The Dems Buy Now, Pay Later Agenda

The Obama Administration wants to ram its agenda through and ignore the due diligence, deliberative traditions, and process that only the inside the beltway crowd knows. They are counting on being able to say “we passed (fill in the blank) legislation and addressed the pressing problems of America” even if the latter part does not pass any sort of substantive scrutiny.

The behavior of the Obama Administration and congressional Democrats defies all logic – except the most cynical political explanations.  All one hears about is the great rush to pass their agenda.  Why? Let’s look at the record.  By now, everyone is familiar with the track record on the stimulus legislation.  It was done fast, and poorly.  Global warming legislation was on a similar track, having been rammed through the House even though Republicans were not granted the ability to even see a complete copy of the final bill before the floor vote.  Fortunately, the Senate has laid down the law and there will be no forced march before August. On health care reform, the House Committee on Ways and Means markup went until the wee hours of the morning.  The House Education and Labor markup went until dawn last Friday.  In the aftermath, the Congressional Budget Office rushed out their estimate of the bill on Friday night about 9 pm.  The only catch was that the CBO had to use health insurance provisions that were based on staff descriptions of the bill and not the actual legislative text.  So, the Committees marked up the bill without knowing what it actually costs and we still don't know what it costs. The cost matters because the budget outlook is disastrous.  (As an aside, the only event not being rushed is the Mid-Session Review of the Budget. It was officially due on a July 15th deadline, but the administration evidently has no desire to display the looming disaster.  While every administration has missed the deadline at some point, the contrast to the remainder of the Obama agenda is striking.)  Which brings us to the administration’s proposed bill on PAYGO. PAYGO is a budgetary process that Democrats have advocated for years and some Republicans support.  The administration’s bill is far from perfect (see my testimony on the bill here), but that could easily be fixed during the deliberations of the Budget committees in the House and Senate.  Why, then, did the Democrats bypass the committee process entirely and take the bill straight to the floor? It cannot be in the interest of good governance.  As Ranking Member Paul Ryan said in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

….distribution of authority among Congress' committees is one of the vital safeguards against the concentration of power that is always hazardous, regardless of political philosophy.  The House has seen an increasing and disturbing trend of rushing legislation straight to the floor, increasingly under limited rules for amendments. Serious deliberation in a transparent manner is the lifeblood of our legislative process; denying it diminishes a great strength of our democratic form of government. We are lawmakers and this trend diminishes our ability to fashion laws.” (see the complete letter here.)

So what is going on that includes even something so esoteric as the details of PAYGO legislation? Clearly the Obama Administration wants to ram its agenda through and ignore the due diligence, deliberative traditions, and process that only the inside the beltway crowd knows.  They are counting on being able to say “we passed ____ (fill in the blank) legislation and addressed the pressing problems of America” even if the latter part does not pass any sort of substantive scrutiny.  And, they think they can get away with it. Every administration begins with this sort of arrogance – the Obama example is unique only in its degree.  But in the process, the administration usually offends those that it ultimately needs to govern effectively and learns its lesson. When will this one?