|
|
|
|
The
Republican Railroad;
Squelching Democratic voices on the Hill |
|
April, 2003 edition
BY MARY
LYNN F. JONES
The
American Prospect
|
|
|
IN JULY
OF 1994, JUST FOUR MONTHS before Republicans swept the elections
and won control of Congress, then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)
blasted the Democratic leadership for trying to ram health-care
reform legislation through Congress without giving the minority
party a chance to be heard. "It is fundamentally wrong for
America," he said, "for people who are supposed to be elected
every two years, who are supposed to be sensitive to the
concerns and the needs of the American people, to deliberately
and ruthlessly run roughshod over the American people."
But in the eight years that House Republicans have been in the
majority, they've perfected the methods they once denounced --
and backed off promises to improve the system. On bills such as
welfare reform, the extension of unemployment benefits and the
recent omnibus appropriations, Republicans have stopped
Democrats from offering amendments on the floor and, in effect,
made the House a one-horse show. "They've really shut down the
place," says Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a 12-term veteran.
"The House of Representatives is not in any way a deliberative
body anymore."
Even some Republicans are complaining. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)
told
The Hill
he was furious that party leaders "waived the rules giving us
three days to look" at the 3,000-page appropriations bill in
February. Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) said the Republican
decision not to allow Democrats to offer amendments on a
prescription-drug bill last year was "indefensible." The
situation is no better in the Senate. At the end of February,
Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)
violated a decades-old rule whereby at least one senator from
the minority party has to vote with the majority before debate
on judicial nominations can be cut off in committee. Democrats
honored this rule when they were in the majority, and
Republicans repeatedly used it to block nominees. In recent
committee proceedings, no Democrats moved to end debate, but
Hatch ended discussion and sent the nominations of three circuit
court judges to the Senate floor. "I'm not going to put up with
any more obstructionism," he huffed.
Republicans have also talked about using the budget process to
push substantive changes that would weaken Medicaid and Head
Start by turning them from federal entitlements into capped
block grants. Most changes in a budget bill require 60 votes
instead of a simple majority. And because no filibusters are
allowed on the budget, it's the perfect vehicle for extreme
Republican measures.
The budget process was intended to allocate funds to federal
programs, not to substitute for the process of legislating. In
effect, Republicans are circumventing the normal means of
enacting legislation, in which proposed changes are vetted in
committee and ordinary citizens, experts, and political
supporters and opponents have a chance to weigh in. To grease
the skids, Budget Committee Chairman Don Nickles (R-Okla.) has
purged from his committee party moderates such as Gordon Smith
(R-Ore.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) who might have had second
thoughts. And it could all happen very quickly: Nickles has said
he wants the Senate to act on the budget by mid-April.
Of course, while ruling the House for 40 years, Democrats used
their fair share of procedural tactics to push bills through.
During this time, Republicans often said Democrats were
"gagging" GOP members by stopping them from offering amendments
on the floor. But a recent report from Democrats on the House
Committee on Rules -- which decides how much time bills are
given on the floor and who can offer amendments -- said
Republican actions are "far more egregious than any taken by
Democrats in the past." A few cases in point: When the House
considered the No Child Left Behind Act, only eight of the 77
amendments Democrats offered were debated; just five of the 106
amendments they put forth on the Securing America's Future
Energy Act were heard. Keep in mind, too, that the committee has
nine Republicans to four Democrats. As the Democrats' report
states, "We consider this trend to be dangerously close to a
willful silencing of those voices that do not share the point of
view of the Republican leadership."
The situation is only getting worse. In the past, Democrats were
at least able to count on getting their views across at the
committee level. But rules adopted at the start of the 108th
Congress limited their ability to force votes even there.
Committee chairs can now postpone a vote on an amendment until
they are sure they have the votes to win. That means that even
though Democrats can offer alternatives at the committee level,
their proposals won't necessarily get a fair hearing.
Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who became House majority leader in
January, is largely to blame for squelching the minority
opinion. His brass-knuckle tactics have made Republicans afraid
to cross party leaders on procedural votes so that moderate
Republicans -- a potential block of swing voters -- never have
to choose on difficult, substantive amendments; they can thus
avoid casting tough votes and instead toe the party line. As
Frank explains it, "They vote for procedures that prevent
amendments from coming to the floor. Then they vote for the
bills unamended and say, 'Well, I had no choice. I would have
been in favor of an amendment, but it wasn't offered.'"
The fact that Republicans actually picked up seats in last
fall's election has only emboldened them, as shown by the new
rule changes. As Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), the ranking member on
the House Committee on Appropriations, told
The Washington Times
in January, "We don't expect to win, but we do expect to be able
to at least offer amendments so the two parties can define their
differences."
"What are they afraid of?" House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
(D-Calif.) asks of the Republicans. "That reasonable, bipartisan
solutions might prevail?"
BESIDES CAUSING DEMOCRATS FRUStration, what's the effect of
having such a one-sided debate? Plenty. In the prescription-drug
bill that passed the House last June, for example, the
government would have given subsidies to insurance companies and
allowed them to change premiums and other coverage. The
Democratic alternative, which wasn't allowed on the floor, would
have given everyone the same premiums and benefits. (The GOP
bill was ultimately never signed into law, but some version of
it will be back later this year, and Republicans are likely to
employ similar tactics.) On the omnibus appropriations bill,
many lawmakers are just now finding out what exactly was in it
-- even though they already voted on it. Funding for important
programs such as community policing and adult job training
declined. Important areas that Republicans claim to want to
fund, such as education, got shortchanged.
Democrats have also been forced to vote for bills that they
would otherwise oppose. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the House
minority whip, voted for the appropriations measure even though
he was deeply unhappy about what he called the "worst process"
he'd seen in 22 years. (By the time the bill passed the House,
the current fiscal year was more than 4 months old, and
lawmakers had little choice but to pass a bloated bill.)
Playing games with the rules process has another harmful effect:
It increases partisan acrimony in an already contentious
chamber. "It's my way or the highway, take it or leave it on
this legislation," said Rep. Jan
Schakowsky
(D-Ill.) in characterizing the prevailing mood. Party-line votes
are becoming increasingly common in the House. The rules changes
in January -- which also included permitting lawmakers to accept
free trips to "charitable" events at resorts and allowing
staffers to eat free pizza catered by special-interest groups --
were approved 221-to-203. A Democratic effort to add funds to
help New York City recover after September 11 and to bolster
defense and homeland security in November of 2001 was defeated
216-to-211. Republicans and Democrats have little reason to try
to forge consensus when they're constantly at extremes.
Yet the most disturbing result is the most far-reaching: By
crafting bills that include the input of only one party,
Republicans are disenfranchising Democratic lawmakers -- and the
millions of people who sent them to Congress. It's a matter that
concerned then-Rep. Gerald B. H. Solomon (R-N.Y.) in 1993. "The
people and their representatives are not even being treated as
second-class citizens; they might as well not be citizens at all
given how little impact they have on shaping legislation in the
House," he said. "If that is not undemocratic, I would like to
know what is . . . " When Solomon became Rules Committee
chairman at the start of the 104th Congress, he vowed that his
committee would allow for an open amendment process in 70
percent of the bills reaching the House floor. In the 107th
Congress, just 28 percent of those bills were open to amendment.
SO WHAT CAN DEMOCRATS DO? FOR one thing, they can get out in
front of Republican proposals. If Democrats aren't able to have
as much say at the end of the process, they should make every
effort to have more input at the beginning. They did that by
unveiling their economic-stimulus plan before President Bush
released his proposal, and also by giving a "prebuttal" to the
State of the Union address. Democrats can hold more press
conferences to call attention to positions that aren't getting
heard on the floor, and they can raise issues more vociferously
in committee.
But real change isn't likely to come until Democrats win back
control of Congress, and with it the committee chairmanships and
the ability to set the legislative agenda. The House, as Rutgers
University political scientist Ross Baker describes it, is "one
of the principal examples of majority tyranny in the United
States." The minority party doesn't have many options. And with
the Senate in Republican hands, House Democrats can no longer
rely on their Senate counterparts to moderate bills or kill
them. That means there won't be a truly open debate on Capitol
Hill until at least 2005. |
|
| |
|
|
|
