Congress will overhaul the tax code soon. But unlike the Reagan tax cuts of the 1980s or the Kennedy tax cuts of the 1960s, this reform lacks bipartisan support. Republicans will write the bill and Republicans will pass it all by themselves. And Democrats are outraged, at least publicly.
Storming out of the House and Senate conference committee to reconcile the bills of both chambers, Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., complained that he “felt like a prop there.” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., condemned the whole thing as “a farce.”
But of course, those reactions are as unsurprising as they are disingenuous. Democrats abandoned bipartisanship long ago when they ran the show.
Rewind to 2009: After winning the White House and helping to secure majorities in Congress, President Obama cut a $787 billion stimulus check. Gestures were made in the name of bipartisanship, symbolic nods to the post-partisan sort of governing that Obama promised on the campaign trail.
The House and the Senate conferenced. Republicans and Democrats haggled over details. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the final plan. But what was the result of the grand bipartisan moment? Resentment from rank-and-file Democrats.
While in the majority, they wanted to press their advantage and hammer the minority. Any concession wasn’t just an inconvenience. It was an affront, a senior leadership aide explained to The Hill. Steamrolling Republicans was the only way to convince House Democrats that “they have a voice, that they are representing their constituents and getting things done the way they were elected to do.”
And so, for that brief window from January 2009 until Republicans retook the House in the 2010 election, bipartisanship was shunned and obstruction welcomed. “Make them filibuster” later became the rallying cry for Democrats.
In this way a new, more cynical political calculus emerged, one where input was shunned and opposition welcomed, because Republican pushback allowed Democrats to dismiss the minority as obstructionist and then push one-sided legislation.
Did the likes of Grijalva and Sanders protest? If so, this writer couldn’t find record of it. Other than when they find themselves in the minority, when have either of those luminaries seriously invited conservatives to amend and improve their liberal legislation?
It seems instead, that Democrats pioneered what Republicans are now employing, and they don’t like it. Go figure.
