By Alan Caruba
This appeared here and I would like to thank Alan for allowing me to publish his work. RK
Congress was not designed to operate in this fashion. In
practice, the Senate is supposed to conference with the House to arrive at a
compromise solution.
“The Senate voted 54-46 to reject a motion to go to
conference with the House on the issue of funding the government, marking the
third time in 24 hours the Senate has rejected an overture from the House
related to avoiding a government shutdown. Senate Democrats have insisted they
will accept from the House only a six-week funding bill with no provisions
related to Obamacare.” – www.politico.com,
Tuesday, October 1. In a history of the Senate, “The Most Exclusive Club”, published in 2005, Lewis
l. Gould noted that “For most members, as the 1990s began, it was more business
as usual. That process led to another ten-year period when the Senate slipped
further in public esteem and failed to meet its political responsibilities. By
the end of the century, civility and a sense of common purpose had vanished
from much of what the Senate did.”
Gould is the Centennial Professor Emeritus of History at
the University of Texas. “Political oratory has been in steady decline over the
course of the past century, if the Senate is any indication. Most Senators read
speeches that staff has written for them. In hearings members often rely on
questions that staff has prepared…Few modern Senators can think on their feet
or make a sustained argument without supporting information or props. ’We’re
just no longer a debating forum,’ said Robert C. Byrd in October 2004.”
“It is hard to overstate this loss to American political
life,” said Gould. “The Framers of the Constitution envisioned a Senate that
would function as a wise and judicious check on both executive power and the
House of Representatives. They did not imagine a body that would act as a
rubber stamp for an incumbent president.”
The recent marathon speeches by Senators Rand Paul (KY)
and Ted Cruz (TX), both Republicans and both elected with Tea Party movement
support, have invigorated what little passes for debate.
The current membership of the Senate is 53 Democrats, 45
Republicans, and 2 independents.
Each State has two Senators for a total of 100. They are
elected for terms of six years.
In practice, the members of the Senate have generally
regarded the members of the House with a bit of disdain, given that they must
hustle to be reelected every two years and tend to the constituency of a
particular district. This attitude was reflected in the way the Senate went
home for the weekend while the House stayed in session to address the
possibility of a shutdown.
How long the impasse will continue is anyone’s guess, but
the cause is the growing public concern over the Affordable Care Act otherwise
known as Obamacare. It is so abundantly a disaster that the Democrats have
decided to brazen their way toward its full implementation while the
Republicans are reflecting the outcry from tens of thousands of telephone
calls, email, and all other manner of communication.
In short, the Republicans are doing what is expected of
politicians while the Democrats are expressing their contempt for the voters.
It is the same contempt that led to the near-midnight, 2009 party line vote in
the Senate that passed Obamacare. None of the Senators had read the huge bill
that is filled with many new taxes and puts the government in charge of one
sixth of the nation’s economy and, in effect, the entire healthcare system. Its
impact is already being felt as large companies lay off more and more workers
while smaller ones put them in a part-time status, reducing the number of hours
with which they can earn a living.
“We had to pass it to find out what was in it,” said the
then-Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Significantly, no Republican in either
the House or Senate voted for Obamacare.
The intransigence of Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), the Majority
Leader of the Senate, reflecting the same view as President Obama, is the
reason why the shutdown has occurred. There is much more to this than just
politics, though obviously both parties are rolling the dice as to the outcome
of the 2014 midterm elections.
To their credit, I think the Republicans have the high
ground. Despite the criticisms, they have shown a united front in their effort
to delay Obamacare’s implementation for a year, strip out the taxes on medical
instruments, and require that members of Congress and their staffs enroll in
the program in the same way everyone else must.
Ultimately, it is the Tea Party movement that will get
the credit for resisting Obamacare and it should surprise no one that the White
House and Harry Reid keep calling them terrorists, anarchists, extortionists,
and other names.
It will be interesting to watch President Obama say
whatever he can to affect the outcome of the shutdown. With nearly five years
in office and with a thick volume of lies he told about Obamacare to get its
passage, he is likely to suffer a significant injury to his power to influence
events in the days and years ahead.
The shutdown is a good thing. Enjoy it.
© Alan Caruba, 2013
