“Gridlock” does not even come close to describing the atmosphere in the U.S. Senate these days. “Obstructionism” comes closer, but that implies that the lack of action on simple measures is the fault of one party or the other. Behind the constant back and forth between Senate Republicans and Democrats about how it’s the other party’s fault, it is clear that there is something very wrong with the Senate today.
Arguments to the contrary miss the point: the Framers of the Constitution may have intended the Senate to be a deliberative body, but there’s a difference between “deliberative” and “do-nothing,” and lately what used to be considered the world’s greatest deliberative body has been turned into a sideshow. Nothing happens that isn’t scripted, there are no swing votes and there is no more compromise.
A perfect example of the Senate’s dysfunction came earlier this year when the Senate was unable to vote on a bill to continue the Small Business Investment Research (SBIR) fund. All that the fund does is require federal agencies to set aside 2.5% of their grant money and give it to small businesses to spur research and innovation in business. That doesn’t sound too controversial, does it? It’s using government money, which Democrats like, and it’s supporting small business, which Republicans like: everyone’s happy, pass it and move on. Except that’s not what happened.
When the bill was on the floor, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to allow a vote on Senator Olympia Snowe’s amendment to the bill, which dealt with business regulations, because he claimed it was too broad and hadn’t been properly vetted by the Senate Small Business Committee. In response to Reid’s refusal to allow a vote on the amendment, Republicans refused to vote to bring the whole bill up for a final vote and so it died.
Naturally, both sides were quick to blame the other. Democrats said that it was irresponsible of Snowe to bring the amendment to the floor because it bypassed typical Senate procedures and Senator Reid not-so-subtly accused Snowe of pandering to her constituents ahead of her 2012 reelection campaign (this was the first of two occasions within a month of each other that Reid publicly berated a colleague on the Senate floor, the second being his argument with Senator Rand Paul over the Patriot Act extension that passed last week). Republicans fired back, claiming that Reid was constantly refusing to allow amendments from Republican senators on the Senate floor, a charge that, while slightly overblown, does have some merit. Reid has had a pattern the last few years of “filling the amendment tree,” a process that allows him to consider only Democratic amendments to bills and ignore Republican ones. At the start of this year, Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed that if Reid allowed Republican amendments, then Republicans would stop blocking debate on bills; so far, though, that agreement doesn’t appear to be working to anyone’s satisfaction.
As I said before, “obstructionism” doesn’t cover what’s going on here; that would imply that one party is doing all the obstructing. Republicans, for their part, are indeed blocking bills from coming up for votes and exploiting procedural rules to stop the flow of legislation through the Senate, essentially holding the chamber hostage unless their demands are met. They are, effectively, preventing democratic governance by majority rule.
For blame on the Democrats’ side, one needs to look no further than Leader Reid. To be fair, Reid has gotten his fair share of criticism in the past for being too accommodating to Senate Republicans and letting them walk all over Democratic priorities. But lately he’s crossed the fine line between holding his ground on ideals and just obstruction for obstruction’s sake. I realize that he doesn’t want to allow the Republicans to claim a victory at his expense, but remember that this was not a controversial bill. Instead of either working with Snowe to come up with a solution, or just allowing a vote and getting his own majority to reject the amendment, Reid decided to just try to ignore the fact that it existed. And so much for Senate collegiality: during his argument with Snowe on the Senate floor, he accused her of wanting the legislation to fail and said, “If that is what my friend wants on her legislative conscience, that’s fine.” What is this, the Senate, or high school?
The problem with the Senate today is that because of the hyper-partisan society that we live in, there is no incentive to work together to pass anything. These days, candidates brag just as much about stopping the other guy’s ideas as they do about promoting their own. Lawmaking is no longer a give-and-take process – it’s a zero sum game. One side wins and the other side loses and that’s all there is to it. Senate Democrats recently decided not even to write their own budget resolution because it would be open to unlimited Republican amendments; instead, they chose to hold a symbolic vote rejecting the House budget proposal. From the standpoint of actually governing, that strategy leaves a lot to be desired.
In all seriousness, though, this is a frightening problem that isn’t going to go away any time soon. Our political culture isn’t going to change over night, and no one is showing a real inclination to stop profiting from the other party’s failures. I’m an outspoken Democrat and I’ve been furious at Democrats for losing legislative battles many times, but when bills that everyone likes can’t pass because senators are mad at each other, or when legislation isn’t even written because a party is worried about the talking points that will be generated, something is wrong with the system. One thing is for sure: when the only thing the parties can focus on is winning, we all lose.
0 comments:
Post a Comment