The Stumble of Legislation
How Washington Doesn’t Work
Fifty years ago, when I was a lowly grad student finding my way through Washington, there was one piece of required reading that has been instructive for me ever since.
Our professor at the Medill School’s Washington program assigned us The Dance of Legislation, then a new book by a young US Senate staffer named Eric Redman. He had worked for Senator Warren Magnuson, and his 1973 book was masterful - sort of a procedural drama about the legislative progress of a health care bill. His story was a far cry from the rudiments of “How a Bill Becomes a Law” that most of us learned in grade-school.
Eric’s meticulous story was an eye-opener. It has helped me - then and now - to better understand Congress and its Byzantine processes to make law.
Just this week, I’ve been reminded of Redman’s story again by the awful work-product of the Republican Congress, loading up a budget bill with punishments for the poor and emoluments for the rich.
See this story today in The New York Times. It reports how some of the loudest MAGA Republicans in the House are suddenly voicing “regrets” over what they helped President Trump and the House leadership ram through with the new measure. It is washing over them how full the “Big, Beautiful Bill” (as the Trump White House calls it) is so full of unreported hidden complications that nobody talked about.
The better-known elements, of course, are bad enough: Slashing Medicaid and plundering nutrition programs for regular families, while handing over generous tax relief for the already better-off. Heaven only knows what other lesser known mischief was inserted once the train was rolling hard.
Much of Congress, especially nowadays, is comprised of individual congressmen who don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t read the bills they vote on, nor do they make any serious effort to grapple with important policy choices. Most members of Congress are dead weight. This condition, among other problems, makes them willing dupes of the next carnival barker who comes into town.
The few members who are bright enough to know better are, of course, uniformly afraid to object to the imbalance of priorities, too frightened to buck the Trump administration on any issue.
A judgment day should be coming, as the full implications of this backward set of priorities begins to sink in more broadly.
May that day come very soon.
I'm cynical enough to question whether these MAGA congressmen are being truthful when they claim they didn't know what was in the "big, beautiful bill". Claiming they didn't know let's them have it both ways - they can stand before a CPAC crowd and crow that they proudly supported President Trump and when they get concerning questions (few and far between), they say "gee, I didn't know that or I would have voted different". It's a sad day when citizens have to wonder if the legislator is lazy or stupid...or too often these days, both. Ethics, expertise and courage are out of style.
That day cannot come soon enough.