DoE isn't a surprise. What Massie, and likely many others watching this bill want to see, is which Republicans decide to resist the destruction of the department.
And that would be very valuable information, especially to the voters who then get to see their politicians actually tell the truth and reveal where they stand.
The destruction of the DoE should be a pretty standard position for the Republican Party. It is an intrusion on individual freedoms and a big government problem. If a Republican doesn't want to destroy it, they better have a damn good reason as to why.
A refusal to help Massie with his bill could force the politicians to explain themselves to their constituency and give a reason why. If the voters don't like his or her response, it could count against them in the next election.
Putting a politician on record is a valuable thing to do, especially in a field where lying is a feature, not a bug. Sometimes, in order to get the truth out, you have to force an action, and introducing a bill does just that.
