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David Harsanyi: Actually, Process Does Matter
The Democratic Party believes so deeply in the will of the American people that it may courageously not vote on a bill that it couldn’t pass.
It was The Washington Post that recently compressed the absurdities of the Democrats’ plan to control your health care into a single amusing headline: “House may try to pass Senate health-care bill without voting on it.”
For the typical American, this may sound counterintuitive — or perhaps inconceivable — but as Democrats continue to display a creative knack for legislative swindling, a question has emerged: Are voters, by and large, concerned about the “process,” or do they care more about outcomes?
This query becomes more significant as Democrats continue to abandon their defense of “deem and pass” — when the House deems a bill passed without actually voting on it — and make a far more dangerous case. How we pass legislation doesn’t matter, they say, as long as the cause is just. Don’t worry; in the end, you’ll learn to love it. (Boy, I wonder whether history offers any clues as to where that kind of logic leads.)
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said: “We talk a lot about process in this town. ... ‘So what?’ says the American public. ... ‘What did you do for me and my family to make my life more secure and better and greater quality?’”
President Barack Obama believes citizens are indifferent to “procedural” spats. “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about what the procedural rules are in the House or the Senate,” Obama told Fox News’ Bret Baier, asserting that it is frustrating to see the “focus entirely” on process. “It was ugly when Republicans were in charge,” he went on to say, “(and) it was ugly when Democrats were in charge.”
Actually, in the case of health-care legislation, the ugly substance of the legislation creates the ugly process. The two issues are inseparable. The process is corrupted, as the advocates have no other path for passage.
This particular process, cobbled together in an effort to bypass the will of voters and protect cowardly legislators, then becomes vitally important.
No wonder Obama admits, perhaps unwittingly, that he’s uneasy about all the focus on what’s going on. To deflect attention, he turns to a childish rationalization: Hey, those guys did it, too!
Let’s concede that Democrats are correct in calling out duplicitous and hypocritical GOPers. Does dredging up instances of Republican chicanery now validate the use of your own scams to pass “the most important piece of social legislation since the Social Security Act” (the president’s own characterization)?
Even on those terms, Democrats have yet to make a solid case. After all, not all legislation is created equal. No Republican “deem-and-pass” case comes remotely close to being used for “the most important bill most of us will ever pass” (per House Speaker Nancy Pelosi).
On Thursday, Democrats voted down a bipartisan attempt to force Congress to take an old-fashioned up-or-down vote on the Senate health-care bill, as it would on nearly any other significant piece of legislation.
Perhaps the House still will elect to vote on the Senate bill as is without any gimmicks. If not, the constitutionality of “deem and pass” in this configuration almost certainly will be challenged.
However the challenge pans out, we shouldn’t forget that the process matters. Sometimes process is vital in protecting the American people from the abuses of majoritarians and crusading tyrants. Other times, it is used by those very people to circumvent pesky constitutional restrictions.
And in this case, the process is only a reflection of the ugly legislation that makes it possible.
— David Harsanyi is a columnist at The Denver Post and the author of Nanny State. Click here for more information, or click here to contact him.
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» on 03.20.10 @ 09:19 AM
You are absolutely right that process does matter a great deal. For example, if our elected representatives actually acted in the interests of voters and taxpayers instead of the lobbyists paid for by big business, we’d have a real health care bill that would include a public option and provisions similar to all the other industrialized nations. But then, our process of governance is broken due to a lack of campaign finance rules and runaway corruption.
We would also have seen vigorous and informed debate of the issues meaningful to health care reform in our mainstream news media instead of the phony, avoid-the-truth-at-all-costs nonsense that now passes for public policy debate in this country. But then, the process of ensuring that our news organizations follow long established journalistic standards is broken due to lax FCC regulation that has resulted in a concentration of media ownership by huge corporations that only want news that represents their interests.
So, yes, “process” is vitially important to ensuring the citizenry is not cheated and lied to as we are all too often these days.
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» on 03.20.10 @ 04:41 PM
Respectfully disagree.
Last year, the Republican congressional “leadership” emerged from a secret
caucus to proclaim their “total opposition” to any significant health reform.
As Senator Jim (“Einstein”) DeMint, of the sovereign state of Joe (“You Lie!” )Wilson’s South Carolina publicly proclaimed, “If we (the Republicans) play it right, this will be Obama’s Waterloo.”
Anyone remember that the Senate wasted three (3) months trying to get just
three (3) Republican co-sponsors for ANY health reform bill, and came up dry?
Why use these parliamentary sleight-of-hand tricks (so popular in the Gingrich-Bush years) in the first place?
Because there is not a single Republican in either branch of Congress
will stand up in favor of health care reform.
Sure, Mitch McConnell keeps saying, “Let’s start over, and do it right.”
But what does that really mean?
During the fourteen (14) years Mitch’s party was in power, they never found the
“right time” to “start” on “health reform” at all.
They never got a bill. Never brought it to the floor. Never allowed an up-or-down “majority” vote. Nada.
Is that surprising, for the party that sold itself to the insurance and Pharma
lobbies years ago? No.
The Party of “No!” also opposed bank reform after the Crash in the ‘30s. Opposed creation of the Securities & Exchange Commission.
Opposed creation of Social Security.
Many opposed “Lend Lease” to help Britain and Russia stave off Hitler until we
entered the war. Opposed the “GI Bill” and the “Marshall Plan”.
Opposed LBJ’s Civil Rights legislation too.
Most members of the Party of “No!” also opposed Medicare when it was created in the 1960s as “a socialist plot against private medicine”.
Isn’t it funny that some now try to position themselves as the “guardians”
of Medicare today?
If McConnell hadn’t promised to filibuster ANY Democratic health reform bill
brought to the floor, the “61 vote” margin would not have been necessary.
If Boehner had not promised to “hurt really bad” ANY House Republican who
endorsed the House bill, would Pelosi be wheeling and dealing like this now?
But hey, the SEC and Social Security happened without them. So did Lend/Lease
and the GI Bill and the Marshall Plan. So did the Civil Rights and Voting Rights
Act. So did Medicare.
The nation did NOT go broke, or go “Red”. The sky did not fall.
The Party of “No!” is on the wrong side of history on way too many social, civil
rights, immigration, environmental, public health, and regulatory issues.
They may or may not do well in this fall’s bi-elections, but the embarrassment
of their reactionary positions will survive in history books for years to come.
IF health reform passes, and actually works, in a few years, no one will
remember what ridiculous tricks (and begging) it took Congress to make it
happen.
If it doesn’t work, it won’t matter whether St. Peter and St. Paul were the bill’s
“co-sponsors”, will it?
But as we hear every Sunday, isn’t it still better to try to light a candle than to
curse the darkness?
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