There's an "informal" practice in the House of Representatives that goes against all common-sense dictates of democracy. It's the doing of Speaker Dennis Hastert, and it's been in effect since 2004. It comes up again this week as the House looks to throttle the immigration reform bill passed by the Senate. Why there isn't more outrage over this mechanism of vote suppression is beyond me.
It seems the Honorable Mr. Hastert feels that majority rule is a quaint and bothersome thing. He does not allow legislation to even come to a vote at all if the "majority of the majority" does not support it. But if you've got, say, a 52% majority, then a majority of that need only be 26.1%. So a cabal of just over a quarter of Representatives can exercise an effective veto over any legislation. Someone explain to me how that is not the antithesis of democracy. But the Republicans don't care about that. To them, it's "Just Win, Baby."
How is the policy being applied today? Let's check this week's
L.A. Times:
Despite the spotlight the congressional debate has thrown on the immigration issue, the clash could mean that no measure will emerge for Bush to sign into law.
Illustrating that growing concern, senators who back a broad overhaul said they were worried that an informal House policy could thwart the push for a compromise bill.
In the past, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has blocked bills from coming to the chamber's floor unless they were supported by a majority of Republicans. He has reiterated that he plans to follow the so-called majority of the majority guideline for immigration legislation.
As a result, a compromise that attracted enough backing from a combination of Republicans and Democrats to pass the 435-member House would be kept from the floor if it lacked the support of more than half of the chamber's 231 GOP lawmakers.
"If Speaker Hastert insists on the 'majority of the majority,' [immigration reform] is dead," Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said Tuesday.
I watched PBS's "Washington Week" tonight and saw that each and every panel member evoked the "majority of the majority" obstacle as though it were a mere matter of course not worth discussing on its own merits. That's what made me look into it further. How could such a thing be met with this kind of ennui? I still don't get it. Even Durbin talks about it as though it's up to old Hastert to let everyone vote or not.
How does the GOP apply the doctrine of majority rule to the Senate, where Bill Frist has famously derided Democrats for not letting Bush nominees have an "up-or-down vote", but not to the House?
We've known about this screwed-up policy for some time; the Washington Post reported on it back in 2004 like this:
Hastert Launches a Partisan Policy
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 27, 2004; Page A01
In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them, regardless of how many Democrats favor them.
Hastert's position, which is drawing fire from Democrats and some outside groups, is the latest step in a decade-long process of limiting Democrats' influence and running the House virtually as a one-party institution. Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year's intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if "the majority of the majority" supports them.
Senators from both parties, leaders of the Sept. 11 commission and others have sharply criticized the policy. The long-debated intelligence bill would now be law, they say, if Hastert and his lieutenants had been humble enough to let a high-profile measure pass with most votes coming from the minority party.
The Democrats did just the opposite when they were in power:
That is what Democrats did in 1993, when most House Democrats opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement. President Bill Clinton backed NAFTA, and leaders of the Democratic-controlled House allowed it to come to a vote. The trade pact passed because of heavy GOP support, with 102 Democrats voting for it and 156 voting against. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the House GOP leader at the time, declared: "This is a vote for history, larger than politics . . . larger than personal ego."
And the Dems tried to remind us of that. But it got little play, and no one seems to remember it:
Republicans "like to talk about bipartisanship," said Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "But when the opportunity came to pass a truly bipartisan bill -- one that would have passed both the House and Senate overwhelmingly and would have made the American people safer -- they failed to do it."
Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a White House aide when NAFTA passed, said this week, "What is more comforting to the terrorists around the world: the failure to pass the 9/11 legislation because we lacked 'a majority of the majority,' or putting aside partisan politics to enact tough new legislation with America's security foremost in mind?"
A fair point, indeed. And it should have scored political points as well as practical ones. But it didn't. It just goes to show you: if you've got the majority, be brazen. Be brash. Ignore the spirit of democracy. And no one will notice.
What does the Constitution have to say about this? Very little. From Article 1 of the Constitution:
Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.
That's pretty much it. So the framers left it up to the powers that be in the House to preserve the spirit of democracy. But the shrewd calculation by House Republicans is that Americans don't follow their proceedings that closely, and if a bill never comes up for a vote, it never existed in the eyes of the public.
This seems to leave the door open for even more dramatic obstruction. Perhaps the majority might decide not to let Democrats vote on any bill. Ever. After all, that'd be "constitutional" in a technical sense. Nowhere does it say that each Representative gets one vote. Maybe Republicans can each have ten votes and the Democrats one. That'd get the job done. Tom DeLay tried to do it with the power of money and mass-action capitalism. But Hastert is doing it by a simple decree.
Welcome to the New Democracy.