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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Just to spark a little debate :) My most
recent Populist column (<A
href="http://www.populist.com">www.populist.com</A>)-- NN</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>TWO CHEERS FOR THE DEMS: REFLECTIONS ON A PARTISAN
YEAR</FONT></DIV>
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<P> by Nathan Newman</P>
<P>Despite the bipartisan flag-waving over the war in Afghanistan, this year saw
the emergence of the most partisan party-line voting this country has seen since
at least the Depression. </P>
<P>With party control divided between the houses of Congress, we regularly saw
the House passing rightwing legislation (drilling in Alaska National Wildlife
Refuge as an example) with the Dems in the Senate stripping it from legislation
on their side of the aisle. Or as commonly this year, we saw the Senate
Democrats passing progressive bills (a Patient Bill of Rights, Mental Health
Parity, Campaign Finance Reform), only to see it defeated in the House with GOP
party line discipline.</P>
<P>And when Bush was nickle-and-diming New York City, refusing to release the
money promised for reconstruction, it was the Dems fighting to force him to
release the money. The House GOP defeated an amendment to the defense bill for
aid to New York in late November, but the Senate Democratic leadership forced
the aid through on their side and, in conference, substantially passed the New
York City aid package in the final bill.</P>
<P>What is remarkable is how few members of either party were crossing party
lines this year-- bills like Fast Track, which was defeated in 1997 with a
number of GOP members siding with Dems opposed to it, had only a handful of
Democratic votes this year but nearly unanimous Republican votes to force its
passage in the House.</P>
<P>Similarly, every Republican in the Senate voted to repeal ergonomics
standards pushed through under the Clinton administration, with all but six
Democrats opposed. These were the first real occupational health and safety
improvements passed in decades, to prevent the suffering and the billions in
lost wages suffered by workers due to repetitive stress injury on the job. Yet
similar party-line voting in the House led to complete repeal of those
standards, a blow to workers nationwide crippled by injuries on the job.</P>
<P>Even on issues like the tax cuts and civil liberties, where progressives
suffered grevious losses this year, the Democrats, despite some dramatic moments
of cowardice, did quite a bit to fight them and blunted some of their worst
excesses. </P>
<P>On civil liberties, Senate Dems used their new majority to block confirmation
of many of Bush's most dangerous judicial nominees. Jeffords defection killed a
few nominations outright as they withdrew in the face of certain defeat,
including conservative former Congressman Chris Cox. Other controversial
rightwing nominees like Jeffrey Sutton (see the May 1, 2001 <I>Populist)</I>
were refused Judiciary hearings and only less controversial nominees have been
approved. Reflecting the fact that any Supreme Court nominee by Bush would face
almost certain opposition, Sandra Day O'Connor, who was rumoured to be planning
retirement, suddenly announced she was staying for the foreseeable future. </P>
<P>In the wake of S11 and Attorney General Ashcroft's call for police state
legislation, in the House, Democrats like John Conyers worked to write a more
restrained compromise bill through the Judiciary Committee, only to see the
House GOP leadership override the committee to substitute the far more draconian
version passed. All Democrats in the House votes to block this move by the
GOP-controlled Rules committee, but they were outvoted. While only 79 Dems in
the House had the courage to vote agains the final passage, Democrats in both
the House and Senate did force through sunset provisions to automatically repeal
most of its major provisions in a few years, allowing progressives the
opportunity under hopefully more favorable conditions to block attempts by
conservatives to pass a new bill to retain them.</P>
<P>Nothing highlighted the dramatic partisan divide between the parties more
than the series of party-line votes, often hair-thin 50-50 and 51-49 votes,
defeating Democratic amendments to Bush's spring tax bill. The GOP defeated
amendments a series of amendment that would have created a radically different
bill. These defeated Democratic amendments included:</P>
<P>* Scaling back the top-rate cut in favor of widening the 15% bracket for
middle class families</P>
<P>* Keeping the estate tax on fortunes worth more than $4 million</P>
<P>* Create a "trigger" to eliminate all tax cuts if the deficit explodes</P>
<P>* Providing a prescription drug benefit through Medicare while scaling back
the top rate cut</P>
<P>The differences between the Bush bill, sending trillions of dollars in the
next decades to the wealthiest voters versus the Democratic votes for directing
tax relief to working families could not be starker.</P>
<P>Beyond the individual votes, this year showed why partisan control of a
chamber matters. While Senate rules prevented a filibuster of the bill in the
Spring, Daschle was able to rally Dems this past December to defeat Bush's
attempt at another corporate tax giveaway in his so-called stimulus bill. </P>
<P>While the Dems are not all progressives would want, in the roll call of votes
on amendment after amendment, we do see the reality of far more stark partisan
division than conventional wisdom admits, a divide only masked by the razor-thin
margins held by each party. Those who ask why Dems are less progressive than
they were thirty years ago ignore the reality that the real problem is there are
fewer of them in Congress today than then, so they have less ability to pass
landmark legislation like Medicare. </P>
<P>More progressive Democrats would be nice, but just electing more Democrats in
general would make a big difference in overcoming the roadblocks to economic and
social justice represented by partisan rightwing Republican power. <BR></P>
<P><EM>Nathan Newman is a longtime union and community activist, a national vice
president of the National Lawyers Guild and author of the forthcoming book
<B>Net Loss</B> on Internet policy and economic inequality. Email
nathan@newman.org or see
www.nathannewman.org.</EM></P></FONT></DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>