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SURPRISE! Dems Break Promise: Stimulus Bill to Floor Friday
by Connie Hair (more by this author)
Posted 02/12/2009 ET
Updated 02/13/2009 ET
In a press conference Thursday, the House Republican leadership spoke candidly about being kept out of the House-Senate conference on the Obama-Pelosi-Reid so-called “economic stimulus” bill. They confirmed they had not yet seen the text of the bill as of 4 p.m.
Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he was unsure how many Democrats would vote with Republicans again on this bill but that he thought Republicans “may get a few” Democrats to side with them. The fact that the Demos have now broken their promise to have the public able to see the bill for 48 hours may drive more Dems into the Republican camp.
“ don’t know, ‘cause they haven’t seen the bill either,” Boehner said.
“The American people have a right to know what’s in this bill,” Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind) told HUMAN EVENTS after the press conference. “Every member of Congress -- Republicans and Democrats -- voted to post this bill on the internet for 48 hours, 48 hours ago. We’ll see if the Democrats keep their word.”
Actually -- as of 5:15 pm, the Democrats had broken their word. The stimulus bill -- which we still haven’t seen -- will be released late tonight and will be brought up on the House floor at 9 am tomorrow.
The following statement was released by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer at 4:57 p.m.:
"The House is scheduled to meet at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow and is expected to proceed directly to consideration of the American Recovery and Reinvestment conference report. The conference report text will be filed this evening, giving members enough time to review the conference report before voting on it tomorrow afternoon."
Meanwhile, at an earlier presser Thursday, Pelosi -- while talking about legislation regarding school construction funds -- said it was vital to see the language of a bill before making decisions. ReadtheStimulus.org had the following quote:
“With all of this you have to see the language. You said this --- I said that --- I understood it to be this way --- you know, we wanted to see it in writing and when we did that then we were able to go forward."
"Around here language means a lot. Words weigh a ton and one person's understanding of a spoken description might vary from another's. We wanted to see it. And not only just I had to see it, I had to show it to my colleagues and my caucus. We wanted to take all the time that was necessary to make sure it was right."
Congressional members are also exchanging barbs via the popular social network Twitter. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) twittered, "Don't know when we're going to vote. Will the no votes delay vote just because they can? Speed is important. They know that."
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) twittered back, “Those in favor of speed over commonsense may just be afraid of letting the People know what they are ramming through.”
UPDATE: The Democrats finally made the bill's language available around 11 p.m. Thursday, approximately 10 hours before members meet Friday to consider the bill and 38 hours short of the time promised Americans to review the bill.
And if that source was too biased for you:
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Stimulate First, Ask Questions Later
With the stimulus bill, Obama chose urgency over transparency.
By John Dickerson
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009, at 6:32 PM ET
President Barack ObamaFor President Obama to get a stimulus bill, something had to give. You can have urgency or transparency or a thorough think about things. But you can't have all three. Forced to choose, Obama chose the fierce urgency of now.
The president heralded a deal reached Wednesday in the House and Senate on a stimulus bill, but the process wasn't pretty. Creating legislation often isn't. Instead of finding a Lego piece that fits, lawmakers get a larger one and bite it in half. Never mind the jagged edges.
In this case, not only is the end product ragged—some of the elements aren't terribly stimulative—but the means were ugly. The differences between the House and Senate bills were reconciled mostly in secret by House and Senate Democratic leaders, three Northeastern Republicans, and White House aides. This is hardly unusual for Washington—which is precisely the problem: It's not the change Obama promised.
Obama promised his administration would be so transparent that its deliberations would be shown on C-SPAN. Had cameras recorded negotiations on the stimulus bill, it would have looked like a scene from Animal Crackers. As Jeff Zeleny reported, the stimulus deal was so opaque even the people negotiating it weren't in on what was in it.
Obama and his aides are quick to point out that the stimulus bill includes transparency provisions. So maybe we shouldn't worry. There's going to be a Web site, www.recovery.gov, which will allow people to make sure the money from the stimulus bill is being spent wisely. That's fine as far as it goes. But that isn't far enough to get us out of the depot. The time for transparency is when a decision is being made, not after it has been issued. Once a piece of legislation has been agreed to, or a project has been put in motion, pointing to a Web site doesn't create much moral pressure to undo the deed.
But don't take my word for it. Here's what Barack Obama's very own Web site says about transparency in legislative negotiations:
End the Practice of Writing Legislation Behind Closed Doors: As president, Barack Obama will restore the American people's trust in their government by making government more open and transparent. Obama will work to reform congressional rules to require all legislative sessions, including committee mark-ups and conference committees, to be conducted in public.
Pointing out this contradiction is not going to undo the bill.
The other victim of urgency is considered thought (which also can't be recovered by a Web site). There's been lots of debate about what to add or subtract from the bill to get a deal. But that's horse-trading, not consideration. In the rush to get the votes, discussions about national priorities on education, technology, and transportation have happened at warp speed.
True, there has been a lot of public debate about what is and isn't stimulative, and the president himself spent an hour patiently teaching the country the other night about the bill. But he was talking more about the need for urgency than any particular part of the stimulus package. And in the rush to get a deal, some barely stimulative provisions have gotten into the bill. The alternative minimum tax fix is a large example. At $70 billion, it's not a small part of the bill, but it's an anemic stimulus. Other stuff would probably be better.
The argument against transparency, of course, is that the perfect can't be the enemy of the good. That's eminently reasonable and realistic. It's an expression we've heard often as the negotiations have come to a close. Something always has to fall out of legislation. In this case it was transparency and consideration. Whether they've fallen out of the young Obama administration, too, is something we'll have to figure out in less urgent times.
Well, Obama definitely trampled all over his Increased Transparency promises with this one. I understand wanting to get your version of the bill passed but there is a hell of a lot of difference between promising to allow for 48 hours to review the bill and not providing a copy of it less than 24 hours before the schedule voting time.
Haste makes Waste and with this amount of money, that's going to be a hell of alot of waste.
Also, I've heard unsubstantiated rumors that the secret conference balooned the size of the bill to over a trillion dollars.
Transparency Ho!!!
