Even with majorities in House & Senate the GOP is still up to sneaky congressional tricks
The recent spending bill ramrodded through Congress - ostensibly merely to raise the debt ceiling for government spending so as to allow Bush's crazy train ride into a financial for the U.S. to proceed smoothly into 2005 - in a fashion that's become typical for GOP lawmakers included items slipped in that obviously some hoped wouldn't be noticed. On the side the GOP representatives are claiming credit for is an anti-abortion rider that will allow hospitals receiving federal funds the option of not discussing abortion as an option when counselling patients, a provision that currently applies only to Catholic hospitals. On the more darkly comic side of "how did that get in there?" responses from nearly all GOP lawmakers who'll talk about it is another provision in the same bill that would essentially eliminate the privacy of any individual taxpayer's tax returns, leaving them open for scrutiny at the whim of two committee members.
This has become standard operating procedure for the GOP-controlled Congress. As North Dakota's Democratic Senator Kent Conrad explained:
"...the measure's presence in the spending bill was symptomatic of a broader problem - Congress writing legislation hundreds of pages long and then giving lawmakers only a few hours to review it before having to vote on it."
This is much the same way so many other things, including the power-grab that is the USA PATRIOT Act, was pushed through Congress. Items worked on largely in secret, pushed in front of lawmakers and a vote demanded in far too short a time for anyone unfamiliar with the legislation to break it down and evaluate its substance and ramifications. Those who don't step in line are declared anything from unpatriotic to "partisan obstructionists" (a now-classic) as part of the bullying. If they do, however reluctantly, sign it any objections and reservations they voiced become inconsequential, and when calls for revision arise later - once people have had a chance to evaluate what was signed - administration tools stand ready to declare the lawmakers as flip-floppers. Worse, I nearly choked the time I heard John Ashcroft defend another measure that was under fire by those concerned with civil liberties by acting surprised, since it wasn't anywhere near as aggressive as the PATRIOT Act, which simply sailed through Congress.
(Thanks to Mr. Washington for passing along the two links above to demonstrate how the GOP continues to stuff what should be even the simplest legislation as if it were an unusually elastic turkey.)
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