In the days since the economic “stimulus” vote, Republicans have been grousing about the Democratic congressional leadership’s failure to observe its own rule that representatives should have at least 48 hours to read, analyze and ponder their position on a bill before it’s actually brought up for a vote.
Those interested in House procedures, transparency and a rational approach to such matters have a point. Only hours after the full House voted that the final bill would be posted on-line for 48 hours prior to a vote, the Democratic leadership met secretly without any Republican members present to draft the bill that would be sent to the House floor for a vote.
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Democratic leaders finally let their colleagues see their handiwork at about 11:00 pm the night before the vote, which gave people very little time to read and consider a bill that ran to more than 1,000 pages. As a result, no one really knew much about what was or was not in the bill when they cast their vote.
I must confess that my first reaction to this was to wonder just who needed two full days to decide how to vote on this turkey anyway. Most Democrats were prepared to vote with their leaders regardless; virtually all Republicans believed deep in their bones that the package was little more than a wrong-headed spending bill that would neither end the recession, nor pass the giggle test with voters once its details became public.
On the other hand, those who voted for it would seem to me to have some obligation to have at least an inkling of what they were foisting on an unsuspecting public. After 9/11, a fully bipartisan Congress passed the so-called USA Patriot Act without anyone reading it, only to have to revisit the legislation when liberals and conservatives alike got queasy for different reasons about what they had done.
It is an unfortunate fact that anyone who’s spent much time around Congress knows that the number of members who read much of anything they vote on can be counted on one hand.
Usually, a bill that makes it to the House floor has been vetted by members who do know and understand the industry they are regulating and what’s in the bill. Hearings are held and members get sub-committee and committee reports that detail the pros and cons of a bill’s various provisions before they are actually asked to vote.
Lobbyists who support, oppose or want to tweak its language descend upon the member and his or her staff to argue their case, and major legislation is dissected in public by news organizations and experts before it ever reaches the committee, and before and during the floor debates, for the rare bills that get to the floor at all.
This legislation was different. We are, according to President Barack Obama and his party’s leaders in Congress, in the midst of an emergency so dire that the usual rules had to be put aside in favor of immediate action.
Thus, no one except those who wrote it saw the bill early enough to have any impact on what was in it or, indeed, even to read it. After all, it ran to more than 1,000 pages and included more spending than any legislation in the history of the United States.
It turns out, as Byron York of The Washington Examiner discovered, even a conferee as senior as Iowa’s Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley was kept in the dark about whether a number of troublesome provisions were in the bill or not.
Perhaps this should all be brought to the attention of those who, like Sarah Brady of Handgun Control, argues that Americans shouldn’t be able to purchase firearms without being forced to wait for three days to take delivery.
The theory is that by imposing a waiting or cooling off period, potentially hot-headed firearms purchasers will have time to contemplate and thus avoid using their new gun in ways that they might later regret.
A handgun or even a baseball bat in the hands of the unhinged can be dangerous enough, but neither are capable of inflicting the damage society suffers regularly at the hands of emotionally out-of-control congressmen running amuck and casting votes without thinking.
I happen to oppose the three-day waiting period for handgun purchases, but in the spirit of post-partisanship I could support a three-day waiting or cooling off period for irresponsible senators and House members.
I’m even thinking about having bumper strips printed up to remind us all that “A Congressman with a vote is more dangerous than a redneck with a gun.”
David Keene is president of the American Conservative Union (ACU).
