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Under the Cover of
Darkness,
secrecy cloaks House votes
By
U.S. Congressman Sherrod Brown - (D-Ohio), ranking member of
Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. (Originally
published Dec. 11, 2003 in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
Never before has the
House of Representatives operated in such secrecy:
At 2:54 a.m. on a Friday in March, the House cut veterans benefits by
three votes.
At 2:39 a.m. on a Friday in April, the House slashed education and
health care by five votes.
At 1:56 a.m. on a Friday in May, the House passed the Leave No
Millionaire Behind tax-cut bill by a handful of votes.
At 2:33 a.m. on a Friday in June, the House passed the Medicare
privatization and prescription drug bill by one vote.
At 12:57 a.m. on a Friday in July, the House eviscerated Head Start by
one vote.
And then, after returning from summer recess, at 12:12 a.m. on a Friday
in October, the House voted $87 billion for Iraq.
Always in the middle of the night. Always after the press had passed
their deadlines. Always after the American people 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.
But what did the public miss? They didn't see the House votes, which
normally take no more than 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 leaders 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 5:55 on
a Saturday morning.
The debate started at midnight. The roll call began at 3:00 a.m. 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 4 a.m., 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, Ways and Means Chairman Bill
Thomas, Energy and Commerce 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 if 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 4:30, 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 5:55, two hours and 55 minutes after the roll call had begun—twice
as long as any previous vote in the history of the U.S. 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.