Do you know what your elected representatives
are doing while you are sleeping? If not, I’ll tell you –
they are passing legislation that affects all Americans without our
knowledge. If your Congressional or Senate representative tell you they
are working around the clock they are telling the truth. What they are
not telling you is that the reason they are doing this is to hide their
actions.
Here are a few of the votes that have taken recently on a Friday night
while you slept:
- 2:54 AM the House cut veterans benefits by three votes.
- 2:39 AM the House slashed education and health care by five votes.
- 1:56 AM the House passed the “Leave No Millionaire Behind”
tax cut by a handful of votes.
- 2:33AM the House passed the Medicare privatization and prescription
drug bill by one vote.
- 12:57AM the House eviscerated Head Start by one vote.
- 12:12 AM the House voted $87 billion for Iraq.
All these votes in the middle of the night, after the press had passed
their deadlines. After working Americans had turned off the news and
gone to bed.
What did the public see? At best, Americans read a small story with
a brief explanation of the bill and the vote count in Saturday’s
papers.
What did the public miss? They didn’t see the House votes, which
normally take 20 minutes, dragging on for as long as an hour as members
of the Republican leadership trolled for enough votes to cobble together
a majority.
They didn’t see GOP leadership stalking the floor for whoever
was not in line. They didn’t see Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority
Leader Tom DeLay coerce enough Republican members into switching their
votes to produce the desired result.
In other words, they didn’t see the subversion of democracy.
And late last month, they did it again. The most sweeping changes to
Medicare in its 38-year history were forced through the House at 5:55AM
on a Saturday morning.
“The debate started at midnight,” states US Congressman
Sherrod Brown, the ranking member on the Committee on Energy and the
Subcommittee on Health, Democrat from Ohio. “The roll call began
at 3:00AM. Most of us voted within the typical 20 minutes. Normally,
the speaker would have gaveled the vote closed. But not this time; the
Republican-driven bill was losing.
By 4AM the bill had been defeated 216-218, with only one member, Democrat
David Wu, not voting. Still, the speaker refused to gavel the vote closed.
Then the assault began.
Hastert, DeLay, Republican Whip Roy Blount, Way and Means Chairman Bill
Thomas, Energy Chairman Billy Tauzin- all searched the floor for stray
Republicans to bully.
I watched them surround Cincinnati’s Steve Chabot, trying first
a carrot then a stick; but he remained defiant. Next, they aimed at
retiring Michigan Congressman Nick Smith, whose son is running to succeed
him. They promised support if he changed his vote to yes and threatened
his son’s future is he refused. He stood his ground.
Many of the two dozen Republicans who voted against the bill had fled
the floor. One Republican hid in the Democratic cloakroom.
By 4:30AM, the browbeating had moved into the Republican cloakroom,
out of sight of C-SPAN cameras and the insomniac public. Republican
leaders woke President George W. Bush, and a White House aide passed
a cell phone from one recalcitrant member to another in the cloakroom.
At 5:55AM, two hours and 55 minutes after the roll call had begun –
twice as long as any previous vote in the history of the US House of
Representatives – two obscure western Republicans emerged from
the cloakroom. They walked, ashen and cowed down the aisle to the front
of the chamber, scrawled their names and district numbers on green cards
to change their votes and surrendered the cards to the clerk.
The speaker gaveled the vote closed; Medicare privatization had passed.
You can do a lot in the middle of the night, under the cover of darkness.”
(Remarks from US Congressman Sherrod Brown of Ohio)
