By GAIL COLLINS
Published: September 22, 2010
The legislative process is almost never uplifting. But if you watch the United States Senate in action these days, you come away convinced that the nation has jumped the shark.
Earl Wilson/The New York Times
Gail Collins
On Tuesday, the Senate failed to override a Republican filibuster of a defense authorization bill. This is a new record for dysfunction. Until now, even when politics was at its worst, Congress did manage to vote to pay the Army.
The bill did contain a lot of controversial pieces. It eliminated the "don't ask, don't tell" rule for gays serving openly in the military. And the majority leader, Harry Reid, tacked on a provision that would allow undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children to win a path to citizenship if they serve in the military or go to college.
So the debate was about ... parliamentary procedure.
"I cannot vote to proceed to this bill under a situation that is going to shut down debate and preclude Republican amendments," said Senator Susan Collins of Maine. She supports repealing "don't ask, don't tell," but neither that nor pay raises for the troops could compare to the principle of unfettered amending.
Perhaps Collins was frightened by Tea Party talk in her home state. Perhaps she had been unnerved by Lady Gaga's decision to go to Maine and hold rallies on behalf of the bill. As a rule, moderate Republicans from swing states are not likely to be moved by a celebrity comparing gay rights to the dress made of meat she wore to an awards show. ("Equality is the prime rib of America.")
Cynical minds might presume that Collins was just caving in to her party's determination to keep the Democratic majority from accomplishing anything before the elections and grabbing at a convenient, if incoherent, cover. If so, she had plenty of company.
Orrin Hatch of Utah, who had supported the immigration proposal three years ago, said he was voting against it this time because: "They don't go through committees like they should in the Senate. They don't give the minority any chance at all to bring up even legitimate amendments, and this stuff has to stop."
Democrats said they had offered the Republicans ample opportunity to propose changes to the bill but that they weren't going to give them a blank check. The Republicans, with many references to the founding fathers, demanded the same open-ended system that was used when the Senate debated the financial reform bill, a process that ate up eight weeks of floor time.
Who is right?
People, it makes no difference. Never pay attention to procedural debates. They will make you crazy. It's like arbitrating a border agreement between two countries whose representatives keep fighting about who did what at the Battle of the 10 Skulls in 1284.
Plus, anybody who claims to be voting solely in the defense of legislative precedent is fibbing or delusional.
Senator John McCain, for instance, was nearly apoplectic about the fact that Reid was attaching unrelated amendments to the defense appropriations bill, like the one allowing illegal immigrants to become citizens after serving in the military. He had never seen such a thing "for as long as I have been privileged to be a member of this body." Except that he had, including Republican proposals on everything from allowing people to carry concealed weapons across state lines to banning Internet gambling.
McCain himself once successfully attached a campaign finance reform amendment to a defense appropriations bill, arguing that it was relevant because better campaign finance would give our men and women in uniform more confidence in the democracy they were fighting for. But that was the old John McCain, before he was kidnapped by space aliens and reprogrammed.
The only people more patently evasive about their motives than the procedural-purity Republicans were the two Democrats who refused to vote to end the filibuster. Both are from Arkansas, and they said they were impelled to break with their party because, um, the system is broken.
"I have heard my constituents loud and clear, and I will continue working to ensure that we do things in an open and transparent way. I opposed the motion to proceed because we all need to listen to our constituents and provide time to fully debate and consider the issues they care about," Senator Blanche Lincoln said in a statement.
She is in a very tough race for re-election and must have been trying to show Arkansas voters that she is an independent thinker. But it was a terrible plan. The poor woman is way, way behind in the polls. Give it up, Blanche! This is not the moment to try to woo the alienated independents with a strange and obscure press release. You should have voted with your heart, spoken your mind and gone out with a bang.
Ah, well, there's always the procedural whimper.
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
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