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The official Web site of the United States Senate repeatedly references the institution as "the world’s greatest deliberative body," and on each occasion, it does so in quotation marks, as I have just done.
This markup can serve one of two applications: It can add gravitas to the phrase by suggesting either universality or provenance with a famous authority, or it can mean the phrase is intended as a grand joke.
To look upon the work of the Senate today, it must surely be the latter.
A recent article in the The Kansas City Star suggested that a better name might be "the place where ideas go to die."
A good idea died there earlier this week, when the Republican minority put the choke hold on a measure to extend $1.3 billion of stimulus money for a youth summer jobs program.
The amendment was co-sponsored by Washington Democrat Patty Murray and Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry.
In addition to the creation of 500,000 jobs, the bill would have sent another $1.3 billion in stimulus money to extend subsidies for children living below the poverty line.
Forty-five senators – including every Republican – opposed the measure, wherefore came its end.
Sen. Murray futilely called into the darkness that her bill would "invest in critical employment and learning programs that will help not only these young people but the businesses who hire them."
This is the state of our Senate.
A measure to fund job creation, help poor families and put cash in the hands of small business owners using a relatively tiny portion of an enormous stimulus package designed for just such purposes cannot pass.
Judd Gregg, a once-moderate Republican from New Hampshire who now fancies himself a majestic deficit hawk, rallied the opposition.
Gregg, I suppose, is taking a stand against the addition of another dime to the budget deficit no matter what (we shall see).
Short-run budget deficits resulting from actions like the stimulus package or corporate bailouts are not a real threat to our nation’s financial stability (long-run unfunded liabilities are, but that’s another column. No, that’s probably a book. Maybe a series of books.).
In fact, show me an economist who says that short-run deficits are more damaging to the economy than unemployment, and I’ll show you an economist who has probably been paid to say that.
Gregg probably knows that, but he doesn’t care, and neither do his compatriots. They’re practicing simple obstructionism, and they can do it with the greatest of ease, because they are United States Senators.
In the Star article cited above, David Freeman, political scientist at Washburn University, said with regard to the procedural and parliamentary labyrinth of Senate rules and customs: "I don’t think there’s really one single person or even a group of people that can actually figure out what’s going on."
Freeman is onto something here, since it only takes one person to stop anything from happening.
Any senator can stop debate on a measure with a filibuster. To counter a filibuster, 60 votes are required to invoke a cloture motion (and this measure didn’t even exist until 1917 – the horror).
So, in times like these, the Senate operates under a gentlemen’s agreement that 60 votes are required to pass anything, at all, ever, under any circumstances, so that filibusters need not actually be undertaken.
This agreement, by custom, requires unanimous consent, so one senator can object to anything (the agreement, executive nominations and so on) and put everything on hold.
By the way, the Senate is 85 percent male, 97 percent Caucasian, its median age is 63, and 100 percent of its members – to borrow from Sen. John McCain – consider themselves potential candidates for president of the United States.
I, therefore, submit for your consideration this is neither "the world’s greatest deliberative body," nor even any manner of deliberative (or representative) body at all.
It’s a chamber of old, white, wealthy drama queens who want to be noticed.
Gregg might be the worst.
He initially accepted the across-the-aisle nomination for the post of commerce secretary from President Barack Obama, then changed his mind – with every camera in the capital pointed his way – when he said he suddenly realized he and the president had different ideas about taxes and budgeting.
Now, I’d hate to suggest this was a publicity stunt, but was Gregg shaving oxen on a collective farm in Irkutsk for two years before showing up for work at the Department of Commerce?
Gregg knew we’d elected a fiscally liberal Democrat who intended to pump a whole bunch of money into an economic recovery package. Get real.
Recent stunt-work from Sens. Richard Shelby and Jim Bunning suggest similar motivations: Prevent the administration from accomplishing anything, whatever it may be, and get national press at the same time.
This sideshow might be fun if it wasn’t hurting people.
10 comments
Bravo to him for having recognized in time that the current Administration would not be a good fit for him. There was some speculation at the time that his refusal also had to do with how the Census was going be handled, that certain aspects of it were going to handled by the White House rather than being under the auspices of the Commerce department where is been controlled for ages.