Well before Barack Obama brought hope to the White House,
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi was adamant that something new and
different and wonderful had arrived. In 2006, the incoming
Speaker pledged that hers would be the "most honest, most open,
and most ethical Congress in history."
At the time, we were skeptical -- to say the least. Our refusal
to accept her rhetoric was roundly vindicated last week. That was
when Madam-Speaker used every dirty trick at her disposal to
coldly ram a 1,500 page global warming bill through the House of
Representatives.
The Speaker chose to stifle the usual observances of deliberative
democracy because open, honest debate would have attracted
unwelcome scrutiny to her massive new energy tax.
Pelosi's legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security
(ACES) Act, would raise the price of hydrocarbon energy sources
like coal and oil thought to cause global warming, but which
power 85 percent -- 85 percent! -- of the economic production in
America.
A large energy tax during a deep recession is a political cyanide
pill that 44 of Pelosi's Democratic colleagues refused to
swallow. That almost doomed the bill and in fact would have
killed it outright Friday night if eight Republicans hadn't voted
with the majority of Democrats. (The final vote was 219 to 212.)
Likely there would have been many more Democratic "no" votes if
Madame-Speaker and Energy & Commerce chairman Henry Waxman
didn't find creative ways to shorten or skip every step of that
"How a Bill Becomes a Law" song.
When fighting between the Energy & Commerce and Agriculture
committees over the bill grew too intense, the farm lobby was
bought off as were a lot of other Democrats. In exchange for
votes, Pelosi and Waxman wrote countless paybacks, favors, and
concessions into the legislation -- all without serious debate.
Indeed, House leadership crafted much of the ACES Act in secret
behind closed doors. In the week before the final vote, it grew
by a whopping 600 pages. Even that figure doesn't stress the
urgent, secretive nature of the process. At 3:09 Friday morning,
Waxman et al. introduced a 309-page "manager's amendment" to the
legislation that was set for a vote later in the day.
Representatives would have had all of nine hours to study the
text, assuming they went without sleep. The manager's amendment
made even that impossible, because you had roughly 1,200 pages of
text -- containing, at last count, 397 new government regulations
and 1,090 new economic mandates -- followed by over 300 pages of
text with no index that amended the previous legislation on
paragraph by paragraph basis.
It would take a team of lawyers several days to sort out a mess
like that.
We have to hand it to Oregon Republican Greg Waldren for his
superb sense of understatement when he said he couldn't "imagine
that anyone on this floor has read every word" of the ACES Act.
That was the whole point of introducing the legislation under an
extremely limited rule and only allowing three hours for debate
on something that may take a good bite out of every American's
pocketbook.
Pelosi and company had complained, rightly, that Republicans
rushed some legislation through Congress. But her approach has
been even less open to any kind of dissent than former Majority
Leader Tom DeLay.
The "open" Congress that Pelosi promised back in 2006 would have
allowed members of the House to voice their ideas about how to
improve legislation. Fat chance. House leadership discarded all
but one -- that's right, one -- of the 220 amendments submitted
by House Republicans on the ACES Act, and allowed next to no time
for debate. Georgia's Phil Gingrey complained on the House floor,
"The Speaker and the Rules Committee have silenced the
opposition."
They certainly tried to. If there's any silver lining to this,
it's that congressional Republicans were incensed and unlikely to
forget, or shut up about it. John Boehner used his privilege as
Minority Leader to insist, over the befuddled objection of
Waxman, on going past normal debate time limits and reading large
chunks of the 11th hour amendment on the House floor.
And afterward, when Waxman requested unanimous consent to say a
few celebratory words about his historic bill's passage, some
Republican uttered those two magical words: "I object."
topics:
Nancy Pelosi, Environment, Cap and Trade, Energy Tax
