Anarchy Reigns in GOP Controlled Congress

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Thu, 29 Dec 2005 07:35:20 -0800

[Zepps_News] #anarchy reigns in GOP-controlled congress

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anarchy Reigns in GOP Controlled Congress

 

 

--Insiders are finding surprises in last week's flurry of votes.

 

Gail Russell Chaddock, The Christian Science Monitor, December 29, 2005

 

 

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1228/p01s03-uspo.html

 

WASHINGTON - The first session of the 109th Congress is over, but

lawmakers and interest groups are still sorting out what surprises may

have been buried in its final bills.

 

A clause added here or lifted there can shift the fortunes of whole

industries and regions. Even insiders say it's tough to follow what's

in, what's out, and why.

 

But even before the results are tallied, observers say it's been a

bumper year for add-ons, especially in conference committees behind

closed doors.

 

The year ended in a crush of tough negotiations, late-night votes, and

hastily printed bills so vast that few lawmakers had time to read them.

Early in the morning on Dec. 19, lawmakers got their first glimpse of

the 774-page final version of a nearly $40 billion spending cut bill.

The time? 1:12 a.m. House members had to vote on the measure just four

and a half hours later.

 

" It's just one example of the increasing breakdown of any rules in the

Congress, " says Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a public

interest group.

 

" More and more decisions are being made in closed-door conference

meetings, where Democrats often aren't allowed. And there is no way to

know what is going on often until after it has been passed, " he adds.

 

While the rules say that a conference agreement can't include elements

that haven't been voted in either the House or Senate - and can't

exclude elements that have been voted in both - they are often violated.

It's only an issue if lawmakers - or outside groups in the know - can

make it one.

 

Senate negotiators were stunned to learn that GOP House leaders had

added a whole campaign-finance bill to the final conference report on

the Defense authorization bill they had already signed. Sen. Hillary

Clinton (D) of New York first heard of the changes while on an

out-of-town trip.

 

" It was totally wrong, " she says. " It's not a very rational system,

when someone can take out what the elected senators and congressmen

have voted for and put in extraneous matter that no one has voted for. "

 

At the urging of House GOP leaders, the new language, including curbs

on the electoral clout of so-called 527 groups, was added to the bill

after the conference had closed.

 

Senator Clinton called Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking

Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, who, along with chairman

John Warner® of Virginia, threatened to withdraw their signatures

unless GOP House leaders pulled the measure off the bill. They did.

 

But another provision, granting immunity from liability to manufacturers

of flu vaccine, was added at the last minute to the FY 2006 Defense

Appropriations bill. Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who sponsored

the measure, says that " appropriate, targeted liability protections " are

needed to reestablish a manufacturing base in the US for vaccines. " A

pandemic will occur, " he says.

 

After protests from citizens' groups, a previous attempt by Senator

Frist to add such a provision was repealed. But last week, Frist, with

the approval of House GOP leaders, added the provision back to the

Defense bill.

 

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D) of Massachusetts dubbed the move " a massive

Christmas bonus to the drug companies at the expense of nurses,

firefighters, and ordinary Americans who will have to take untested

vaccines and drugs and get no money for compensation if they are injured. "

 

The practice of adding new provisions in conference, even after the

conference is officially closed, " has been used with increasing

frequency recently, " says consumer activist Jamie Court, president of

the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in Santa Monica, Calif.

" It's a testament to the power of K Street [lobbyists], " he adds.

 

At the same time, provisions that have been approved by both the House

and Senate can also be stripped from conference agreements, behind

closed doors. Although 82 senators and 228 House members passed a

nonbinding resolution requiring the Bush administration to report to

Congress on secret CIA prisons abroad, the measure was dropped from

the Defense Authorization bill in conference - a decision not made

public until Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) of Ohio asked about it on the

House floor as the bill was coming to a vote.

 

" It's brute power, " says Sen. Ron Wyden (D) of Oregon. " Much of this

is about who's the last in the room, and it reflects badly on the

Congress. "

 

--

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government

talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court

order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about

chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order

before we do so "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004