Back-room dealing a Capitol trend
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| Sun, 10-03-2004 - 10:13am |
Page 2 of 10 -- The Rules Committee commonly holds sessions late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, earning the nickname "the Dracula Congress" by critical Democrats and keeping some lawmakers quite literally in the dark about the legislation put before them. On the Patient's Bill of Rights legislation in 2001, for example, the Rules Committee made a one-word change in the middle of the night that drastically limited the liability of HMOs that deny coverage to their patients. The measure was hustled through the House hours later, with few lawmakers aware of the change.
Congressional conference committees, charged with reconciling differences between House- and Senate-passed versions of the same legislation, have become dramatically more powerful in shaping bills. The panels, made up of a small group of lawmakers appointed by leaders in both parties, added a record 3,407 "pork barrel" projects to appropriations bills for this year's federal budget, items that were never debated or voted on beforehand by the House and Senate and whose congressional patrons are kept secret. This compares to just 47 projects added in conference committee in 1994, the last year of Democratic control.
Bills are increasingly crafted behind closed doors, and on two major pieces of legislation -- the Medicare and energy bills -- few Democrats were allowed into the critical conference committee meetings, sessions that historically have been bipartisan. The energy bill -- a sweeping package meant to lay out a national energy policy -- started in closed-door meetings held by Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force and was written in private sessions on Capitol Hill that excluded all Democrats. On the Medicare negotiations, only two Democrats -- both already supportive of the bill -- were included.
The amount of time spent openly debating bills has dropped dramatically, and lawmakers are further hamstrung by an abbreviated schedule that gives them little time to fully examine a bill before voting on it. The House typically holds no votes until Tuesday evenings -- and then usually on noncontroversial items such as the renaming of post offices -- then adjourns for the week by Thursday afternoon. The Iraq war resolution was debated just two days in 2002; the defense authorization bill, which customarily undergoes weeks of floor discussion, was debated and voted on this year in two days.
Lawmakers say they are still finding items in the Medicare package that passed last winter that they find objectionable, such as the financial penalty on seniors who wait to sign up for the Medicare prescription drug plan.
"There was no way that every member of Congress could hold up their right hand and say, `I read every page of that bill before the vote,' " said Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat, noting that members had just one day to examine the 400-plus-page bill before voting on a law that would change health-care allotments across the country.
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http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/10/03/back_room_dealing_a_capitol_trend?pg=2

This is a good example too, of how we really need and have not had, the checks and balances that the House and Senate are supposed to bring.