It’s a pretty common argument. Dems had a congressional majority for the better part of 40 years. By the late ’80s and early ’90s, they ultimately took this status for granted and abused it, foolishly thinking they were invulnerable and above accountability. Republicans took over in ’94 and quickly proceeded to follow in their rivals’ footsteps.
But Sam Rosenfeld argues very persuasively in The American Prospect that this tack, which even Dems sometimes embrace, isn’t even close to being fair — Republicans’ abuse and casual corruption has reached a level that Dems couldn’t even dream of.
Republicans have long peddled the moral-equivalence line in order to rationalize their behavior in the majority as just deserts and to characterize all Democratic complaints as sour grapes. The mainstream acceptance of the notion that the Jim Wright-Tom Foley era was some cesspool of moral lassitude and institutional autocracy only serves to frame contemporary Republican practices as a natural progression in a political cycle, a version of politics as usual. It behooves Democrats seeking to revive their party’s fortunes through a reformist appeal to challenge this received wisdom — not the least because, in fact, it’s utter nonsense.
Rosenfeld couldn’t be more right. Looking at corruption, he argues that the DeLay-led GOP majority has turned political sleaze and dishonesty into an art form.
Plenty of ethical lapses and pay-to-play lawmaking took place under the Democratic majorities. But Republicans, upon taking the reins in 1995, were immediately more corrupt. The relationship between lobbyists and legislators became instantly more incestuous. (And I do mean “instantly”: On January 3, 1995, two days before the Republicans were to take official control of Congress, Tom DeLay gathered a large group of industry lobbyists into his new office and inaugurated a deregulatory lobbying-lawmaking collaboration called Project Relief; it was the start of a very beautiful friendship.) The Republican leadership has raised the value limit on lobbying gifts by about tenfold while easing restrictions on free junkets. Lobbyists have a more direct involvement in the writing of legislation than they ever did under the Democrats. The willingness to eviscerate ethical safeguards and oversight emerged more gradually under Republican control, but, particularly as DeLay consolidated his power over the course of the late ’90s and into George W. Bush’s first term, emerge it did.
Corruption aside, the Republican congressional majorities are also far worse in what Rosenfeld calls the area of “institutional tyranny.”
To fully appreciate how outrageous the abuses are here, one should go back and look at the stunning three-piece series the Boston Globe ran back in October called “Closed for Business.” The worst caricatures of crooked politicians and shady deals are exposed as absolutely true.
* The House Rules Committee, which is meant to tweak the language in bills that come out of committee, sometimes rewrites key passages of legislation approved by other committees, then forbids members from changing the bills on the floor.
* 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.
* Congressional conference committees 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. The last year of Dem control of Congress, the number of projects totaled 47.
* 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 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.
* When Dems were in the majority, about half the bills were open to amendments. In the last Congress, the number had dropped to about one-quarter of the bills.
On their worst day, ’80s and ’90s Dems were never this thuggishly corrupt. As Rosenfeld concluded:
All in all, it really is a whole new ballgame in Congress, a level — and a quality — of institutional abuse, cronyism, and corporate looting that recalls the Gilded Age far more than the Foley Era. Republicans haven’t fallen from grace, and they haven’t lost touch with their roots; they are governing as they are wont to govern.
And it’s not a pretty sight.