Credit where it’s due
We spend an awful lot of time yelling about what Congress is screwing up. In our defense, it’s a target-rich environment. A quick glance at the red ink that threatens to drown us is all the evidence you need.
But fair is fair, and we should be just as quick to praise when they get something right as we are to criticize when they get something wrong. This week marked a few important victories.
First and foremost, House leaders allowed for substantial debate on the massive defense appropriations bill. There were 100 amendments ruled in order, including several controversial measures they had been trying to avoid. Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, sent a letter to members early last week indicating that they intended to pursue a closed rule that would allow little, if any, debate on or amendment to what is likely the largest bill this Congress will deal with. This was an obvious move to sidestep surrounding surveillance, war operations and overseas funding disputes that could threaten to bog down the process.
However, closing down the process would have contravened years of tradition, as the defense appropriations bill typically attracts dozens of amendments and robust debate about a wide range of national security issues.
In response, the R Street Institute joined with 10 other conservative organizations to call on House leaders to adopt an open rule for the bill. Our effort raised some eyebrows on Capitol Hill and may well have contributed to the Rules Committee delaying its meeting, as members from both sides of the aisle weighed in to call for a more open process. After the delay, the committee relented to pressure from both inside and outside Congress and approved consideration of 100 amendments to the bill. I still haven’t had time to comb through the entire list to see what was discarded, but my initial reaction was that approving two-thirds of all amendments submitted just a week after they had planned to allow only a handful was a win for taxpayers. That seemed to be the reaction of most media folks as well, as several wrote to document this as a win for conservatives.
House leaders deserve credit for listening on this important issue. The stakes on the bill were high, and rather than submit to their baser instincts to shut off debate, they allowed for a relatively open process. As a result, we were able to eliminate $3.5 billion of spending added to an overseas fund specifically for the purpose of evading budget caps and came within a few votes of eliminating entirely funding for NSA’s blanket surveillance program. These are small victories, to be sure, but victories that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the more open process on the bill.
