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”.

******

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.

******

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.

When President Obama assumed office, he did so with the promise of reforming America’s healthcare system by implementing a public option. The president argued that a public option would not raise taxes for the middle class, but would “be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects.”

His critics said that not only was this goal too ambitious, but that it could not, and even should not be done. His backers lauded the plan, saying the country needed change and the status quo was no longer enough. Since then, the road to healthcare reform has been a long and bumpy one, and for liberal Democrats on the Hill, things have taken a turn for the worse. And most recently, it’s all because of one Senator from Connecticut.

When it comes to passing the healthcare bill in the senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada)-the most powerful person in the chamber- has had to take a back seat to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn). In the last week, Lieberman almost single-handedly shut down the Democrat’s plan to include an option that would allow seniors ages 55-64 to buy into Medicare. Now the measure, which was originally the compromise to Reid’s public option, is no longer a part of the bill.

So how could one senator so drastically alter a provision in the healthcare bill that a majority of Senate Democrats and the Obama administration supported? Welcome to the game of Capitol Hill politics.

Though an independent, Sen. Lieberman caucuses with the Democrats, giving them their super-majority of 60. But unfortunately for Reid, Lieberman didn’t approve of the Medicare plan, telling Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation, “…I certainly would have a hard time voting for it because it has some of the same infirmities that the public option did. It– it will add taxpayer cost. It will add to the deficit. It’s unnecessary. …”

And so in order to appease Lieberman and retain the 60 votes, the Medicare option was dropped. But this of course, didn’t happen without stirring up frustration and fury with liberals in the media and on the Hill. Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein unleashed his anger by writing, “At this point, Lieberman is just torturing liberals. That is to say, he’s willing to directly cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score,” (he later took out the word “directly” to tone down the accusation that Lieberman’s disapproval of the option was simply murderous).

One senior Democratic aide told Politico, “The anger toward him right now is white hot.” And spokesman for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Adam Green, proposed taking disciplinary action against the senator, saying, and “…Taking away Lieberman’s chairmanship is the way to teach a lesson to others.”

Despite this, the White House is still pushing for the Senate to pass healthcare reform by Christmas. At this point, anything would be acceptable, just as long as something gets passed. If that sounds desperate, it’s because well, that’s exactly what President Obama is. In a meeting with Senate Democrats on Tuesday, the president pushed the bill’s passage saying this would be the last chance for reform.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told Politico, “If President Obama doesn’t pass health reform, it’s hard to imagine another president ever taking on this Herculean task. For those whose life’s work is reforming health care, this may be the last train leaving the station.” Vice President Joe Biden seconded that sentiment, saying on MSNBC that if reform isn’t passed now, it will be pushed aside for another generation. The message to the Senate is, essentially, it’s now or never.

But trite hyperbole and the apocalyptic plea of “something is better than nothing!” are not likely to have any effect on moderate and Republican senators who are dead-set against a drastic overhaul of the healthcare system. Nor is the president’s desperation helping his approval rating, which recently hit an all-time low of 41 percent, according to Rasmussen.

Although in the end, the Senate may heed Obama’s call for action in the face of perceived crisis, it won’t be the action President Obama promised with gusto when he assumed office. But just getting something to pass in the Senate will take a lot more wooing of moderate Democrats and Republicans, while risking losing the support of staunch liberals. At this point, only time will tell if a reform bill will pass by Christmas, not to mention what effect doing something as opposed to nothing will have on the 2010 elections. And who knows how many more Joe Liebermans there are.

******

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.

Last week, President Obama shifted gears from a push for national healthcare to an all-out job-creation blitz. In between justifying his decision for a troop increase in Afghanistan and pushing the Senate to act on a healthcare bill, Obama managed to squeeze in a “Jobs Summit” on Thursday and a speech in Allentown, PA on Friday.

But he has every reason to want to address unemployment. A new report released by Democracy Corp, a Democratic polling firm, shows that pessimism among Americans about the unemployment rate is at an all-time high for the Obama presidency. Not only that, but more Americans than ever feel the country is on the wrong track.

This isn’t welcome news for the Democrats in D.C. As George W. Bush becomes more and more of a memory, Americans are looking to place the blame on the party that is in power; that means Democrats running for reelection in 2010 will be facing uphill battles. But why shouldn’t Democrats accept at least partial responsibility for the disturbingly high unemployment rate? It has, after all, increased under Obama’s watch from 7.6 to 10.2 percent.

But to limited government and free-market onlookers, this has come as no surprise. Why? Because as job creation has always been fundamentally an undertaking of private enterprise, the federal government has, or at least should have, no role in it. Moreover, the Democrats use of the government as a means to the end of creating jobs only makes matters worse.

When President Obama first assumed office, he announced his intention to “create or save” 2.5 million jobs by 2011 with a stimulus package. Based on the Keynesian theory of economics, the Obama administration planned to use said stimulus package to invest in the economy. The purpose was two-fold: To give employers the money needed to hire workers and thus reduce unemployment, and put more money in the hands of the people to encourage spending. This in turn, would fuel an economic recovery.

But as is now well-known, the stimulus package has been implemented, but the results have been found wanting. The reasons for this are simple, and they all have to do with the very nature of a government-funded stimulus. For starters, government “investment” is only a code word for government “spending,” and with the tax payers’ money, no less. The chief way for the government to stimulate the economy is take money from the tax payers and redistribute it, which is exactly what Obama did. But, to resurrect an old metaphor, this doesn’t increase the size of the pie; it just cuts it in different slices.

In other words, taking money from the taxpayers and redistributing it does not increase the amount of money in the economy. It only puts it in different places. Thus, while jobs may be added, the consumer is left with less money. As a result, demand does not meet the increased supply, profit will not be realized, and eventually, businesses will have to make cuts all over again.

The other way the government came up with to fund the stimulus- printing more money at the Treasury- has proven to be just as harmless. There is a sound argument to be made for printing more money in the short term to encourage spending; even the libertarian economist Milton Friedman recognized that an increase in the money supply is necessary during tough economic times. The trick is just knowing when to stop. Printing too much money reduces the purchasing power of the dollar, which causes inflation. This does nothing but hurt those looking for employment.

President Obama has used nothing but government intervention to solve the economic crisis. But of course, in the words of the Wall Street Journal’s, Evan Newmark, “That’s not the way capitalism works. It doesn’t take a village to create a new job. It takes a businessman trying to make a new buck.” But the only way that will happen is if economic conditions are favorable and the businessman has the freedom to allocate his resources the way he sees fit.

Whether it’s one of Obama’s speeches, or a group discussion by CEO’s, talk will do nothing to spur job creation. The only thing American businessmen need is the freedom to act; for the government, that means cutting taxes and regulations, then getting out of the way. The best thing President Obama can do is to start relying on that “invisible hand” the economist and philosopher Adam Smith wrote about so long ago. His assessment of the market is just as true today as it was then, and stimulus packages and government job creation had no part in it.

******

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.