Here’s an interesting fact to know and tell, compliments of Jim DeMint:
For Immediate Release: July 23, 2008
U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina)CRS Report: 94% of Senate Bills Passed in Secret
855 bills have passed the Senate with no debate, no amendments, no votes
Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) and Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) released a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) finding that 94 percent of bills the Senate has passed in the 110th Congress have been without a vote, debate or a single amendment. The 855 bills that have been secretly passed spend more than $9 billion, though a final total is not available because many of the bills were rushed through before a cost analysis could be performed.Senator DeMint: “It would surprise many Americans to learn that the ‘World’s Greatest Deliberative Body’ passes the overwhelming majority of legislation without any debate at all. Democrats think they are entitled to pass bills without debate or votes, and they’ve tried to ram them through right before recess to pressure us to give up. But, Senators shouldn’t fear debate on these important bills. It’s in the best traditions of our republic to demand the Senate actually do its job and have a public debate on bills that expand government and increase the burden on taxpayers. Senator Reid can complain all he wants, but Republicans represent millions of Americans whose voices are being silenced by Democrat strong-arm tactics.”
Dr. Coburn: “The U.S. Senate has a nine percent approval rating because the American people believe that much of our work is done in secret with no debate, no transparency and no accountability. This report shows that the reality is worse than the public’s fears. Instead of encouraging open debate, I’m disappointed that Majority Leader Reid often chooses secrecy or demagoguery. For instance, he has depicted my effort to reduce the number of bills that pass the Senate in secret by ten percent as ‘unprecedented obstruction.’ What is unprecedented and ahistorical, however, is the Majority Leader’s view that Senators should have a king-like right to pass massive spending bills in secret with no debate, no amendments and no recorded vote.”
The CRS report states, “[T]he vast majority of measures passed or agreed to by the Senate so far in the 110th Congress have not received formal parliamentary debate on the floor of the Senate.” This practice, known as “hotlining,” has traditionally been reserved for noncontroversial bills with little to no cost to the taxpayer, like the naming of post offices. However, the practice has been abused to sneak through large bills that cost the taxpayers billions of dollars and have significant policy implications.
On March 3, 2008, U.S. Senator Richard Durbin stated on the Senate Floor:
“My good friend, the late Congressman from Oklahoma, Mike Synar, used to say: If you don’t want to fight fires, don’t be a firefighter. If you don’t want to stop crime, don’t be a policeman, and if you don’t want to vote on tough issues, don’t run for Congress.”
“I agree with him. I don’t like facing tough votes, but it is a part of the job. You ought to at least have enough confidence in your beliefs to cast that vote and go home and explain it.”
Highlights from the Congressional Research Service Memorandum – “The Clearance Process in the Senate and Measures Approved in the 110th Congress through June 30, 2008”:
“Nearly every day the Senate is in session, the majority and minority leaders consult to identify bills and resolutions that have been “cleared” by the Senators in both parties. A measure is considered cleared if no Senator has informed party leadership … that he or she is opposed to passage of the measure without debate.”
- Only 56 bills (6%) were passed by vote (53 by roll call vote, 3 by voice vote)
- 855 bills (94%) were passed by Unanimous Consent (no debate, no vote)
- 388 were passed by UC on the same day they were introduced
- 381 were passed by UC without debate
- 88 were passed by UC with some debate
- 9 were passed by UC without debate after debate on a Senate companion bill
- 35% of the bills passed by UC were agreed to in the week before a recess
- 52% of the bills passed by UC were agreed to during the two weeks before a recess
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Here’s a PDF of the CRS report, and here’s another PDF of graphics that go with it.
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This sort of debunks the notion that term limits are bad because it takes so long to come up to speed on how our “complex” government works.
Wouldn’t take me more than a week or so to figure out how to press the Yea or Nay button based on what the majority/minority whip instructed me to do.
Two terms is plenty for a Senator and four for a representative. Imagine if these guys had to go out and get real jobs?
Sounds like we need some taxpayer lawsuits to overturn all these ersatz laws which were never legally passed into law.
The staffers are running the system, writing laws that politicians never read. This frees up the Senators for shaking down more bribe money from lobbyists.
Every legislator should have to sign an oath, under penalty of perjury, that they have personally read every word of every bill they vote on. If they don’t have time to read the laws, we don’t have time to obey them.
If DeMint and Coburn actually cared about this “problem” they could easily do something about it, since (at least according to the above explanation) a bill can’t be passed by Unanimous Consent if even a single senator objects. If that’s not the case, then the Republican minority leader must be complicit.
And who are they kidding when they claim this is massive spending, yet 855 bills total only $9 billion? Sure it may be 94% of bills, but it’s less than 1% of spending.
To Wally,
Coburn and DeMint certainly do object to many bills that would normally pass by unanimous consent. That is the whole point of this press conference, to bolster support for opposition against the Advancing America’s Priorities Act, which is a package of bills bundled by Majority Leader Reid that have been held by Coburn.
What a fiasco. It’s like that old joke about the guy going to the doctor and whining, “Doctor. You have to help me. It hurts when I do this (as the patient moves his arm a certain way.) The doctor replies (Of course) “Well don’t do that.” Someone needs to tell these two rubes what the term “unanimous” means. If they didn’t want the bills to pass by unanimous conset, they should have objected. If they wanted to debate these bills, they had the right to under Senate rules — for an unlimited time. If they wanted a record vote on these bills, they could have had that under Senate rules. These guys are bitching about something they themselves could have stopped. And just which pieces of vital legislation on this list do Coburn and Demint think the Senate should have spend hours debating, despite the fact that all Senators already agreed on the bill? The resolution permitting the U.S. Capitol Grounds to be used for the National Soapbox Derby? What a fucking embarassment. The American people are disgusted that the Congress never confronts real problems facing our nation anymore. Ideologues like these two jackasses who don’t know that the Congress operates on compromise are one pretty good reason why that’s the case.
If Senators DeMint and Coburn are correct, this just shows that what we need to do is to repeal the 17th Amendment and have our U.S. Senators once again appointed by the state legislatures and not directly elected. If DeMint and Graham did not perform to SC standard, we would get new blood often enough to extract more accountability.
Another corrupt practice is bills being changed in committee after votes. A lot of pork and bribery stuff is sneaked in that way. Patrick Moynihan wrecked out entire IT and electrical engineering professions with some tax law changes which he sneaked into a bill on tuna fishing, for a $20,000 bribe.
It would be NICE if this caused the citizen’s of this country to WAKE UP and vote these Crooks out of office, Or that the 9% approval rating that Congress had as of July 24th, 2008, Meant that people were finally sick of Congresses crap enough to actually get off their keisters and actually Vote in Force,…But, just like every other election in this country, the Citizens will just Allow these Rubes Back into office, and ONLY 20-25% MAX of the population will vote, and we will just Get the SAME Crappy Reps and Senators that we have gotten for the last 4 Decades.
And, Just Remember, that once America votes in Barack HUSSEIN Obama in as President, that that is the END of the USA as we have known it for the last 250+ years, and that is NOT a Race issue, it is a Marxist issue. And if you do not Believe me, that means you are Not watching and listening to him.
Coburn and DeMint did us another favor today (Friday) by driving Majority Leader Reid even closer to the edge. Captain Ed reports:
That last remark is a bit optimistic, but Reid was not a happy camper:
Reid went on to claim that he’d offered Republicans an opportunity for amendments, but his claim was not supported by the record and denied by Arizona’s John Kyl. When reporters asked him about that, Reid got nasty:
Happy hour at the GOP lounge was probably well-attended tonight:
Well, unforeseen economic circumstances are helping them find a voice. But DeMint, Coburn, and a few others have been pushing for some time.
Democrats aren’t going to do anything to oil “speculators”, because the futures trading is done in Chicago, and Dick Durbin, Rom Emmanuel, and Barack Obama are blocking hearings and committee meetings.