John Fund has an interesting article on Congressional shenanigans and heavy-handed parliamentary rule in the House of Representatives. In some respects, he notes, this is nothing new, and it's not getting any better:
The breakdown has been a long time coming. In the 1980s, after almost 40 years of control, House Democrats had become arrogant and casually exercised the near-absolute power that body gives the majority. In 1985, Democrats insisted on handing a disputed Indiana House seat to the Democratic incumbent by a four-vote margin despite clear evidence that ballots had been handled in a completely arbitrary way during a special recount by a House task force. In 1987, Speaker Jim Wright held open a budget vote for an extra 10 minutes in a frantic effort to convince someone to change his vote. The maneuver prompted then-Rep. Dick Cheney to call Mr. Wright "a heavy-handed son of a bitch."
Republicans didn't act any better during the reign of Majority Leader Tom DeLay. In 2003, a massive Medicare prescription drug entitlement was passed only after a vote was held open for three hours at 3 a.m. as Mr. DeLay strong-armed reluctant GOP members into voting for it. Votes were held open at least a dozen times during the last years of the Republicans' troubled control of the House.
Democrats issued a report in early 2006 pointing out the abuses of GOP rule. None other than Newt Gingrich admitted that he thought his party was too dismissive of the rights of the minority and risked a backlash if Democrats regained control.
Indeed, that happened with stunning speed after the GOP's fall from power last November. Despite Ms. Pelosi's pledge that "we would have the most honest and open government," the new majority quickly adopted a whatever-it-takes approach to passing legislation. Last week alone, a dubious ethics bill was passed less than 24 hours after being introduced. The bill expanding health-care coverage to children was rewritten at 1 a.m., a rule harshly limiting debate was passed at 3 a.m., and the bill was sent to the floor for a final vote the same day.
Fund argues that it is in the interest of both parties to stop the infighting, but offers no reason to be particularly optimistic.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Congressional Shenanigans:
- Disorder in the House:
John Fund, known for his non-partisan commentaries for noticeably left-wing opinion pages within the WSJ, says the following:
What the Democratic party is doing in the House now is as bad as what the Republicans did when they had power. But, you can't blame the Republicans, because hey- the Democrats really started it in the 1980s. And the solution? Well, the Democrats should roll over.
Allow me to list the problems with this analysis:
1. The Democratic leadership of the House is as bad as the Republican leadership of the House in the 1990s.
-No. The House is a majoritarian body. What the Democrats are doing is in keeping with the history, however, they have been much more 'fair' than the Republicans at the committee level and in other ways (allowing an investigation) than the Republicans were. This is a false equivalency.
2. The Republicans leadership of the 1990s-2000s was just the same as the Democratic leadership of the House in the 1980s.
-No. Everyone (Gingrich included) acknowledges that the Republicans, via parliamentary maneuvers and other procedures (K Street project) took this to a whole new level that was unprecedented. Let us use the cherrypicked example- keeping the vote open for ten minutes in an unsuccessful attempt to win a vote, versus keeping the vote open for three hours (however long it takes) in order to successfully strongarm a vote.
3. The solution is for the Democrats to play nice.
-No. The house is a majoritarian body. The Democrats have brought the House back to the point where is used to be. Oh yes, his party was in power. What's that saying? Elections have consequences. When the Democrats starts their own K Street project, when they have a Hammer, when they are keeping votes open for three hours so they can threaten lawmakers to change their votes, when they are shutting down ethics investigations, when they are shutting Republicans out of the committees, then I might listen to John Fund. But where was he when the Republicans were in control?
The real story is this:
1. Both houses passed ethics reform legislation by wide margins. Since the bills were not identical, however, a conference committee was required to harmonize the two versions.
2. The Republican leadership in the Senate refused, for several months, to appoint any members to the conference committee, effectively consigning the bill to limbo. This is a procedural trick you may not have heard of before - they either didn't have the votes to filibuster, or weren't willing to go on record as filibustering ethics reform legislation, so they pretended to support the bill but then refused to let the conference committee go forward.
3. After months of delay, the Democrats decided to move the bill forward. House and Senate Democrats sat down together and worked out an acceptable compromise between the two versions.
4. The Democrats re-introduced the compromise bill in both houses, where it again passed by wide margins.
About the only breach of protocol in this whole scenario is that the Republicans weren't included in the process where the House and Senate versions were harmonized. I'm not sure how many people know this, but it was completely routine during the last several Congresses for the Republican majority to unilaterally exclude the Democrats altogether from conference committees whenever the mood struck them. But in any event, the only reason the Democrats were forced to do it on their own in this case is because the Republicans refused to designate any of their own members to attend the conference committee.
Now, I wouldn't have expected John Fund to go through this whole explanation, but it's a little stunning to see him try to blame the breakdown of this process on the Democrats. If the Republicans had behaved normally, there would have been a conference committee months ago and a compromise bill would have already been signed into law. The shenanigans in this case were solely on the GOP side of the aisle.
Nevertheless, if you support the Republican party as it stands today: there is something seriously wrong with you.
Well, there are some posters who object when the "score" -- or, to use a more accurate word, "history - is grossly misrepresented, or at least feel it's worth it to set the record straight. Not the most important topic in the world, probably an inside-baseball/the beltway issue and all that, but Fund invited correction by being wrong in the first place.
The Dems chose to ignore the rule which says that when a vote is declared final it is final. Why, because they made a mistake.
You, and John Fund, can make all he excuses you want but the fact of the matter is the Dems have taken this to a whole new level.
The Democrats know what they did was illegal because Steny Hoyer is on record as saying that "We" the Democrats, will rule on this, not the neutral Parliamentarian. You know, the person employed to rule on questions of parliamentary procedure.
The Congressional solution - a panel to review and produce a report. What is there to review? it was all recorded by C-span. One year to review a tape.
Baseball anyone?
You're at risk here of seeing what you want to see.
In fact, there are major differences between the way that the Republican majority ran the House in previous Congresses under Dennis Hastert and Tom Delay, and the way that the current Democratic majority is operating under Nancy Pelosi.
The House Republicans ran a tighter ship ... and arguably were more-effective because of it. In particular, Hastert and Delay did not allow bills onto the floor unless suppported by a majority of the Republican caucus.
The current Speaker evidently doesn't have the same policy. For example, only two days ago, House Republicans joined by 41 Democrats passed a major bill opposed by the Speaker and the Democratic caucus (S 1927, the 'Protect America Act'). That's a pretty weak display of brute-force partisan control by Speaker and/or caucus ... Tom Delay would be contemptuous.
Unless you or John Fund can offer analogous examples from the Hastert-Delay period, I think you're kidding yourselves.
You'd do better examining the relative merits of Hastert-Delay's tight-ship vs. Pelosi's free-form approaches. Each has advantages and disadvantages. For example, the Hastert-Delay approach gave a clearer/harder edge to policy, especially on 'wedge issues'. Did that provide short-run gain but leave Republicans in swing districts exposed to voter retribution in the long run? Conversely, will voters ultimately see the Pelosi approach as wimpish and ineffectual?
And by the way, thanks for the Cheney quote. Him calling anybody a "heavy-handed son of a bitch" is priceless.
And didn't Nicholas Longworth do something as GOP speaker that I should not like?
And didn't the Whigs once . . .
Yeah, politicians play politics. I am shocked.
Just curious - do you have any evidence at all for this "fairness" at committee level? Or is this simply another bald assertion?
Dems attempted to claim the moral high ground last year, arguing that they would run the most ethical and open Congress in history. But that rhetorical flourish is only as good as Dems can now make it in the majority. To be perfectly cynical: Republicans never claimed to run an open House, so Democrats' charge that "you did it to us!" rings somewhat hollow.
The Democrats do have a problem though. Their majority is based on swing districts, many, if not most, of which voted for Bush in 2004. That means that their House leadership can only apply a limited amount of pressure on them, since if these Members hew to the party line, they are likely to lose their seats in the next election. And, thus, we see FISA reform passing, despite opposition by the Democratic House leadership.
Here is a simple question to test Fund's motives: Was he complaining about abuses when the Republicans had the majority? Was Adler?
Though, the problem here is that the Democrats ran their last campaign on being more ethical than the GOP and claimed they would do things more fairly when they were in charge of the House. Smart people knew they were full of shit, but some people actually voted for them on that basis. They should, then, keep their campaign promises and if they don't, that should be pointed out.
Of course, Dem members of the House are being pushed by the loony left, a politically immature group full of angry ideological crazies who are out to censor their opponents and who demand instant policy gratification (like socialized health care, immeidate Iraq troop withdrawal and impeachment of the whole Bush administration). That kind of ideological pressure simply wasn't the case before when the Dems ran the house, or even when the GOP ran the house.
I'd also point out that the Senate Dems treatment of Bush judicial nominees is highly irrational and unprecedented in American political history. You can't blame the GOP for that.
A few decades ago, most reporters didn't get a byline [their name over a story]. A story was reported for its news value. The paper that routinely scooped other paper with news reports got bragging rights and increased its circulation.
But things changed, especially after newbie reporters Woodward & Bernstein created their news accounts about Nixon. Every reporter wanted his/her name broadcast, and newspapers in general complied [a current exception is the Economist; that's why its reporting is much more objective than TIME, Newsweek, etc. Its reporters have no incentive to sensationalize, and if they do, their un-named editors keep them in check].
The result? Reporters 'enhance' their reports, and often completely fabricate quotes from 'unnamed sources.' Some create 'fake but accurate' documents that are passed off as ''news.'' Publishers promote this sensationalism because it sells papers. Everyone wins -- except readers who want the unvarnished facts.
What we get instead is opinion and propaganda by putative reporters.
After all, everyone wants their name in lights. No matter what it takes.
Wish I'd said that, but I have to credit Mark Twain.
From the article
It is hard to square those points in the article with loki13 opinion of what the article said (his comments in block quotes).
'Column' has the context of an opinion piece; the other two terms need either adjectives or other specific context to make clear whether one means 'opinion piece' or 'news piece'.
I was pointing out the false equivalency in the article. As you ably pointed out, yes Virginia, the article is full of false equivalencies. The Democrats today are 'as bad' as the Republicans were (false), but the Republicans (ably led in spirit if not in rank by Mr. DeLay) were only doing what the Democrats were really responsible for (also false).
You might want to note that the blockquoted section immediately followed the part about John Fund's nonpartisanship and the WSJ's liberal leanings...
Dude... are you being sarcastic?
Dude, I don't even know any more.
. . .
As for the linked article, why is it that in political reporting it's proper to point to a specific incident or two and then make broad generalizations? There isn’t a bit of rigorous analysis in the linked piece supporting the idea that the Democrats are acting as bad as the Republicans were before -- or even that things are “bad” now. Perhaps that’s true, but the author doesn’t make the case. So given that, Alder, why is this article “particularly interesting”? I see nothing of interest in it except unsupported assertions weaved together to support “conventional wisdom” about how “bad” things are now and how bad things have been in the past. Indeed, the two latest democrat “bad” incidents (which, with some hand waving and hocus pocus, I guess are supposed to be a trend) are much more complicated than the article makes it appear. Again, maybe they are evidence of something sinister going on, but the article doesn’t even attempt to honestly and rigorously make that case.
The real problem here is our appallingly bad press -- liberal, conservative, whatever. It’s embarrassing. From the poor writing, to the thoughtless analysis, to the media’s race to embrace and find stories to support conventional wisdom, it’s essentially useless. Why do these people have jobs opining on anything? And then you have people who should ostensibly know better (I’m looking at you Professor Alder) who help peddle this nonsense.
Indeed, lets suppose (perhaps counter factually) that the democrats have been a huge improvement ethically over the last Republican-run Congress. But let’s assume that they, because they’re human, have made some mistakes, including the two cited incidents. Realizing that they have made some mistakes, they set up an investigation (unprecedented for something so trivial) to figure out what happened. The media is still going to try to portray those two incidents as part of a trend, because it’s conventional wisdom that members of Congress misbehave. So now what political pressure do members of Congress have to behave? Whether they’re relatively ethical or not, the same articles are going to be written.
Well said.
Surely you gest?
They set up a committee to get this out of the way.
What is to decide, they have everything on tape. It doesn't take a year to review the tape.
Are you joking? You may as well ask why scientists insist on using beakers and test tubes.
Given that Congressional approval ratings have reached all time lows and make Bush seem popular by comparision, the public seem to be less impressed with the current Democrat controlled Congress than many of the commenters here.
And re: the proposed
Potemkin villagecommittee. The only way this committe's report will have any legitimacy at all is if it is composed of 50/50 Democrats/Republicans. Allowing each Party to nominate the committee members must be done in the interst of fairness; much like plaintiff/defense each gets an equal shot at selecting a jury.But knowing Steny Hoyer's side of the aisle, we all know what will happen instead.
In Smokey's view, there's almost no such thing as straight news anymore. Agree or disagree with Smokey, that's a substantive question, different from my usage question. Perhaps people are wrong to make a distinction between news and opinion, but certainly people do.
Thanks for the info, I wasn't following this closely. However...
Who picked the committe members?
So for efficiency, I'll just throw in a few tit-fot-tats from each side. You said that
Unprecedented, of course,
in the sense that the GOP did far worse to Clinton's judicial nominees in the 1990s?
Righty: What do you mean? We confirmed Ginsburg 96-3 even after you all Borked Bork and almost stopped Thomas 52-48.
Lefty: But Orrin Hatch told Clinton he'd be OK with someone moderate like Ginsburg; Clinton didn't go far out of the mainstream like these right-wing nominees.
Righty: Moderate? She was an activist lawyer for the ACLU and feminist causes. And White was an anti-Roe vote, so this was a big balance shift.
Lefty: She's still more moderate than Thomas or Alito. Besides, you're obsessing on the Supremes, while Hatch and the GOP did theirt dirty work on the other nominees, like race-baiting Ronnie White.
Righty: At least he got an up-or-down vote. Filibusters were unprecedented. Estrada got screwed.
Lefty: Filibusters came along only because blue-slips weren't available. At least filibusters were open. Hatch's team blue-slipped many good nominees who never got even a committe hearing, let alone an up-or-down vote.
Righty: Even if the GOP did it in the Clinton years, it was still just payback for before. Wasn't John Roberts left hanging after his first circuit nomination under Bush I?
Lefty: The Federalist Society is a vast confirmation conspiracy.
Righty: Chuck Schumer is a vast ego.
Lefty: And now we go to commercial.
Righty: Keep watching us on the Volokh Commentariat Gang.
(fade)
Machine guns have been banned since the 20s.i
Besides, it takes two to tango. When one side is intent on destroying the country, it sort of takes the luster away from cooperation.
Only full-autos manufactured after 1986 are barred from registration. Silencers, Destructive Devices, SBRs and SBSs are still covered by the NFA (and all the attendant paperwork) but not the 1986 cut-off.
Except where state laws say otherwise...