American Maggie

For a bill to become a law, it must first go through a long, arduous process of hearings, debates, and votes. The health care reform bill is no exception, and the final stage of its completion is getting closer and closer. But it’s not here quite yet.

Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution says that the Senate and House of Representatives must pass the same version of a bill before it can become law. In order for that to happen, senior members of both houses must come together in conference committee to resolve any differences between the House and Senate versions of a given bill.

For the most part, rules are pretty lax when it comes to conference committees. Congressional leadership (that would be Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi) appoint delegates to the committee, and numbers of attendees don’t have to be equal on the House and Senate side. In other words, there could be three members of the House present and 10 members of the Senate present, and that would be fine. However, House rules stipulate that conference meetings must be public and open for all to see.

But apparently, House rules don’t hold much weight when it comes to passing a massive reform bill that would overhaul the nation’s health care system. The House and Senate versions of the bill contain many stark differences that need to be resolved; something that will need to be done with approval from Sens. Lieberman and Nelson, the last two to sign on to the Senate version. Essentially, the health care debate is far from over, and final completion with President Obama’s signature is still a long way off.

Yet instead of hashing out the final version in conference committee, Senator Reid and Representative Pelosi have decided to hold closed meetings with only a handful of congressional members, all of them Democrat, no less.

The most obvious and chief suspected reason for circumventing the normal process is that the Democrats want to continue to ram through health care reform with as little debate as possible and without any Republican input. That may be true, but there’s also another reason Democrats chose to do without a conference committee. Ironically, that reason is the 2007 passage of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

The Act was passed as a measure of ethical reforms, and among other things, amended Senate Rule 28 to make it harder for members of the conference committee to take out measures in the final bill that were identical in both chambers, and add provisions that were in neither the House nor Senate versions. This made it easier for Senators not present in the conference committee, to be able to strike out any provisions that were added or taken away, without defeating the entire conference report.

The change to the Senate rules was made in order to increase transparency in the legislative process, as well as strengthen ethical guidelines for Senators. Conference committee attendees could no longer emerge with an entirely new, unrecognizable version of the bill. However, since the Act’s passage, Congressional leaders have all but completely stopped sending major bills to formal conference committees, where they would have to abide by the new restrictions of Rule 28.

Now enter health care reform: legislation that is highly controversial and was narrowly passed in both chambers along party lines. And with the broad spectrum of issues that differentiate both the House and Senate bills, adding provisions similar to the deal Sen. Nelson (D-NE) got for the purpose of enticing House members to vote for the final version was expected. Yet those last-minute provisions could then have been struck down by a group of at least 41 Senators, which would have defeated the entire conference report.

Thus, it’s safe to say that one of the main reasons Pelosi and Reid bypassed the traditional and expected conference committee was so they could add whatever was necessary to the final version of the bill, in order to ensure its landing on President Obama’s desk. It may not be transparent or ethical, but it’s the way the current process works.

The lesson for Americans who are infuriated by the behind-closed-doors behavior is that this kind of conduct is to be expected. Likewise, when the CEO of C-SPAN, Brian Lamb, is denied his request to televise the meeting between Reid, Pelosi and the chosen Democrats, the American people should not be shocked or surprised.

So, when during the campaign Barack Obama said, “we’ll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so the people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies,” that was just a campaign promise. And as is well known, campaign promises don’t really mean much of anything, even when they come from a president promising “change”.

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Amanda Carey is the Editor of The Tiger Town Observer at Clemson University.  She has previously worked for Robert Novak and has been published in Reason Magazine and The American Spectator.

He ran on emotion and an obvious passion for defending the United States of America. There was no lack of evidence of his dedication to his country. He was determined to be the first African American president, despite the odds. He persevered through rumors surrounding his faith, his birth origin. In November, 2008 he became the people’s president. Where have those seemingly innate traits disappeared to? Did he leave them at the door? Since the horrific Fort Hood incident, and the most recent Christmas Day “crotch bomber” scare, President Obama has appeared aloof and different from the man hopeful Americans elected into office.

It took President Obama two weeks subsequent to the Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines scare to seriously speak to his country on the failure of the federal government. It took him two weeks to address what went wrong and the apparent lack of inter-agency communication.

One may have expected his speech to shed light on new information, possibly lay out a plan to ensure Americans that they should no longer feel threatened of being sprinkled throughout the skies of Detroit. President Obama delivered on none of those expectations. Rather he spoke devoid of emotion, reciting what Americans already knew, what talk show hosts had already discussed while he was away on vacation.

I suppose that one could excuse this behavior as holiday fever. True, he was in Hawaii for the holiday. Sun rays and warm sandy beaches may have a relaxing effect on an individual. But this is not a circumstantial case. Obama exemplified similar behavior after the Fort Hood massacre. Again, Obama lagged in addressing the issue. He did not visit the site for several days and instead vacationed to Camp David, pulling a former President Bush-Hurricane Katrina move.

These instances act as fodder for claims that President Obama is ill suited for the role as the President of the United States. A country that demands on the scene leadership demands an individual who can be present, on the scene, after an incident transpires, threatening our nation’s security. President Obama appears more professorial than presidential.

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Kathleen Someah previously attended Kenyon College where she studied English and Political Science.  She was recently an intern with a political think tank where she focuses primarily on issues relating to homeland security.  She currently resides in California.