Undemocratic Process

There has been much comment about the take-no-prisoners approach of the Congressional Republican leadership in cramming through the Medicare prescription-drug benefit this past November 22. Procedural rules were ignored. House Democrats were barred from conference committees. And since the Republicans didn't have enough votes of their own as the session opened, the usual fifteen-minute rule in the House for roll-call votes was simply put aside. The roll call went on for almost three hours, until enough reluctant Republicans had been threatened and browbeaten into changing their votes to allow the bill to squeak through. Democrat Barney Frank of Massachusetts said it might be "the end of parliamentary democracy as we have known it."

But it was not the worst case. A far more chilling episode, little remarked and with even graver portent for the future of the democratic process, occurred on November 12. A small group of leading Republicans ordered stripped from this year's Treasury-Transportation appropriations bill an amendment (already approved) that prohibited the use of Treasury funds to enforce controls on travel to Cuba. They did this behind closed doors and before the conferees had even met to consider the disposition of the amendment. As Democratic Senator Max Baucus, one of the amendment's sponsors, pointed out in a subsequent statement, "It wasn't the conferees [who removed it]. Thirteen of the sixteen Senate conferees were supportive.... [They] would not have stripped out the amendment." Who then? According to Republican Senator Michael Enzi of Wyoming, another amendment sponsor, "It was stripped out by committee staffers even before members of the committee formally met. There was no vote taken. Poof, it just disappeared into the Congressional ether."

But how could that happen? The measure had been approved on the floor of the House in September by a bipartisan vote of 227 to 188 and in the Senate in October by a 59-to-36 vote, with a number of key Republicans voting in favor. Clearly it was the will of the majority in Congress, reflecting the will of the American people. The language in the House and Senate versions was identical, so there was nothing for the conferees to reconcile. By Congressional rules, it should have moved forward to the President's desk with the rest of the bill, for him to sign or veto.

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