Rules, Roll Calls, & Republican Recklessness
"The two of us have been immersed in Washington politics for more than 36 years. We have never seen the culture so sick or the legislative process so dysfunctional. The plea deals of Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, the indictment of Tom DeLay and his resignation as House majority leader, and the demise of Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham notwithstanding, this is not simply a problem of a rogue lobbyist or a pack of them. Nor is it a matter of a handful of disconnected, corrupt lawmakers taking favors in return for official actions.
"The problem starts not with lobbyists but inside Congress. Over the past five years, the rules and norms that govern Congressional deliberation, debate, and voting…have routinely been violated, especially in the House of Representatives, and in ways that mark a dramatic break from custom.
"What has all this got to do with corruption? If you can play fast and loose with the rules of the game in lawmaking, it becomes easier to consider playing fast and loose with everything else, including relations with lobbyists, acceptance of favors, the use of official resources and the discharge of governmental power."
--Norman Ornstein (resident scholar for the American Enterprise Institute), and Thomas E. Mann (senior fellow, Brookings Institute), "If You Give a Congressman a Cookie," New York Times, January 19, 2006.
I'll make it short and sweet. Here are some of the hamhanded tactics the Republican majority in Congress has used to ramrod its policies through. Keep in mind that not every single solitary Congressman is a Republican. Nearly half are Democrats. That means they represent nearly half of the voters in this county. So if one Congressman is frozen out, then all his or her constituents are frozen out as well.
Roll Call Votes and Rule Violations
1. Roll call votes, which are supposed to take fifteen minutes or so, frequently stretch out to two or three hours. Any dissent is stifled, any debate quashed.
2. Omnibus bills, sometimes thousands of pages long, are brought to the floor with no notice, though the rules require at least 72 hours.
3. Conference committees exclude minority members and cut deals in private, sometimes adding major provisions after the conference has closed.
4. Majority Republicans bypass normal procedures and ignore objections. They then reframe substantive issues as procedural matters.
5. When the Republican chairman and two Republican members of the House ethics committee reprimanded Republican majority leader Tom DeLay for at least THREE violations of standards, House Speaker Dennis Hastert fired them all and appointed two members who had given large sums to Tom Delay's defense fund (which was defending him, at the time, for the matter before the committee.)
K Street Corruption
I'll get into this in more detail later, but suffice it to say that the same Republican majority leader Tom DeLay created the K Street Project, to quote Ornstein and Mann in their article, "used its governmental power to demand that trade associations and lobbying groups fire Democratic lobbyists and hire designated Republicans, who could then be expected to show their gratitude by contributing generously to party candidates and committees."
The primary donor being Jack Abromoff.
"The problem starts not with lobbyists but inside Congress. Over the past five years, the rules and norms that govern Congressional deliberation, debate, and voting…have routinely been violated, especially in the House of Representatives, and in ways that mark a dramatic break from custom.
"What has all this got to do with corruption? If you can play fast and loose with the rules of the game in lawmaking, it becomes easier to consider playing fast and loose with everything else, including relations with lobbyists, acceptance of favors, the use of official resources and the discharge of governmental power."
--Norman Ornstein (resident scholar for the American Enterprise Institute), and Thomas E. Mann (senior fellow, Brookings Institute), "If You Give a Congressman a Cookie," New York Times, January 19, 2006.
I'll make it short and sweet. Here are some of the hamhanded tactics the Republican majority in Congress has used to ramrod its policies through. Keep in mind that not every single solitary Congressman is a Republican. Nearly half are Democrats. That means they represent nearly half of the voters in this county. So if one Congressman is frozen out, then all his or her constituents are frozen out as well.
Roll Call Votes and Rule Violations
1. Roll call votes, which are supposed to take fifteen minutes or so, frequently stretch out to two or three hours. Any dissent is stifled, any debate quashed.
2. Omnibus bills, sometimes thousands of pages long, are brought to the floor with no notice, though the rules require at least 72 hours.
3. Conference committees exclude minority members and cut deals in private, sometimes adding major provisions after the conference has closed.
4. Majority Republicans bypass normal procedures and ignore objections. They then reframe substantive issues as procedural matters.
5. When the Republican chairman and two Republican members of the House ethics committee reprimanded Republican majority leader Tom DeLay for at least THREE violations of standards, House Speaker Dennis Hastert fired them all and appointed two members who had given large sums to Tom Delay's defense fund (which was defending him, at the time, for the matter before the committee.)
K Street Corruption
I'll get into this in more detail later, but suffice it to say that the same Republican majority leader Tom DeLay created the K Street Project, to quote Ornstein and Mann in their article, "used its governmental power to demand that trade associations and lobbying groups fire Democratic lobbyists and hire designated Republicans, who could then be expected to show their gratitude by contributing generously to party candidates and committees."
The primary donor being Jack Abromoff.
posted by Deanie Mills at 3:28 PM
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