BELLACIAO - Report Documents Republican Abuse of Power: With This Congress, Democracy is Dead - Collective Bellaciao: "Friday 11th March 2005 (07h05) :

Broken Promises: The Death of Deliberative Democracy
A Congressional Report (pdf) on the Unprecedented Erosion of the Democratic Process in the 108th Congress.

Compiled by the House Rules Committee Minority Office
The Honorable Louise M. Slaughter, Ranking Member

Cliff notes by Ben Frank

How Modern Congress works: Lobbyists write the bill and Republicans force it through Congress before anyone has even had a chance to read it. The textbook cases of corruption include: Million dollar job offers, Hooters subsidies, and bribery on the floor of Congress- that’s the US government.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In the 108th Congress, House Republicans became the most arrogant, unethical and corrupt majority in modern Congressional history.

When they took control of the House after the 1994 elections, Republicans vowed they would be different than previous Congresses. They promised they would manage the House in a way that fostered what they called "deliberative democracy," which they defined as "the full and free airing of conflicting opinions through hearings, debates, and amendments for the purpose of developing and improving legislation deserving of the respect and support of the people."

This report documents how, ten years after their "revolution," House Republicans have completely abandoned this standard of deliberative democracy they set for themselves. Furthermore, they have abandoned any other principle of procedural fairness or democratic accountability.

In the opinion of many non-partisan observers of Congress, the 108th Congress not only matched the worst abuses of earlier Congresses; it set a whole new benchmark.

For Example:

When the House debated the Medicare prescription drug bill, perhaps the most important legislation it considered in the 108th Congress, Members brought 59 amendments to the Rules Committee.... [They] allowed only one Democratic [Amendment] the Republican leadership was confident it could defeat.

In other words, on this bill, a bill that changed the fundamental structure of the federal government’s largest health care program, the majority did everything it could to prevent the House from taking "clear positions" on "clear issues" related to Medicare reform.

We were very disappointed, but not surprised, to learn later that the bill would give the pharmaceutical companies billions of taxpayer dollars at the expense of America’s seniors, and that Rep. Billy Tauzin, one of the authors of the Medicare bill, had negotiated a $2 million a year job for himself heading the drug industry lobby during the period the conference was producing its report.

The representatives the American people elected to write their laws had less input into this legislation than the drug industry and other special interests that stood to benefit from it.

At the end of this secret process, the Republican leadership rushed the final product to the House floor and forced Members to vote on it before they knew its contents.

It is safe to say that the Medicare prescription drug program would have been significantly different had Members been able to debate and amend the bill in a manner consistent with an open, democratic process.


This report examines in detail how, over the past two years, the Republican leadership ignored the House Rules and the basic standards of legislative fairness and regular order with an impunity that is unprecedented in the history of the House of Representatives. This report shows that:

Despite their vows to open up the rules process and restore deliberative democracy to the House chamber, House Republicans took unprecedented steps in the 108th Congress to make the House floor a "democracy-free zone." They used closed and highly restrictive rules to prevent Members from offering amendments that would have provoked real debate and forced Members to go on the record on real issues. The end result of this policy was that special interests, not U.S. Representatives, wrote the major bills in the 108th Congress.
- posted by Editor @ 8:52 PM

The Gorilla in the Room: "How AIPAC Works - Part 2 - Why AIPAC is Feared

For most members of Congress, U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East has traditionally been a pretty peripheral issue. Only since September 11th, and the invasion of Iraq, has it taken on the importance it has now for most politicians.

There's always been a tendency for most member to choose the path of least resistance, and everyone in Washington understands that, if you vote against AIPAC's wishes, the Israel lobby has tools to punish you. I'm going to offer an illustration here of how this works -- based on the experience on Rep. Earl Hilliard (D-AL), an African American congressman from Alabama who lost his seat in 2002 after voting against AIPAC positions on a couple of issues. Yes, I know that this wasn't the only issue brought up in the campaign, but I think what I'm going to illustrate here gives a good example of why AIPAC is feared on Capitol Hill.
...
Davis's 2002 campaign, however, was characterized by a remarkable avalanche of out-of-state contributions. He raised over $315,000 in New York, over $61,000 in New Jersey, over $58,000 in California, and over $21,000 in Connecticut. Maybe in such an exciting race, he also had some people in neighboring states interested in backing him? Well, here's the data for Mississippi. One zip code (10021) on the Upper East Side of Manhattan gave more than triple what he got from donors in Georgia.

Now I know it's politically incorrect, but go back to the donor data and look at the surnames. Sure, some of these people may not be members of AIPAC, but it's clear that the majority of them contributed in response to Earl Hilliard's record on AIPAC's issues. Kinda self explanatory, eh?

- posted by Editor @ 8:27 PM