Most Members of Congress don’t care how individual provisions in the bills they pass actually affect individual citizens. They care about how the media portrays them, and about getting credit for items that affect their particular constituencies.
And they care about how their favored lobbyists and campaign donors feel, and about how various interest groups will respond.
But they don’t really care about voiceless individual citizens.
If they did, they would make sure their staffs actually have time to analyze legislation to ward off any jokers in the deck. And they would ensure the public has time to weigh in before Members vote.
But they don’t. Instead, once the backroom deals are made, Members rush to vote so they aren’t forced to know, much less defend, what’s in the bills. That was the method used to pass the gargantuan $787 billion economic “stimulus” package that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says will actually depress long-term economic growth.
The tactics used to strong-arm the stimulus through were par for the course. Republican and Democratic majorities alike have used those tactics repeatedly, like Soviet commissars, to pass controversial bills.
That way, they don’t have to explain, for instance, why they are making innocent third parties subject to state-sponsored jackpot lawsuits over unintentional, technical violations of privacy regulations.
Or why they are, without any debate on the merits, creating a “Comparative Effectiveness” health regulation panel designed to let bureaucrats tell doctors what medicines they can prescribe.
Maybe that’s a good idea, maybe not. But it should be considered on its own, not hidden in an $787 billion monstrosity.
Similarly, how many Americans know that this stimulus bill completely gutted the single most successful, most popular policy change of the past 40 years, the 1996 welfare reform that worked superbly to cut welfare rolls and move people to jobs or school while increasing payments for the truly needy?
Yes, gutted. Completely reversed the rules changes that made welfare reform a “reform.”
Senators who voted for the 1996 bill should answer three simple questions. First, did welfare reform work to help people improve their lives? Second, if that answer was “yes,” then why did they vote to undo that reform?
Third, why do they think it appropriate to undermine that reform without a public debate on that subject alone, rather than as a provision shrouded by a much larger bill?
Here are the senators who voted for welfare reform in 1996 and for the stimulus package last week that ruins welfare reform (Republicans italicized): Max Baucus (Montana), Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller (W. Virginia), Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan (N. Dakota), Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl (Wisconsin), Tom Harkin (Iowa), John Kerry (Massachusetts), Carl Levin (Michigan), Joe Lieberman (Connecticut), Barbara Mikulski (Maryland), Harry Reid (Nevada), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania) and Ron Wyden (Oregon).
Oh, and count now-Vice President Joe Biden of Delaware in that number as well.
Meanwhile, because of a bill Congress passed last year that took effect last Tuesday, bookstores all over the country have begun throwing out or destroying children’s books published before 1985. Why? Because some of the bindings or illustrations may contain trace amounts of lead.
Since when did Congress support book burning?
News accounts also confirmed that a number of thrift shops were literally closing their doors because of that same law’s overbroad and overly punitive provisions. These are people losing their livelihoods because of what Congress did.
South Carolina’s Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, to his credit, pays attention. He offered an amendment to the stimulus bill that would have delayed the new anti-lead law for six months so its unintended consequences could be fixed.
His amendment went nowhere. The majority couldn’t be bothered with undoing the damage. They were too busy adding $8 billion for Sen. Harry Reid’s pet project of a rapid train from Las Vegas to Disneyland.
How many real people will actually use such a train is anybody’s guess. Who knows, maybe a dozen or two. You know: people who can no longer buy the old, illustrated Mickey Mouse books that have been destroyed because of the anti-lead law, and who therefore decide to leave the slot machines to see Mickey in person.
Quin Hillyer is associated editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner.
