Procedural Maneuvering and Public Opinion

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by Adam Nagourney
NY Times

WASHINGTON — You could forgive Americans for being a little confused. At a moment when Congress is engaged in a crucial debate about overhauling the health care system, the talk from Washington is about self-executing rules, deem and pass, reconciliation, the Slaughter Rule, preliminary C.B.O. scores, final C.B.O. scores — not to mention filibusters, cloture votes, the Byrd Bath and supermajorities.

At the end of the day, it is fair to wonder whether Americans even care about these exhausting debates, much less follow them.

“I don’t think procedural stuff really resonates with most Americans,” said Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader. “It may add generally to their cynicism, but it is accomplishment — or lack of it — that matters much more.”

Perhaps. Yet this yearlong debate may test the proposition that no one outside this city cares how the sausage is made. Indeed, as the midterm elections approach, Republicans are betting that process matters. A central part of their strategy has been to tangle the legislative works, resulting in both sides’ resorting to the most arcane legislative maneuvers, displaying sausage-making at its grubbiest.

“It just seems to me that people are really in tune with what is happening now,” said Senator Scott Brown, the Massachusetts Republican whose election in January suggested the depth of anti-Washington sentiment. “People are informed, and they are angry. They want this kind of political chicanery and the parliamentary maneuvers to stop.”

Mr. Brown was referring to House Democrats who were moving to pass the Senate health care bill over the weekend with a deem-and-pass maneuver, which means they would be voting on fixes to the Senate bill after agreeing that the vote would also serve to pass the Senate bill itself, something many Congressional Democrats were loath to do. (Got that?) Indeed, Democrats on Saturday dropped the deem-and-pass idea, presumably figuring that it might have been one legislative maneuver too many.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/weekinreview/21nagourney.html