Order in the Senate
Heed McCain’s call for bipartisan lawmaking
When he killed the last Obamacare repeal in the Senate, Sen. John McCain told his colleagues that the bill was bad, in part, because the process was bad. He was right then, and he is right today.
Now that the Graham-Cassidy bill has died, with Mr. McCain one of the executioners, the point is even more well-taken. The Senate should return to the “regular order,” as Mr. McCain said, if it wishes to make progress on Obamacare.
Regular order means committee hearings, expert testimony and witnesses, reporting a bill, or bills, to the floor, and debate on the floor of the U.S. Senate. That is the way the Senate has functioned for decades, and that is the process derived from the system the Founders created.
That is the process that reveals the costs, flaws and unintended consequences of proposed legislation. That is the process by which bills are refined and improved. That is also the process that produced the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960s, for example, which was difficult legislation to pass.
This is called the legislative process. It is far from perfect. But it beats legislators voting on bills they have not read or do not understand.
All the significant legislative achievements of the past 35 years have been bipartisan. Welfare reform, Social Security reform and the extension and expansion of the GI Bill were all the products of the two parties finding common ground and giving way on certain key points precious to each. In the case of Social Security, the outlines of the deal were sketched by the top elected leaders of the two major parties — a conservative Republican named Ronald Reagan and a liberalDemocrat named Tip O’Neill.
That is called compromise, and it is the only way to fashion really significant or, arguably, even sound legislation. It’s the only way to make Washington work.
Legislation by fiat, or by one party, with zero support from the other party, is apt to be impractical and unpopular. That was the problem with Obamacare. That would have been the problem with its replacements — three different rabbits pulled out of three hats without the benefit of a legislative process.
Legislating is not rubber-stamping everything your party comes up with or voting “no” on everything the other party comes up with. The regular order — proposal, debate, deliberation, adjustment, more debate and amendment on the floor, a vote, and then conference and reconciliation with the other chamber — is legislating. This is what senators and congressmen are sent to Washington to do. According to the polls, this is what Americans want.
“Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order,” John McCain told his colleagues. “We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle.”
Since the uber-partisan, exclusive and ersatz way has failed, why not try the old way, John McCain’s way, the Founders’ way, the right way to repair, not repeal, Obamacare? Why not try bipartisan legislation, by working politicians, crafting actual legislation — the regular order? We might get legislation worthy of being the law of the land.