Good day. It's Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025, and this is Denison Forum's daily article podcast.

Today's article is written by our co-founder and CEO, Dr. Jim Denison, and narrated by yours truly, Chris Elkins.

Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. Senate passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, President Trump's signature legislative priority.

The tally was 50-50, with Vice President J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.

The legislation now returns to the House, where voting is scheduled to begin later today.

Many are debating the contents and merits of the bill. I am interested today in the process

by which it passed the Senate. When the group began voting on their 45th Amendment or procedural

motion, this broke the record for the most votes during a quote-unquote

voterama, a marathon session provided for under law governing the budget process of the Senate.

The process took so long in part because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer forced the clerks

to read the entire 960-page mega bill on the Senate floor.

The bill passed because Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski chose to support it after winning

key concessions on federal health and food aid programs for her state.

All of this, the marathon sessions, the scores of amendments,

the forced reading, the pivotal significance of a single senator from a state of 740,000 residents

comprising 0.2% of the American population is a feature of American governance, not a bug,

but that feature is foundational to our flourishing,

but with an enormous cost.

In American Covenant, how the Constitution unified our nation, and could again,

political scholar Yuval Levin demonstrates that the founders intended a system of checks and balances so extensive

that every dimension of the intonation would be represented and included in its governance.

This was vital for a country as manifestly diverse as ours with immigrants from across the

...