{"id":13481,"date":"2007-11-05T11:18:45","date_gmt":"2007-11-05T16:18:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13481.html"},"modified":"2007-11-05T11:18:45","modified_gmt":"2007-11-05T16:18:45","slug":"how-a-bill-doesnt-become-a-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/how-a-bill-doesnt-become-a-law\/","title":{"rendered":"How a bill doesn’t become a law"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, shortly after his veto of the bipartisan State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) bill, the president was asked at a press conference why the process broke down. A reporter said, “Isn’t there a responsibility by both the President and congressional leadership to work on this common ground before it gets to a veto?” Bush insisted that Congress intentionally left the White House out of the loop.<\/p>\n

“[W]e weren’t dialed in,” the president said<\/a>. “And I don’t know why.” Bush added that White House officials weren’t “part of the process,” and the “legislative branch want[ed] to go on without the President.”<\/p>\n

In an interesting tick-tock of why the S-CHIP bill failed, the NYT’s Robert Pear reports<\/a> that Bush’s version of events isn’t even close to being true. Pear notes that a bipartisan group of senators met for two hours a day, almost every for a few months, to put together a good piece of legislation.<\/p>\n

But even before they finished their work, President Bush attacked it.<\/p>\n

In a pre-emptive strike on June 27, Mr. Bush \u2014 standing before another Western image, an equestrian portrait of Theodore Roosevelt as a Rough Rider \u2014 said the proposal would “cause huge increases in government spending” and lead to “government-run health care for every American.”<\/p>\n

Senators were taken aback by what they saw as the ferocity of the president’s comments. Telephone logs and e-mail messages show that Republican senators and their aides had frequently consulted White House officials as the bill took shape.<\/p>\n

One participant in the talks, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, called the criticism and veto threats premature, “disappointing, even a little unbelievable.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact, between January and September, congressional offices had more than 35 meetings and telephone conversations on S-CHIP with White House officials.<\/p>\n

But the Bush gang wasn’t interested in talking.
\n<\/p>\n

Senator Hatch tried to bring White House officials into the negotiations, believing their involvement would produce a better bill. But, lawmakers said, the administration did not want to discuss the child health program except as part of a broader discussion that included the president’s tax proposals.<\/p>\n

In early June, the White House sent a message to Republicans saying the president hoped they would not cut a deal with Democrats. The White House predicted that Republicans would have more “negotiating leverage” in the fall. That appears to have been a miscalculation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, everything Bush said at his press conference was wrong. Who would have guessed.<\/p>\n

The NYT article, however, suggested congressional Dems are also responsible for the breakdown.<\/p>\n

Republicans say that Democrats misjudged the president; excluded House Republicans, who in the end were crucial, from negotiations; and aimed negative advertisements at the very members whose votes they needed to override a veto.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s take these one at a time:<\/p>\n

* Dems “misjudged” the president, in that they thought he was sincere when he vowed to expand S-CHIP.<\/p>\n

* Dems “excluded” Republicans, except the Senate GOP helped write the bill, and pleaded with House Republicans to support it.<\/p>\n

* Dems pressured Republicans to vote for the bill, which apparently is controversial because, well, I’m not sure why. (House Republicans would have been more inclined to support healthcare for low-income children if Dems hadn’t pressure them to? The House GOP was motivated by spite?)<\/p>\n

I know the media prefers a pox-on-both-houses narrative, but it looks like the White House actually deserves the blame on this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, shortly after his veto of the bipartisan State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) bill, the president was asked at a press conference why the process broke down. A reporter said, “Isn’t there a responsibility by both the President and congressional leadership to work on this common ground before it gets to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}